Popular Posts

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Facial Recognition and the Danger of Automated Authoritarianism

Hundreds of police departments are using facial recognition technology without oversight.

Clearview AI, a tech startup, has created an app that enables law enforcement agencies to match photographs to its database of over 3 billion photos scraped from millions of public websites including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Venmo. For comparison, the FBI's photo database contains only 640 million images. According to The New York Times, some 600 law-enforcement departments, including federal, state, and local agencies, have already used Clearview AI's technology. "You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared," explained the Times.

Moreover, Clearview AI's technology doesn't need straight-ahead mugshots to work effectively. "With Clearview, you can use photos that aren't perfect," Detective Sgt. Nick Ferrara of the Gainesville, Florida, police department told the Times. "A person can be wearing a hat or glasses, or it can be a profile shot or partial view of their face." No outside tests for the app's accuracy have been publicly reported, but the company claims in a 2019 FAQ to users that it:

" …has the most accurate facial identification software in the world, with a 98.6% accuracy rate. "

More

8 comments:

  1. to late the government is using facial recognition at all the airports! Good luck with that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The only recognition anyone should really be concerned with is their faceless credit score. Don't fancy your image anything special unless you are branding yourself online.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Commenters:

    If you aren't doing anything wrong . . .

    Remember all of that?
    LOL
    How do those words taste now?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Keep Cheering My Fellow Travelers

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just wait until robotics and AI incorporate this technology to remove political nuisances. The Terminator is mankind's real future, though whether or not the AI becomes self aware or the elite simply program them to remove everyone but themselves so any future people born will be chip'd and enslaved is up in the air.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous Anonymous said...
    The only recognition anyone should really be concerned with is their faceless credit score. Don't fancy your image anything special unless you are branding yourself online.

    January 22, 2020 at 5:56 PM

    Which drug are you on?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous Anonymous said...
    Hey Commenters:

    If you aren't doing anything wrong . . .

    Remember all of that?
    LOL
    How do those words taste now?

    January 22, 2020 at 6:07 PM

    Yup, I remember all of that too. But ya know, we have all kinds, different areas, states, different walks of life etc., they all can't be right all the time.

    Like we are.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.