Lawmakers against Clearview AI facial recognition contracts

Four Lawmakers are against Clearview AI facial recognition contracts. On Wednesday, four progressive lawmakers sent letters to several fed agencies. They demand an end to their use of Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition system. Those lawmakers are Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, Pramila Jayapal, and Ayanna Pressley.

They sent the letter to the Interior, Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense. In an August 2021 report from the General Accounting Office, all four agencies identified using Clearview for “domestic law enforcement” purposes.

Moreover, the letter states that Clearview AI’s technology has to eliminate public anonymity in the United States.

These four lawmakers earlier introduced legislation. They demanded banning federal law enforcement from utilizing facial recognition technology. They also call for new restrictions for state and local police departments using this technology.

What is Clearview and why is it a problem?

Clearview AI is unique among facial recognition vendors. It has an internal database of identified faces, many of them scraped from Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. This allows it to build a robust facial recognition model with a more extensive data set than competitors can access. This more comprehensive data set reduces the risk of bias in the model, giving Clearview AI a competitive advantage. This AI’s technology is also practical because it is cloud-based, which means it can run on low-cost servers.

According to The Guardian, police in Australia uses Clearview’s database. It can search for and identify the face of an indigenous man at a Melbourne train station. The man, whose identity the authorities have been keeping secret, was filmed walking into the train station alone in a dark suit. He had a red bag and a mobile phone. The police were able to identify him after searching his face in Clearview’s database. Clearview CEO said that more than 2,400 police agencies entered into contracts with this company.