Hackers Steal Client List from Controversial Facial Recognition Startup Clearview
An unknown hacker breaches Clearview AI and steals a customer list detailing police and government use of its controversial facial recognition software. The company dismisses the incident as a normal part of modern life despite patching a security flaw.
A hacker steals the customer list of Clearview AI, a controversial startup that scrapes billions of public photos to power a facial recognition system for law enforcement. Clearview notifies its clients that an unauthorized party gains access to internal records, which include customer names, user account numbers, and total search counts.
Clearview's attorney dismisses the breach by stating that data breaches are simply a part of life in the 21st century. The company claims that its main servers remain uncompromised, even though it admits to discovering and patching a security flaw that allowed the unauthorized access to occur.
This contradictory explanation suggests the miscreant likely targets a third-party system, cloud service, or individual computer that stores the sensitive client data. The incident adds to the ongoing scrutiny surrounding the secretive startup, which already faces lawsuits and public backlash over its massive scraping of public web images.