March 28 (BBC/GNA) – Facial recognition firm Clearview has run nearly a million searches for US police, its founder has told the BBC
CEO Hoan Ton-That also revealed Clearview now has 30bn images scraped from platforms such as Facebook, taken without users’ permissions.
The company has been repeatedly fined millions of dollars in Europe and Australia for breaches of privacy.
Critics argue that the police’s use of Clearview puts everyone into a “perpetual police line-up”.
“Whenever they have a photo of a suspect, they will compare it to your face,” says Matthew Guaragilia from the Electronic Frontier Foundation says. “It’s far too invasive.”
The figure of a million searches comes from Clearview and has not been confirmed by police. But in a rare admission, Miami Police has confirmed to the BBC it uses this software for every type of crime.
Clearview’s system allows a law enforcement customer to upload a photo of a face and find matches in a database of billions of images it has collected.
It then provides links to where matching images appear online. It is considered one of the most powerful and accurate facial recognition companies in the world.
The company is banned from selling its services to most US companies, after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took Clearview AI to court in Illinois for breaking privacy law.
But there is an exemption for police, and Mr Ton-That says his software is used by hundreds of police forces across the US.
Police in the US do not routinely reveal whether they use the software, and it is banned in several US cities including Portland, San Francisco and Seattle.
GNA/Credit: BBC