Secret Facial Recognition App Tracks Billions of Public Photos for Police
A controversial startup called Clearview AI builds a massive facial recognition database by scraping billions of public images from social media. Law enforcement agencies across the country use the tool to solve crimes, raising significant privacy concerns.
A small startup called Clearview AI creates a groundbreaking facial recognition app that scrapes over three billion public images from social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo. The system allows users to upload a photo of a person and instantly receive links to other public photos of that individual. This massive database surpasses anything previously built by the United States government or major tech companies.
More than 600 law enforcement agencies quietly use this tool to solve serious crimes, including murder, identity theft, and child exploitation. However, the app's capabilities extend far beyond traditional policing and pose severe privacy risks. The underlying code includes features to pair the software with augmented-reality glasses, which potentially allows a user to identify every person they see in public.
Critics worry that this technology enables dangerous levels of surveillance, making it possible to easily identify protesters, strangers, or any individual on the street to uncover their personal details. The company also licenses this software to private businesses for security purposes, further expanding its reach beyond government control. In response to these practices, Twitter officially demands that Clearview AI stop scraping photos from its platform.