Privacy, What Privacy?

If you've ever posted a picture of yourself on the internet, or photos of you have been posted, the odds are good that you are now part of a giant photographic database compiled by a secretive US startup.

The New York Times has revealed that Clearview AI has compiled a database of billions of facial images scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo, and other websites and has put that together with a sophisticated AI-based facial recognition system that is now being used by law enforcement and government agencies.

Privacy advocates have been warning that this would happen sooner or later and now it seems that it has. Should you be worried? Think about this:

But without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company, which declined to provide a list. The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw. The tool could identify activists at a protest or an attractive stranger on the subway, revealing not just their names but where they lived, what they did and whom they knew.

And it’s not just law enforcement: Clearview has also licensed the app to at least a handful of companies for security purposes.

“The weaponization possibilities of this are endless,” said Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. “Imagine a rogue law enforcement officer who wants to stalk potential romantic partners, or a foreign government using this to dig up secrets about people to blackmail them or throw them in jail.”

I think I'm going to start searching for companies that produce makeup to confuse facial recognition systems. They should be a good investment.