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Vermont sues Clearview, alleging "oppressive, unscrupulous" practices:
Clearview AI's bread and butter is a tool providing facial recognition on a massive scale to law enforcement, federal agencies, private companies, and—apparently—nosy billionaires. The company has achieved this reportedly by scraping more or less the entire public Internet to assemble a database of more than 3 billion images. Now that there are spotlights on the secretive firm, however, Clearview is facing a barrage of lawsuits trying to stop it in its tracks.
The latest comes from Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan, who filed suit against Clearview this week claiming violations of multiple state laws.
The complaint (PDF) alleges that Clearview, which is registered as a data broker under Vermont's Data Broker Law, "unlawfully acquires data from consumers and business concerns" in Vermont.
Clearview built its massive database by gobbling up "publicly available" data from the Internet's biggest platforms—including Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others—most of whom have since issued cease-and-desist letters telling Clearview in no uncertain terms to knock it off. These images are frequently of minors, the complaint notes, and Clearview admitted in its state filing to knowingly having images of minors collected without anyone's consent. Vermont's data law prohibits "fraudulent acquisition of brokered personal information," and the state argues that Clearview's screen-scraping tactics are exactly that.
What Clearview does with its ill-gotten data is also a problem, the state argues. The Green Mountain State's first issue is from a security perspective: the company has already suffered at least one data breach, in which its client list—which it has repeatedly refused to make public—was stolen. The second issue is privacy.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 14 2020, @12:24AM (3 children)
I really think privacy is permanently compromised. There's just too much stored data about everyone. Rather than try to restore lost privacy, it may be better work on getting society to be more accepting. As the famous Cardinal Richelieu said:
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
The answer is not to prevent those six lines from reaching the public, it is to stop the hangings.
For example, one thing people do an awful lot more of than is generally accepted or still even realized, is sexual infidelity. Now, however, paternity tests are easy and cheap. That kind of skeleton is a lot, lot harder to keep in the closet. Society has come around somewhat. Just being a bastard, in the old sense of being of illegitimate parentage, doesn't carry the social stigma it once did. That Scarlet Letter crap may have been plausible 4 centuries ago, but I should hope the power and numbers of the remaining puritanical prudes are so greatly reduced that these days, they have no chance of making such a punishment stick or sting. Provided, that is, that they are not aided by privacy laws in being allowed to practice their particular brand of oppression in secrecy, dressing the matter up as religious freedom whenever anything is exposed.
Another blow to privacy was brought to us by the police. They didn't want to be videoed while working. And why? They couldn't give a good reason that stood up to the least bit of scrutiny. They didn't have a good reason. It quickly emerged that the real reason was so they could continue to get away with abusing their power, of course. Their loss of privacy on the job has been a clear public benefit.
Cockroaches don't like sunlight. Loss of privacy will make those unfair backroom deals and election and bid riggings far harder to arrange. And that's a good thing.
Still, privacy has a place, in that the law is far from perfect, and is violated all the time, with no harm done. Indeed, the greater harm would be if it was impossible to violate the law. In a medical emergency, it's better to break the speed limit than lose a limb, or a life. Then there's the crazy Intellectual Property laws. Another problem is severely antiquated law. A lot of law is politically motivated and not a good idea, stuff such as Prohibition. And, laws about sexual conduct, such as anti-sodomy statues.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 14 2020, @12:45AM (1 child)
I can't argue any of your points.
What I will argue is, that any agency, government or private, has some right to harvest all the data on all of the citizens, everywhere. The databases, for the most part, shouldn't exist. Those that are considered to be necessary should be very tightly controlled.
You mention intellectual property? Funny, that the private citizen owns no property, but corporations own all the property. The corp can harvest my data, and yours, then claim some IP rights to that very data. It's almost like the corporation owns me? I outright reject that idea.
It's time for a new generation of philosopher/lawyer/personal rights sort of thinker to come forward, to define boundaries on the collection and use of personal data. Permitting the corporates to define right and wrong can't possibly end well.
We already have laws meant to protect the privacy of children, but those laws are mostly meaningless. Those cameras on the streets of $City are recording the children, right along with the less protected adults. Clearview scans children's Facebook pages just as readily as they scan any adult pages.
Whatever, I'll continue to fight the good fight, to the extent of my ability. Much of my online activity is simply not tracked. Much more of it is still difficult to track. And, whenever possible, I poison the well.
The real problem is, the number of people who still have no idea how pervasive surveillance is. Start with all the idiots who post their life experience to Facebook, for everyone to see.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @05:24AM
More problematic: Start with all the idiots who post other people's (e.g. their children's) life experiences and data to Facebook, for everyone to see.
When I grew up, disservices like Facebook did not exist, so my parents never had an opportunity to compromise my privacy in such a way. I am a staunch advocate of privacy rights, and had my parents surrendered all my data to mega-corporations like so many parents do today, I would be furious.
I would hate to be a kid growing up today, especially one concerned about privacy like I am. Posting your kid's information and photos online like so many do definitely needs to be illegal.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 14 2020, @05:17AM
Let's do both. But given the tendency of people to ostracize and bully others for little to no reason, the latter might be a pipe dream.
Mass surveillance necessarily threatens democracy. [gnu.org] We must prevent the data from being collected to begin with, wherever possible. Business models like Facebook's should be illegal, period.