Clearview AI: secretive company that might end privacy as we know it (2020)

Not a bad idea, to be honest.

The countermove is what D-ID (YC funded, IIRC) said they would do and then changed their mind: train a face recognition library to generate modified versions of a picture such that a human would still believe it's the same person, but different enough that face recognition systems think it's someone else. Then use those pictures in all of your internet socials.

Edit: according to this article they did develop that, but they don't offer the service to individuals: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/05/d-id-launches-its-initial-...

Or just give up on privacy in the sense you mean. Ultimately we’re all living in meatspace. I was happier when I just accepted it. I’ve been on both sides of the privacy fence — when I was in my 20s I cared deeply about not being known, as you say. But it was self destructive, and I’ve seen many people who end up as reclusive as I was.

It’s fine to have privacy. And it’s necessary. But obsessing about it too much can really get to you, in a way that’s sort of hard to articulate.

If someone knows the city you live in, is that really a big deal?

Now, there is the flip side of this. I recognize this is a privileged position to have. Some people’s lives have been ruined due to harassment of their physical location, and I am fortunate not to have to worry. It’s particularly easy for me to say this as a man, since women have a very different threat model.

But as with all things, it’s a balance. The cold truth is that technology will only accelerate the trends that first Facebook and now Clearview are exploiting.

Just be happy and live a nice life. I hid too long.

Scary thought:

Let's say you do this. And facial data DBs continue to grow. And eventually they become so widespread that most people are in them. And facial recognition becomes so ubiquitous that it is necessary for everyday transactions. And you can't participate in large swatches of society because you are, as far as the technology is concerned, a statue, or dead.

Far fetched? It's happening with cell phones. Many things are not possible, or vastly more difficult, if you don't have a smart phone.

In the long run, the only option is to privatize knowledge entirely.

Machines don't care what numbers they run, cpus and users should be blind to the meaning of app code. .exe's should be absolute black boxes by default.

When we have the techniques to privatize knowledge from machines, the desire for privatized faces and biometrics, will rise.

The entire premise for biometric tracking is that mental locks don't work (passwords, ect). It's not true.

Privatize knowledge and mental locks work fine.

In the UK the policing minister plans to 'integrate data from the police national database (PND), the Passport Office and other national databases to help police find a match with the “click of one button”' [0].

It becomes very difficult to escape mass surveillance via facial recognition if passport (and presumably soon drivers license) photos are used.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/06/mps-and-p...

I like it. Fight fire with fire. Also every legitimate photo should be AI enhanced so that it is impossible for the creeps to tell real photos from generated ones.

I barely have time to get the laundry done and supposed to do this?

"customer-support employees" - nice dodge.

This is a bad company with a bad purpose for existing, and the people working with / for them should feel bad!

If only that body didn't delegate all of their work to unelected officials and basically sit there and collect a paycheck.....

> Published Jan 18 2020, Updated Nov 2 2021

If this site is going to rely on archiving sites to allow people to read articles, perhaps you should just post the archive link to begin with.

I am starting to believe that this is, most likely, the best way out of a lot of the mess we find ourselves in, in the modern digital world. We, the laypeople, are under scrutiny in so many ways, our lives being recorded all the time. The basic asymmetry is that, on the other hand, the powerful have tools at their disposal to hide from scrutiny, and at the same time have access to the data collected on us. With well designed systems, we could remove this unfair advantage that they have, and level the playing field.

Would it be immoral with a community effort to track and publicize the movements of the executives and enablers of such enterprises? Similar to ElonJet.

LinkedIn lost a lawsuit over that subject, which effectively nullifies those terms.

> Did they infringe my copyright?

Yes. How are you going to stop them?

In Europe: no. Training ML systems doesn't require a license.

In the US: we don't know yet. The law is not clear, and there are lots of suits in progress.

It's truly scary how zealous some people can become and how the double down in the face of criticism.

A little introspection and contemplation is always good.

He's not wrong.

It doesn't matter, when liberty goes, so will the lifeblood of technological change.

The company founder types are building their own mausoleum.

When this is all said and done, the matrix, star trek, ect will only be populated by those guys. The rest of us will be happy and free from it, with real resources and real likes.

Source?

I care about my privacy. Why should I care about profitability of startup that violates it.

The answer is pretty simple: Privacy matters more.

There are millions of ways for profit but you only have one privacy.

Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

"Won't someone think of the employees" is a common tactic companies use to avoid shutdowns, and that's against long standing laws and regulations. Seems to work often enough too.

So find at least one EU citizen in their database and unleash the GDPR against them?