Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It by Kashmir Hill.
Kashmir holds a masters degrees in journalism from New York University. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Kashmir is a technology reporter at The New York Times after having worked at Gizmodo Media Group, Fusion, Forbes Magazine, and Above the Law.
Perhaps of the most shocking books in fact that I have read in some time. Kashmir is documenting how a small AI company provided facial recognition to law enforcement, billionaires, and businesses. Yet, it should be no surprise this has eroded privacy as we know it.
Kashmir introduces readers to this chilling story as a skeptic. A tip regarding a mysterious app called Clearview AI held a claim it could with 99% accuracy identify anyone based upon a single photograph of their face. The app indeed provided a person’s online name, social media profiles, friends, family members, and their home address. This was just for starters and in the wrong hands, would be a very powerful surveillance tool.
Clearview AI was a start up run by Australian computer engineer Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor. The company was funded by conservative provocateur Charles C. Johnson and billionaire Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel. In contrast, Google and Facebook chose that this type of tool was too dangerous to release. However, via private investors, Clerview AI would be pitched to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world.
Enter Doubleclick
So, Kashmir was able to break open the story of Clearview AI and make the public aware of their powerful facial recognition tool. Clearview AI achieved this goal of capturing billions of images of people online and using it as a search database of faces. While researchers have spent decades theorizing about this technology, Clearview AI released a workable version. Google and Facebook made their own versions of the technology, but chose to shelve the projects from fears of lawsuits and basically the death of anonymity.
??????
Facial recognition technology in fact, has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. This technology has already been used in wrongful arrests in the United States. Unregulated, it could expand the reach of policing, as it has in China and Russia, to a terrifying, dystopian level. Readers will benefit from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Surveillance Valley.
Clearview AI is now the open secret for law enforcement, but has largely remained hidden from the general public. However, Clearview began confronting lawsuits from advocates and privacy organizations who want to protect biometric information. Clearview AI is showing how data mining startups with the right money and investors can create new threats to society.
In conclusion, Your Face Belongs to Us is revealing and disturbing. This shows the rise of a new breed of unknown AI startups with remarkable products. Clearview AI is game changer due to their secret facial recognition tool that has stolen the privacy of everyone. An amazing read for any who wants to understand the risks facial recognition technology, use by law enforcement, and how these types of AI startups can actually end anonymity.