ACLU goes after face recognition company
BREAKING: We're taking Clearview AI, the creepy face recognition surveillance company you may have heard about, to court.
If allowed, the company will end privacy as we know it. It must be stopped. pic.twitter.com/GPCkEQquyM
— ACLU (@ACLU) May 28, 2020
The ACLU has filed a complaint against Clearview AI, a face recognition company which has harvested over 3 billion images from social media profiles without users’ permission and sold it as a smartphone app that enables customers to submit an anonymous photo and retrieve a set of matching images with links back to the source. In January, the New York Times reported that law enforcement officials have used the app to identify perpetrators.
The ACLU is suing on behalf of groups such as immigrants, sex workers, and sexual assault survivors, on the basis that the technology opens people up to political and personal surveillance—for example, at protests and AA meetings. “Neither the United States government nor any American company is known to have ever compiled such a massive trove of biometrics,” they write. ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler told the New York Times that, “if left unchecked, Clearview’s product is going to end privacy as we know it.”
The ACLU is bringing the case in Illinois, where a rare biometric privacy policy allows individuals to sue for up to $5,000 per violation.
