Before being exposed, Clearview AI was a tracking tool, a toy in the hands of billionaires.
In October 2018, John Catsimatidis was having dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in Manhattan's SoHo district when he saw his daughter walk in with a man he didn't recognize. After the couple sat down at another table, the billionaire asked the waiter to come over and take a picture.
Catsimatidis then uploaded the photo to a facial recognition app called Clearview AI on his phone. The app has a database of billions of photos, taken from sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In a few seconds, Mr. Catsimatidis found a full set of photos of the mysterious man, along with web addresses that mention this person: His daughter's boyfriend is a venture capitalist from San Francisco .
"I want to make sure he's not the bad guy," Catsimatidis said. After Catsimatidis texted this information to his daughter, she was surprised and didn't know how her father could find information about her boyfriend.
Powerful and mysterious tool
Clearview was not well known in January, when the New York Times reported that the secret start-up had developed an effective facial recognition system, used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies. Clearview quickly faced backlash. Facebook, Google and many other tech giants have sent a letter asking Clearview to stop working. Lawsuits have been filed in Illinois and Virginia, while the state of New Jersey has banned the application.
In response to the criticism, Clearview has published a code of conduct. They emphasized in a blog post that Clearview's technology is only for law enforcement agencies and security experts to use as an investigation tool.
"We recognize that powerful tools are at risk of being abused, no matter who they belong to, so we take them seriously," says Clearview's post.
However, the New York Times has identified many non-law enforcement individuals with access to Clearview technology. For more than a year before the company became known to the public, the app was freely used by investors, customers, and partners of companies.
People with Clearview credentials have used face recognition at parties, dates, and business meetings. They use it as entertainment or use it to identify people they don't know their names or can't remember.
"During the investment appraisal process, we provided trial accounts to potential investors," said Hoan Ton-That, co-founder of Clearview.
Catsimatidis first heard about Clearview from Richard Schwartz, co-founder of the company and former assistant of New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. In the summer of 2019, Catsimatidis tested the app at a chain supermarket he owned to identify people who stole things from the supermarket.
"People often steal ice creams. That's a big problem for us," Catsimatidis said. He said that Clearview is a "good system", helping the security force to quickly identify the person who picked up things.
BuzzFeed News said many other units, such as labor unions and other real estate companies, also ran a surveillance system developed by Clearview to mark individuals they consider to be risky. This site says Clearview is also used on the systems of Best Buy, Macy’s, Kohl’s, NBA and many other organizations.
Access is granted rampant
When Clearview developed a face recognition service in 2017, the two co-founders invited a range of customers including real estate companies, banks and retailers. Many individuals at these companies have received accounts to use Clearview.
Clearview received a $ 1 million investment in July 2018. Supporters of this app include billionaire investor Peter Thiel, venture capitalist David Scalzo and Hal Lambert, an investor in Texas.
“I have used the application. I used it to talk about what we are doing. I have recommended it to my friends, potential investors and they all thought it was great, ”Mr. Lambert shared.