Recently there was a news very widespread in international newspapers indicating that Clearview AI violates the privacy of users on the Internet, and for those who do not know this company, it is a nascent facial recognition company that has a database of billions of photos collected from Facebook, Instagram and other websites and the main problem Is that this company is trying to sell its technology to countries with documented human rights violations.

There are those who collect social media information and keep it for use against you one day


Details of the beginning of this problem:

The big hype about this company began when Senator Edward Markey, a member of the US Senate, called for an investigation with this company as it was trying to share the facial recognition program with some foreign countries with authoritarian regimes, and this program can also collect and process images of children taken from social media platforms. Social, as it includes billions of photos collected from the Internet.

There are those who collect social media information and keep it for use against you one day

What's worse is that right after the senator’s request, BuzzFeed News reported that Clearview documents indicate that more than 2200 private and public organizations around the world, including the FBI and law enforcement agencies in 27 different provinces, have experimented with the private face recognition program. In this company, which declared that it is very effective, it gets to know the person and gather information about him as soon as his image is revealed.

There are those who collect social media information and keep it for use against you one day

And here comes the problem, which is that a company that has information of this danger is not subject to strong government oversight, and of course the use of advanced facial recognition technology is a matter of concern and violates privacy in a very large way. To any particular country in exchange for money because until now reports indicate that Clearview has already provided its software to organizations in many countries, including Arab countries, and this is the point that raises a number of concerns because it risks empowering governments to conduct mass surveillance and suppress citizens.

There are those who collect social media information and keep it for use against you one day

It was expected that each of the CEO of Clearview, called Hoan Ton, would meet with Senator Edward Markey to explain to him the truth of the matter and answer all the questions raised, but unfortunately the president of the company withdrew from this discussion and did not attend and here the questions began to increase more and more, but later on the president appeared CEO of the company Hoan Ton in a media interview indicated that his company is focused on working with law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada, but as I indicated earlier, BuzzFeed News reports showed that the company is looking to expand into sectors including retail, real estate, banking and markets from Brazil to the Middle East.

There are those who collect social media information and keep it for use against you one day

And to be agreed, the worrying thing for them is that the company has already started dealing with some countries, especially in the Middle East, intensively, as the company provided free trials to various government related agencies there, and these same documents showed that some of these countries have conducted searches using technology Face recognition.

There are those who collect social media information and keep it for use against you one day

And recently, a report was released by Clearview AI, explaining that it maintains privacy and is trying to ensure that its technology will not enable anyone to violate human rights. It also stated that the parties that enable it from its software are all parties related to law enforcement, but of course this is not true because The company enables entities not linked in any way to the law.

As I indicated, from my simple point of view, the reason behind this uproar is that the company has moved towards some Arab countries, arguing that this violates US federal laws that protect the privacy of others, the reason that made me say this is because reports indicate that the company has expanded to include law enforcement agencies in Australia, Canada and the Kingdom. Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, India, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, but no one spoke except for the Arab countries.

There are those who collect social media information and keep it for use against you one day

Finally, before I finish, I would like to point out that the company is facing multiple lawsuits in the recent period, and Google, YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter have begun to stop dealing with this company, but in my opinion, as long as the company provides this information to law enforcement, it will not be affected by anything.

Tell us in the comments your opinion on this topic, and do you agree with what Senator Edward Markey did or not? Or do you think that America talks about human rights only outside its borders, and at the same time some groups in America have no rights?

Source:

cnet | buzzfeednews

Related articles