Does Clearview Technology Violate Rights?
What if there were an easy way for police to locate suspects? Would law enforcement find this valuable? These are questions one company asked when they created an innovative solution for identifying people using AI. Clearview AI has amassed a database of nearly 3 billion photographs from the Internet. The database is almost seven times bigger than that of the FBI, and Clearview's technology allows for almost instant identification of anyone in its database with just a simple face scan.
The company says that all of its photos are obtained from sites where users have shared them publicly.
According to various sources, hundreds of companies, including 600 law enforcement agencies, are already using Clearview's face scanning app. In Indiana, state police officers supposedly used Clearview to identify a shooter who had been captured on cell phone video within 20 minutes. The Raleigh, North Carolina, police department allegedly paid $2.500 for a yearlong subscription to the database.

Others have expressed grave concern about the potential for Clearview's technology to violate civil rights. YouTube, LinkedIn, PayPal, Twitter, and Facebook have all sent cease-and-desist letters to prohibit the company from mining images from their sites. In Congress, Senator Ed Markey sent a letter to Clearview's founder to demand that the company release certain information. In the letter Markey
noted, "The ways in which this technology could be weaponized are vast and disturbing. Using Clearview's technology, a criminal could easily find out where someone walking down the street lives or works. A foreign adversary could quickly gather information about targeted individuals for blackmail purposes. Numerous studies have also demonstrated that Al facial recognition technology is
significantly affected by racial bias.
Several groups have filed class action lawsuits against Clearview for violation of, for example, state biometrics and computer crimes laws.


SOLVING THE CHALLENGE
How would you rule if you were a judge deciding whether to continue to allow Clearview technology to remain on the market?
1. I would side with Clearview. If citizens choose to post photographs on the Internet without protecting their security, then Clearview has the right to find and save those photos.