Following the US Capitol raid, facial recognition tool Clearview AI has reported a 26% spike in use. It is being used by law enforcement to identify those who committed criminal offences inside the federal building, regardless of the system’s controversy.

Identifying the hundreds of individuals involved in the Capitol attack proved to be a gargantuan task. Countless live streams and social media posts have captured the faces of Trump loyalists storming the Capitol, leading the FBI to ask the public for assistance in identifying the perpetrators. Alongside this, police have turned to facial recognition technology to speed up the process.

Clearview’s image search technology allows law enforcement to identify criminals from data available on the open web. The algorithm is capable of identifying someone even from a blurry photo. Compared to the two facial recognition programmes under the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Clearview’s database simply cannot be beaten, boasting over 3 billion images. As a result, this software is currently in use by approximately 2,400 agencies in the US.

Surprisingly, when asked by CNET about employing facial recognition technology to assist in this pursuit, the FBI skirted the question. This marks a departure from the openly acknowledged use of facial recognition technology by federal agencies in other investigations, including those regarding the Black Lives Matter protests. Even so, local police forces in Miami and Alabama have reported submitting leads based on Clearview searches.

Clearview has been no stranger to the debate surrounding the broader use of facial recognition by authorities. Contention lies in the fact that this system uses data gathered from all corners of the internet, without user’s consent - its database contains driver’s license photos and mug shot photos, as well as posts on social media accounts. Consequently, Clearview has been subject to several lawsuits, probes, and cease-and-desist orders over the years. The company has been described in the press as ‘the world’s scariest facial recognition company’, ‘an Olympic-calibre web scraper’ by Vox and Biometric Update respectively.

“[T]here’s been a lot of controversy, but fundamentally, this is such a great tool for society,” Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That asserts. But more than 40 organisations have signed the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s open letter to the US government, calling for a moratorium on facial recognition technology.

Notably, Clearview was sued for violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), a far-reaching piece of legislation that prohibits companies from collecting and storing sensitive biometric data without consent. In complying with this law, Clearview AI announced it has stopped selling its tool to non-law enforcement entities. This has been criticised for being not enough - adhering to one state’s laws does little for the company’s continued use of faceprints across the country. “Instead of taking real steps to address the harms of face recognition surveillance, Clearview is doubling down on the sale of its face surveillance system to law enforcement and continues to fuel large scale violations of Americans’ privacy and due process rights,” ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler comments.

Aside from privacy issues, there are concerns over the software’s accuracy. This has led some police departments to take independent action to ban the use of Clearview due to the widespread inaccuracies which affect minority communities in particular. This represents a broader concern of facial recognition softwares. “Surveillance tools like face recognition, including the recently disclosed Clearview program, aggravate existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system,” said Adam Schwartz, Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney.

The use of facial recognition technology in law enforcement has been proven to be a double-edged sword. There remains very little oversight of facial recognition despite its growing popularity. Until these pressing issues are addressed, fears of surveillance are alive and well.

By: Nicole Woo

A Clearview Of The Capitol - An Assessment Of Facial Recognition Technology