Clearview AI Violates Californians' Privacy, Lawsuit Alleges (latimes.com) 39
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: Clearview AI has amassed a database of more than 3 billion photos of individuals by scraping sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Venmo. It's bigger than any other known facial-recognition database in the U.S., including the FBI's. The New York company uses algorithms to map the pictures it stockpiles, determining, for example, the distance between an individual's eyes to construct a "faceprint." This technology appeals to law enforcement agencies across the country, which can use it in real time to help determine people's identities.
It also has caught the attention of civil liberties advocates and activists, who allege in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that the company's automatic scraping of their images and its extraction of their unique biometric information violate privacy and chill protected political speech and activity. The plaintiffs -- four individual civil liberties activists and the groups Mijente and NorCal Resist -- allege Clearview AI "engages in the widespread collection of California residents' images and biometric information without notice or consent."
This is especially consequential, the plaintiffs argue, for proponents of immigration or police reform, whose political speech may be critical of law enforcement and who may be members of communities that have been historically over-policed and targeted by surveillance tactics. Clearview AI enhances law enforcement agencies' efforts to monitor these activists, as well as immigrants, people of color and those perceived as "dissidents," such as Black Lives Matter activists, and can potentially discourage their engagement in protected political speech as a result, the plaintiffs say. [...] The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would force the company to stop collecting biometric information in California. They are also seeking the permanent deletion of all images and biometric data or personal information in their databases.
It also has caught the attention of civil liberties advocates and activists, who allege in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that the company's automatic scraping of their images and its extraction of their unique biometric information violate privacy and chill protected political speech and activity. The plaintiffs -- four individual civil liberties activists and the groups Mijente and NorCal Resist -- allege Clearview AI "engages in the widespread collection of California residents' images and biometric information without notice or consent."
This is especially consequential, the plaintiffs argue, for proponents of immigration or police reform, whose political speech may be critical of law enforcement and who may be members of communities that have been historically over-policed and targeted by surveillance tactics. Clearview AI enhances law enforcement agencies' efforts to monitor these activists, as well as immigrants, people of color and those perceived as "dissidents," such as Black Lives Matter activists, and can potentially discourage their engagement in protected political speech as a result, the plaintiffs say. [...] The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would force the company to stop collecting biometric information in California. They are also seeking the permanent deletion of all images and biometric data or personal information in their databases.
chill out (Score:3)
violate privacy and chill protected political speech and activity.
The services that the data was scraped from already violate privacy, and do a hell of a lot more than "chill" political speech and activity. If you're on today's "wrong side", you're "cancelled".
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Your meaningless Subject here (Score:3)
Not sure what to make of that FP. What were you trying to say? Not sure yourself, or in a rush to FP?
Anyway, I am not a policeman, but I am curious what pictures of they have of me. Actually more curious if they have any misidentified pictures that are not of me. Find my doppelganger?
Also curious if they might have copies of personal pictures that I want but have lost over the years. Not sure if I would pay for getting them back, but also not sure if the company shouldn't be sued for violating my privacy.
Bu
Mass surveillance (Score:2)
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That genie is already out of the bottle.
Privacy is dead.
Even if this lawsuit is successful, the only result will be moving the service overseas.
And who are Clearview's customers (Score:4, Insightful)
Honest question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Honest question (Score:5, Informative)
Why did you put your picture on the internet if you didn't want people, on the internet, to use it?
Plenty of pictures on the internet were not put there by the people in the photos.
When training a facial recognition system, the most useful photos are often side shots or three-quarter shots taken by someone else.
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''Plenty of pictures on the internet were not put there by the people in the photos.''
That's quite true. But those type of photos don't have identifying information. Except, if there's a license database included. And, this one is debatable, a mug shot. Mugshots of accused should be protected, convicted probably not so much.
Another issue is that if you are in public and your image is taken and used for profit, you obviously have right to participate in the profit. I kinda don't think the same is true for yo
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But those type of photos don't have identifying information.
Have you ever used Facebook? Do you know how tagging works?
Unless you are a hermit, Facebook has photos of you, tagged with your name, and visible to anyone.
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''a hermit''
Not quite. Just didn't like the TOS. And no, there's no image of me on Bookface, not Chatsnap or Igram.. no social media. Never needed it.
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Have you ever used Facebook? You can go into the settings and disable the ability of others to tag you.
To be fair it's not exactly well advertised and years ago it wasn't possible.
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You can go into the settings and disable the ability of others to tag you.
How does it work for people who don't have a Facebook account?
Can they still be tagged?
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No, you can only tag people who have accounts. However there is of course nothing to stop someone writing your name in a comment, not directly linked to your face but possibly guessable.
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That's quite true. But those type of photos don't have identifying information.
It doesn't need to have identifying information. Just being linked to known acquaintances will almost certainly be enough to find you. If ClearView has your image in its database but doesn't know your name, they probably know the names of the people you were with in the photo and the person whose social media account they scraped it from.
So the police now can ask a half dozen people who the person in the photo is. Do you really think Clearview not tagging your photo with your name is any form of protection?
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Do you really think Clearview not tagging your photo with your name is any form of protection?
Absolutely not. But government agencies already have facial images. Honestly, I don't find it a problem. If an investigation is being done and I am identified via facial recognition from an official database, that's just fine. That's actually a good thing, keeps everyone safe. Possibly makes people think before they attempt to do a crime.
But that's not where the money or danger lies in this. The money in th
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Another issue is that if you are in public and your image is taken and used for profit, you obviously have right to participate in the profit.
If you think it's so obvious, maybe you should lobby for legislation to that effect.
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EU too? (Score:2)
Do Clearview do this in the EU as well? That'd be highly likely to contravene data protection laws.
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I've never put my picture on the internet, other people might of though.
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''Clearly Europeans aren't that stupid.''
Not all, but out of the top ten surveilled cities in the world, the only one that is not in China is London.
https://www.usnews.com/news/ci... [usnews.com]
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London is not in Europe. It's on that silly island to the northwest.
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That's not how European data protection law works. If person X grants company Y permission to use certain personal data about X for purpose Z, that doesn't grant company C permission to use that data for any purpose whatsoever except as a subcontractor of Y for purpose Z.
Re:EU too? (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget privacy, Clearview are clearly in breach of copyright laws. They don't own the copyright in the photos they scraped from the internet, and they have no license to use those photos. They are breaking the law in just about every country in the world.
Remind me whats the penalty for copyright infringement for commercial gain in the USA per violation? I have a feeling Clearviews fine is potentially of astronomical proportions.
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This is where it is thorny regarding fair use. This is also inherently dangerous with the amount of biometrics being used by one item, that can then be used by a different item. Say Idemia, a fingerprint scanner often used for entry, decides to partner with credit card companies as well as have it's own systems. Now do you think a corporation is goin
Where the Law breaks down... (Score:3)
But if you take a picture of *me*, you're somehow allowed to use that as you like? The argument being made is that now the work of art is being created by the photographer? But what if I argue that my face is a work of art? It might not be in the classical sense, but it is something I've spent my entire life sculpting and fashioning. The decisions we make about our facial features - whether that be to shave a beard or not, pluck an eyebrow or not, have piercings or not, even what we eat or not - all combine to produce a work of art. Our faces are shaped by our lives and our life experience, by our choices and by our innermost thoughts and experiences.
OK, back to the first point... If a paint a face on canvas, I can claim copyright protection and the law allows me to stop others using my work product without my permission. Does this mean that if I place a mark on my face (even a bindi or tilaka) that I have now turned my face in to a canvas on which I have wrought a work of art? Will the law protect me now?
More importantly: if the law won't protect me now, then why not? What else is copyright for if not to protect a created image?
All of which might suggest that if any company is storing, processing and earning revenue from any likeness that includes make-up, they are breaking copyright laws.
Yes, I accept that my logic here is completely contrived. But bear in mind that the faceless corporations that steal and manipulate our data use legal tricks far worse than this to get access to that data in the first place.
There's a reason that the Constitution begins with, "We, the People..." and not, "We, the products of faceless corporations..." We might need to remind a few people of that.
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The law very much does protect photos, many have sued and won for photo copyright infringement. As was just pointed out to me, Clearview risk being sued for billions for copying photos for commercial gain without permission. That is if they didn't ask for permission, I assume they didn't since it sounds like they just scrape the web for them.
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But if you take a picture of *me*, you're somehow allowed to use that as you like?
No, although it is a bit more complex than that.
In cases of revenge/non-consensual porn copyright has been used to get it removed, specifically copyright over the victim's body. Unfortunately that did sometimes require registering nudes with the copyright office.
Where it gets a bit more tricky is that in some circumstances there is an implied licence, e.g. a celebrity on the red carpet. And when you are not the focus of an image, like say you are visible in a landscape photo, your rights are greatly diminis
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Revenge porn lawsuits and injunctions are not about copyright. They're about privacy, reputation, and permission.
When taking a photo, the copyright belongs to the photographer. But laws have been passed about model's rights, and that prevents a photographer from using a photo of someone in a commercial setting without their permission, with some exceptions, like for public personalities in public settings and for news photos.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
so wait (Score:1)
...the assertion is that they are upset that someone (artificial, and en masse) looked at the pictures that they voluntarily posted into public media for public viewing?
So narcissists get to insist the precise context of their attention grabbing now?