Clearview AI built a massive facial recognition database by scraping 30 billion photos from Facebook and other social media platforms without users’ permission, which law enforcement has accessed nearly a million times since 2017[1].
The company markets its technology to law enforcement as a tool “to bring justice to victims,” with clients including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. However, privacy advocates argue it creates a “perpetual police line-up” that includes innocent people who could face wrongful arrests from misidentification[1:1].
Major social media companies like Facebook sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI in 2020 for violating user privacy. Meta claims it has since invested in technology to combat unauthorized scraping[1:2].
While Clearview AI recently won an appeal against a £7.5m fine from the UK’s privacy watchdog, this was solely because the company only provides services to law enforcement outside the UK/EU. The ruling did not grant broad permission for data scraping activities[2].
The risks extend beyond law enforcement use - once photos are scraped, individuals lose control over their biometric data permanently. Critics warn this could enable:
- Retroactive prosecution if laws change
- Creation of unauthorized AI training datasets
- Identity theft and digital abuse
- Commercial facial recognition systems without consent[1:3]
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I deleted my Facebook account a long time ago. And I don’t gave my face on Instagram anyway (it’s the sad Windows BSOD face)
Not to be a Debbie Downer but if you have friends they may be on Facebook and they’re taking pictures and you’re in them.
People look at me strangely when I ask them not to take pictures of me but I’m really insistent about it.
Have been since I got off Facebook a decade ago.
You can try to explain to these chucklefucks until you’re blue in the face that as bad as things are now an even bigger issue is what can happen in the future but they just don’t fucking get it.
“So what if they serve me ads” says stupid mcchucklefuck as they’re rounded up thirty years from now for ethnic cleansing based ten thousand Facebook photos.
Or not. Like - it’s impossible to predict the future but that’s the whole point - no one has any fucking idea so why engage in a practice which provides you fucking nothing but carries with it full unforgiving weight of that jagged question mark?
An ongoing reign of terror by a one party state run by the worst people in cooperation with the plutocracy is all but inevitable now.
The succession fight to our dear leader is the only real chance to take it back, but we still have the same worthless opposition in charge, chosen to be weak, to not offer reform, and to be constitutionally opposed to building and running a real political machine that could take the government from this Republican machine fixing to rig the elections every way they can.