![]() If Facebook’s application of facial recognition AI is the key factor for its violation of the state law, Clearview’s AI creates the same legal risk for the company. But if we’re looking at unauthorized collection of biometric info, it gets a little cloudier. That satisfies the “doing business in” prong. Seems unlikely an unproven tool would be better at solving crimes than stuff the CPD already does, but who wouldn’t prefer to use an app rather than shoe leather to track down perps? Without it, Chicago Police would “solve fewer crimes than places” that do use it, he said. Interim Chicago Police Superintendent Charlie Beck on Thursday offered a vigorous defense of CPD’s use of a facial recognition tool that matches images of unknown suspects to three billion photos scraped from social media.Ĭlearview AI, the Manhattan-based firm that developed the software, has come under fire after a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Chicago earlier this month seeking to halt the company’s data collection and after a New York Times report detailed the privacy concerns its technology has brought to the fore.īut, Beck said Thursday the department needs the tool and doesn’t abuse it. It claims it has “partnered” with 600-1,000 law enforcement agencies - claims that should be taken with several doses of salt considering the number of law enforcement rebuttals that have greeted its marketing assertions. Since Clearview scrapes sites to build its biometric database, it is obviously not securing anyone’s explicit permission.Īnd Clearview does business in Illinois. The law requires companies doing business in Illinois to obtain permission from users before harvesting biometric info. ![]() The company is already cruising around on the outer edges of the law by scraping sites for photos in violation of their terms of service. Once you get past some of the more ridiculous assertions, you’re looking at a few fairly plausible allegations that could survive a motion to dismiss and open Clearview up for what is certain to be some damaging discovery. If true, the $550 million settlement is a bargain.īut let’s take another look at the Clearview lawsuit. Given the sheer amount of uploaded photos hosted by the site, it was speculated Facebook could have faced a $35 billion fine. Facebook’s AI scanned uploaded photos for matches and suggested names of people who resembled those in the photograph. ![]() ![]() This lawsuit dealt with yet another Facebook feature no one asked for: the nearly-automatic tagging of friends and acquaintances in uploaded photos. The announcement comes eight days after the Supreme Court denied Facebook’s petition to review the case and halt an impending trial that was put on hold in 2018 when Facebook appealed a lower court decision advancing the case. In what lawyers are calling the largest settlement ever reached in a privacy related lawsuit, Facebook will pay $550 million to settle claims it harvested users’ facial data without consent and in violation of a 2008 Illinois privacy law. A recent settlement by Facebook in a lawsuit alleging violations of this law suggests the proposed class action against Clearview might actually go somewhere, even if Clearview is an outside party scraping (possibly illegal) photo collections from other sites. I was very dismissive of the lawsuit, stating that scraping of publicly-posted photos couldn’t possibly create an actionable violation of privacy. Late last week, legally and ethically-dubious facial recognition tech developer Clearview was sued for violating an Illinois law making certain collection and storage of biometric information illegal. ![]()
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