ACLU Accuses Clearview AI of Privacy 'Nightmare Scenario' (theverge.com) 22
The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday sued the facial recognition start-up Clearview AI (alternative source), which claims to have helped hundreds of law enforcement agencies use online photos to solve crimes, accusing the company of "unlawful, privacy-destroying surveillance activities." The New York Times reports: In a suit filed in Illinois, the A.C.L.U. said that Clearview violated a state law that forbids companies from using a resident's fingerprints or face scans without consent. Under the law, residents have the right to sue companies for up to $5,000 per privacy violation. "The bottom line is that, if left unchecked, Clearview's product is going to end privacy as we know it," said Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer at the A.C.L.U., "and we're taking the company to court to prevent that from happening."
The suit, filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, adds to the growing backlash against Clearview since January, when The New York Times reported that the company had amassed a database of more than three billion photos across the internet, including from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Venmo. This trove of photos enables anyone with the Clearview app to match a person to their online photos and find links back to the sites where the images originated. People in New York and Vermont have also filed suits in against the company in recent months, and the state attorneys general of Vermont and New Jersey have ordered Clearview to stop collecting residents' photos. According to the A.C.L.U. suit, "Clearview has set out to do what many companies have intentionally avoided out of ethical concerns: create a mass database of billions of face prints of people, including millions of Illinoisans, entirely unbeknownst to those people, and offer paid access to that database to private and governmental actors worldwide." The company's business model, the complaint said, "appears to embody the nightmare scenario" of a "private company capturing untold quantities of biometric data for purposes of surveillance and tracking without notice to the individuals affected, much less their consent."
The suit, filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, adds to the growing backlash against Clearview since January, when The New York Times reported that the company had amassed a database of more than three billion photos across the internet, including from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Venmo. This trove of photos enables anyone with the Clearview app to match a person to their online photos and find links back to the sites where the images originated. People in New York and Vermont have also filed suits in against the company in recent months, and the state attorneys general of Vermont and New Jersey have ordered Clearview to stop collecting residents' photos. According to the A.C.L.U. suit, "Clearview has set out to do what many companies have intentionally avoided out of ethical concerns: create a mass database of billions of face prints of people, including millions of Illinoisans, entirely unbeknownst to those people, and offer paid access to that database to private and governmental actors worldwide." The company's business model, the complaint said, "appears to embody the nightmare scenario" of a "private company capturing untold quantities of biometric data for purposes of surveillance and tracking without notice to the individuals affected, much less their consent."
A.C.L.U.? (Score:1)
Doesn't the moron who wrote the NY Times article know that you aren't supposed to use full stops after the letters of acronyms and initialisms? He had one job and failed at it.
Re: (Score:2)
You actually are supposed to in the US, but not the UK/Commonwealth. Hence it's correctly "U.S.A." in the US while it's "UK" in the UK. (I'm in the Commonwealth so I'm using Commonwealth convention outside examples.)
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What does the Staten Island style guide say?
No standing? (Score:2)
Why does the A.C.L.U. have standing to sue? They have no relationship to any injured party.
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Consent to use photos (Score:2)
You granted FB full rights when you signed up.
Then FB transferee those rights to the application creators when they signed up.
I find the whole AI picture scanning thing creepy and pro-totalitarian Chinese-style government intrusion but this suit is going nowhere. This company will be dead and change names, etc, a few times before they even see the inside of a court room.
Re:Consent to use photos (Score:5, Insightful)
What about those of us who get captured in photos but didn’t consent to Facebook’s terms? Moreover, in the case of Illinoisans they have to give explicit consent to have their biometrics used. Facebook didn’t have that permission (hence separate suits against them), so they certainly didn’t have permission to give it to others.
Re: Consent to use photos (Score:4, Interesting)
They can not sue the people who used a public photo. Not successfully anyway.
Actually, they can. Facial recognition technology is considered the use of a biometric by the state of Illinois. Public or not, if someone uses facial recognition on a photo of an Illinoisan without their consent, they’ll quickly find themselves in hot water, which is exactly what I was alluding to when I mentioned suits against Facebook. It’s bee talked about on Slashdot several times over the years. My recollection is that Facebook eventually settled the suits, paid a fine when the Illinois AG went after them, and changed what consent they seek to make sure they’d be in the clear.
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I mean, we hold all kinds of contracts as being invalid. E.g. Minimum Wage.
Reverse image search (Score:1)
Yandex? Bing/Microsoft?
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Code of Conduct won't save you (Score:2)
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I completely agree with your proposal on one condition. That it applies to everyone except me.
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Worse than that, they're actively campaigning against due process and fair trials on college campuses.
Perhaps I misunderstood and the A actually stands for Anti.
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"This is the same ACLU that has now started suing businesses they feel violate _____ rights."
Fill in the blank and tell me why they are bad for suing a business that violates ANY rights? What PROTECTED right should businesses be allowed to violate without incurring potential litigation?
Society has Survied without AI Spying (Score:2)