maximus otter
Recovering policeman
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2001
- Messages
- 13,974
The surveillance state is available as a plug-and-play solution for any cop interested in a free trial period.
Clearview AI carved out a market niche for itself as a provider of facial recognition tools for law enforcement agencies that find the technology challenging to implement on their own. The company's plug-and-play surveillance capability entices government users with free trial periods and a database of billions of faces scraped without permission from social media. According to a new report, the technology has been used by more agencies than previously disclosed, sometimes without authorization. The report may not be complete, since many police departments belong to networks for sharing resources.
"BuzzFeed News has developed a searchable table of 1,803 publicly funded agencies whose employees are listed in the data as having used or tested the controversial policing tool before February 2020. These include local and state police, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Air Force, state healthcare organizations, offices of state attorneys general, and even public schools."
Uses to which the tool was put included searches for protesters, criminals—and friends and family members. Inappropriate searches on acquaintances could have been predicted by anybody aware of the abuse of official databases for curiosity and personal gain.
"In many cases, leaders at these agencies were unaware that employees were using the tool; five said they would pause or ban its use in response to questions about it," Buzzfeed's reporters added.
...the more than 3 billion faces in its database give it an important edge over competing services. Even the FBI boasts "only" 640 million or so faces (as of 2019) against which to match images.
But the FBI built its database from public records, such as driver's license repositories, and was called out for doing so. "[T]he FBI's face recognition apparatus continues to balloon, threatening our fundamental liberties," the ACLU warned two years ago.
Clearview AI, on the other hand, populated its vast database by scraping images from social media services without the permission of either the posters or the hosting companies.
https://reason.com/2021/04/09/cops-...ion-technology-more-than-previously-revealed/
maximus otter
Clearview AI carved out a market niche for itself as a provider of facial recognition tools for law enforcement agencies that find the technology challenging to implement on their own. The company's plug-and-play surveillance capability entices government users with free trial periods and a database of billions of faces scraped without permission from social media. According to a new report, the technology has been used by more agencies than previously disclosed, sometimes without authorization. The report may not be complete, since many police departments belong to networks for sharing resources.
"BuzzFeed News has developed a searchable table of 1,803 publicly funded agencies whose employees are listed in the data as having used or tested the controversial policing tool before February 2020. These include local and state police, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Air Force, state healthcare organizations, offices of state attorneys general, and even public schools."
Uses to which the tool was put included searches for protesters, criminals—and friends and family members. Inappropriate searches on acquaintances could have been predicted by anybody aware of the abuse of official databases for curiosity and personal gain.
"In many cases, leaders at these agencies were unaware that employees were using the tool; five said they would pause or ban its use in response to questions about it," Buzzfeed's reporters added.
...the more than 3 billion faces in its database give it an important edge over competing services. Even the FBI boasts "only" 640 million or so faces (as of 2019) against which to match images.
But the FBI built its database from public records, such as driver's license repositories, and was called out for doing so. "[T]he FBI's face recognition apparatus continues to balloon, threatening our fundamental liberties," the ACLU warned two years ago.
Clearview AI, on the other hand, populated its vast database by scraping images from social media services without the permission of either the posters or the hosting companies.
https://reason.com/2021/04/09/cops-...ion-technology-more-than-previously-revealed/
maximus otter