Clearview AI is reportedly set to cancel client accounts that are not associated with law enforcement or other government entities, as scrutiny grows over abuses of the facial recognition AI app.

“Big Brother, it turned out, was wearing a MAGA cap”

Clearview AI said its facial recognition tool was only for law enforcement, but Buzzfeed News reports they gave accounts to former Trump staffer Jason Miller, as well as various Republican political operatives and a figure known to be a Holocaust denier.

"Before Clearview Became a Police Tool, It Was a Secret Plaything of the Rich." That's the title of the New York Times piece, and that's the horrifying reality of how artificial intelligence and facial recognition are already being used in ways that violate your expectations of privacy in the world. — Read the rest

BuzzFeed News reporters have seen leaked Clearview AI documents that show the company is "working with more than 2,200 law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the world," including Best Buy, Walmart, Macy's, ICE, DOJ, and the FBI, plus "a sovereign wealth fund in the United Arab Emirates."

Clearview, the shady facial-recognition firm with links to law-enforcement and alt-right internet trolls, reports that its entire client list has been stolen.

In the notification, which The Daily Beast reviewed, the startup Clearview AI disclosed to its customers that an intruder "gained unauthorized access" to its list of customers, to the number of user accounts those customers had set up, and to the number of searches its customers have conducted.

Canada's privacy authorities on Friday said they are investigating New York-based Clearview AI over concerns the facial recognition technology may not comply with Canadian privacy law.

Clearview AI (previously) is a grifty facial recognition company that sells untested, secretive tools to police departments, claiming that they can identify people from security camera footage by matching the pictures those scraped from big social media sites.

• Hoan Ton-That, founder of facial recognition tech firm Clearview AI, previously connected to Trump world figures and online hate extremists, reports Buzzfeed News

• Chuck Johnson, Mike Cernovich, and Rudy Giuliani are among the linked figures named in Buzzfeed report

• NYPD disputes facial recognition firm Clearview AI's claim that it identified a terrorism suspect

Clearview AI app used by 600+ law enforcement agencies, from local police departments to FBI, DHS

Twitter told law enforcement app maker Clearview AI that its scraping of Twitter images for facial recognition databases violated Twitter policies.

Surprise, surprise: the FBI has unprecedented access to wild technology that allows for horrifying overreaches of privacy; and the vast, vast majority of them haven't actually gone through the formal training program but still use (read: abuse) the system anyway!

That's according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which reveals:

Seven law enforcement agencies in the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ) reported using facial recognition services provided by commercial and nonprofit entities.

Well, isn't this cyberpunk AF?

From The New York Times:

Mr. Howell, 42, is a lifelong protester and self-taught coder; in graduate school, he started working with neural net technology, an artificial intelligence that learns to make decisions from data it is fed, such as images.

Well, this isn't creepy at all. Facial recognition search.

A facial recognition website based in Poland claims to offer a service in which you can upload a picture of anyone to the site, and it finds more images of that individual all around the internet.

• Yay, Clearview AI but for shopping!

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg today announced the launch of Facebook Shops, an e-commerce feature to allows business users to list and sell products on Facebook and Instagram.

"We believe that the Blacks and the Jews are taking over America, and it's our job to take America back for the White race," Patton testified at trial, describing his beliefs while carrying out the crime — beliefs he said he no longer held.

In 2004, a more legible typeface, Clearview, was approved to improve America's road signs. But after a decade of use, U.S. Federal Highway Administration has decided to return to the old typeface, publicly available as Highway Gothic.

The reasoning isn't clear—they claim that it's actually more legible than Clearview, but are yet to explain why or offer research to back up the decision. — Read the rest

BoingBoing reader Paul Vallee says,

I was reading this interesting story about a new font being developed for use on roadsigns and with likely broad applications in general legibility. It turns out, disappointingly, that this font is not going to appear in the public domain and is thus not available for download.