Before Clearview Became a Police Tool, It Was a Secret Plaything of the Rich (nytimes.com) 66
Investors and clients of the facial recognition start-up freely used the app on dates and at parties -- and to spy on the public. From a report: One Tuesday night in October 2018, John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery store chain, was having dinner at Cipriani, an upscale Italian restaurant in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, when his daughter, Andrea, walked in. She was on a date with a man Mr. Catsimatidis didn't recognize. After the couple sat down at another table, Mr. Catsimatidis asked a waiter to go over and take a photo. Mr. Catsimatidis then uploaded the picture to a facial recognition app, Clearview AI, on his phone. The start-up behind the app has a database of billions of photos, scraped from sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Within seconds, Mr. Catsimatidis was viewing a collection of photos of the mystery man, along with the web addresses where they appeared: His daughter's date was a venture capitalist from San Francisco.. Ms. Catsimatidis said she and her date had no idea how her father had identified him so quickly.
Clearview was unknown to the general public until this January, when The New York Times reported that the secretive start-up had developed a breakthrough facial recognition system that was in use by hundreds of law enforcement agencies. The company quickly faced a backlash on multiple fronts. Facebook, Google and other tech giants sent cease-and-desist letters. Lawsuits were filed in Illinois and Virginia, and the attorney general of New Jersey issued a moratorium against the app in that state. [...] The Times, however, has identified multiple individuals with active access to Clearview's technology who are not law enforcement officials. And for more than a year before the company became the subject of public scrutiny, the app had been freely used in the wild by the company's investors, clients and friends.
Clearview was unknown to the general public until this January, when The New York Times reported that the secretive start-up had developed a breakthrough facial recognition system that was in use by hundreds of law enforcement agencies. The company quickly faced a backlash on multiple fronts. Facebook, Google and other tech giants sent cease-and-desist letters. Lawsuits were filed in Illinois and Virginia, and the attorney general of New Jersey issued a moratorium against the app in that state. [...] The Times, however, has identified multiple individuals with active access to Clearview's technology who are not law enforcement officials. And for more than a year before the company became the subject of public scrutiny, the app had been freely used in the wild by the company's investors, clients and friends.
Clearview CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
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As opposed to the slurping noises you make whenever a rich cock is waved in your face. You've still got a little banker jizz on the side there. Did he tell you that you can't wipe it off?
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He is a CEO.
We don't have to like him.
He doesn't need to be a good person.
All we expect of a good CEO is they keep the company growing and profitable.
And that in a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's not our civilization (Score:3)
Things change. Civilizations come and go. Sometimes they don't go through violence but through gradual changes and technological improvements. Psychopaths were only a "good" thing in that they solved certain problems.
Honestly though it's debatable if we would h
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I think competition and cooperation are essential for progress. They balance each other out. You can't have all cooperation and still be able to evolve.
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Genes create a spectrum of behaviors. Having a few of the genes that code for sociopathic behavior may make one a better leader, but having many of them is a handicap. It's not that "sometimes being a sociopath creates a survival advantage" it's more that having one or two of the genes that code for specific parts of sociopathy can make one a better leader or better in survival situations. So individually, the genes are selected for, and sometimes that leads to an individual getting too many of those genes.
Re: And that in a nutshell (Score:2, Insightful)
You may not like him, but he is free to pursue his talents to do the best he can for himself and his
Re: And that in a nutshell (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this sociopathic fellow you praise not rigging the system the way he feels it should be set up? That's what the rich do. They put time and money into achieving their political goals because it works for them, why on earth should the average person be shamed for doing the same thing?
There is no free and open cooperation or competition among sociopaths. They lie and cheat and rig the game remorselessly, because they are physiologically incapable of remorse. They use coercion every day because it works, and they can't possibly regret the harm thy cause to others when using it.
In a constitutional democracy, We, the People are the authority. We set up the system to benefit the largest number of people fairly, rather than rigging the game to benefit those who have no conscience.
If might makes right, then when the people get together, they have the might, and therefore the right. If might does not make right, then why worship those who profess to be strong?
Some times it is okay for a group of people to tell an individual that their behavior is unacceptable. Whether something counts as "Initiation of force" really depends on who is asking, doesn't it?
Companies are not natural things (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically you find these things natural because the systems were in place long before you were born. If you were born into feudalism you'd find than natural. It takes time, care and effort to analyzie and see the systems that govern your daily life.
Anyway here's two examples just
Oh, I forgot my favorite example (Score:3)
If that's not rigging the system then, well, you've moved the goal post too far. Maybe NASA could help...
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You americans are really weird.
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do you believe this is a 'new' phenomenon?
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Not really. The NYT has an article on the rise in suicides, deaths by drinking, drugs, etc. afflicting Americans. It seems the capitalist notion of putting profit above all else, and its subsequent effects of devaluing workers, offshoring, etc., is causing middle and low income Americans to die much younger.
If the company is only concerned with profit and growth, then Americans will continue to suffer the consequences.
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well yes. But as the OP stated. We don't care.
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If the population is getting to a point where working is untolerable, they will stop working and not be customers of products.
There are also cases where there CEO who are jad bad people, however people work for the company because of good HR policies and benefits.
While fictional I like to think of the Episode of the Simpsons with Scorpio. This guy was a Bond Supervillain, however his minions love to work for him, because he created a good working environment.
There are a lot of studies showing how profit is
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Not at all.
However the Value of the company isn't tied to the CEO value as a human.
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He is the cappo di tutti capi.
We don't have to like him.
He doesn't need to be a good person.
All we expect of a good mob boss is they keep the family growing and profitable.
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As if money were the only concern!
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Sounds like a lot of the regulars on slashdot.
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Facial Recognition Tech is IMMENSELY BENEFICIAL....yes, to the jackboots and dictators of the world.
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Extremely high userid, copies and pastes the same text in multiple posts in multiple articles advocating for a surveillance society, hates institutions like the ACLU and EFF that protect freedom. Found the Russian troll.
empty-headed rabble rousing (Score:2, Insightful)
to keep people in-fighting? perhaps msmash is somehow benefitting from keeping the proles fighting amongst themselves?
I don't mind people having an agenda to push; it's the secretive aspect of it that smells like shit, usually because it's a shitty agenda and being forthright and honest about has been deemed unproductive.... so let's just skip over that part
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Yah, I skipped over your post when I realized it was vacuous innuendo masquerading as insight.
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while you're looking up big words to use, try understanding what they mean first
Re:Already divided and conquered by wealth inequal (Score:4, Insightful)
not much of a democracy when another's opinion is dismissed only for being different; what examples can you give for 'democracy and freedom' dying from wealth inequaltiy? it's just scare tactics intended to villify 'others' so that the outrage can be harnessed and exploited; you're getting played and don't even know it
speaking of analytic skills, did you miss the part where my issue is about the need to keep an agenda secret? you got so caught up in 'setting me straight' that you forgot to read analytically
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Hilarious. You could be in denial, no true Scotsman not withstanding.
Your full-throated defense of the status quo suggests it's doing quite well for you. I'd bet you make more money than the average American.
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attempts to kill the messenger are getting hilarious.... just deliberate obtuseness on my issue/question
this is not about income, it's about the privacy and power; when others frame this as 'rich vs p
So basically like every other piece of technology? (Score:5, Interesting)
Before automobiles became widely available to the public, they were a plaything of the rich.
Before cell phones became widely available to the public, they were a plaything of the rich.
Before computers became widely available to the public, they were a plaything of the rich.
Any new technology is hideously expensive at first which limits the potential customer base. If you can find a few people to foot enough of the bill while you work out the kinks and get the production costs down you might just be able to survive as a business.
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others will use this to agitate and promote class warfare, which is just divide and conquer writ large
using your comment as a template, I present a hypothetical:
let's say the app was free to use for anyone, would only the dirtbag rich use it to snoop in on people? hell no, everyone, including the dirtbag poor and dirtbag middle would; this is not a rich/poor thing, just a people thing
attempts to present it as anything else is an attempt to exploit it for advantage,
Re:So basically like every other piece of technolo (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm conflicted on this being accessible by everyone. On one hand, the privacy concerns are extremely numerous. I don't want someone to be able to tell everything about me just because I walked by them on the street. On the other hand, I have an extremely hard time remembering faces and names. People will often come up to me and talk to me like they know me. I've gotten very good at faking recognition, but it would be nice if I had a heads up display (think Google Glasses without the negative connotations that name brings up) that would say "This is John Smith. You worked with him on the Widgets project 3 months ago."
How you balance the benefits that people like me could receive versus the privacy costs is a question I don't have the answer to. It's something society as a whole will need to decide on.
Re:So basically like every other piece of technolo (Score:4, Insightful)
You've posited a strawman: the line wasn't "Before Clearview became widely available to the public, they were a plaything of the rich"; it was "Before Clearview became a police tool, it was a secret plaything of the rich".
This tech is not for sale to the general public, because of its potential for causing significant harm when mis-used. Yet some rich people got to use it despite not having the accountability, binding oaths and at least figleaf of proportionate need, and what's more they got to hide the fact they were using it. That's what the problem was. It was nothing to do with rich people getting access before poor people.
Re:So basically like every other piece of technolo (Score:4, Insightful)
Or like how the world used to be 50 years ago. Most people used to live in small rural communities. If your daughter walked in on a date with a guy... you know him, you knew who his parents were, you know his grandparents, you know who his sister is dating, you knew who he used to date, you knew...
This brief blip of anonymity is by and large the weird part in human history.
Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
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And the difference is the cost. The old timey "shoe leather" way costs $$$$$, while the modern day Clearview way costs $.
And that cost difference create a huge scale difference and opens it up to all kinds of abuse by all kinds of people. Think of the people that were illegally buying cell phone location data and selling access to Bounty Hunters, Repo and others. In fact Clearview make this kind of thing economic for stalkers and other bad actors and that's a HUGE concern, not even considering the privacy i
What's the point of being rich if you can't profit (Score:3)
Now, if the venture guy had alerts that someone was doing a search, and was notified, then we'd be talking about an awkward family moment...
We knew this was coming (Score:1)
FindFace had already done the same in Russia harvesting the VKontakte social network four years ago:
https://www.theatlantic.com/te... [theatlantic.com]
Interestingly enough the article above was asking rethorically
"Could someone do the same thing to Facebook? Probably not."
PI
Law enforcement (Score:2)
Tangled Web (Score:1)
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excellent NRA angle, hadn't thought of that before
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From the article:
Clearview received a seed investment round of about $1 million in July 2018. Its backers included the billionaire investor Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist David Scalzo and Hal Lambert, an investor in Texas who runs an exchange-traded fund with the ticker symbol “MAGA,” which tracks companies that align with Republican politics.
So already you got tracking of companies by political alignment. Why wouldn't people use this to track gun owners?
in 2013 New York Times released a ma
Banning impossible; make it public (Score:2)
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It's not like the access itself is the consequential part. What you'd want to scrutinize are the various forms of execution people decide they want to run off with, as usual.
We can't uninvent polygraphs but we can say "no, you can't equate this to real evidence, you CANNOT say 'statement X was a lie' based on an expensive noisemaker."
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Refugee Clearance (Score:2)
Hope his daughter (Score:1)
The real problem is equality (Score:1)
What is really interesting ... (Score:2)
Google with a cease and desist? (Score:1)
That's rich. Google upset that someone else is storing photos? Isn't google the #1 storage of photos in the world?
Maybe they're afraid someone has a good image lookup engine for finding people.