<https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/24/clearview-ai-subpoena-watchdog-groups-514273>
Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition company that scrapes
public images from social media to aid law enforcement probes, has
subpoenaed internal documents from some of the groups that first exposed
its activities.
The firm served subpoenas in August to civil society coalition Open The
Government, its policy analyst Freddy Martinez and the police
accountability nonprofit that he’d previously founded, Lucy Parsons Labs
— demanding any correspondence they’d had with journalists about
Clearview and its leaders, as well as information they’d uncovered about
the company and its founders in public records requests, over the last
four years.
The subpoenas, obtained by POLITICO, could draw the groups into lengthy
court battles and, they argue, dissuade others from taking on Clearview
or other companies working on potentially problematic technologies.
David Brody, counsel and senior fellow for privacy and technology at the
nonprofit Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the move
could be seen as an attempt to deter the advocacy groups, and
journalists, from future investigations.
“To use legal process to try to silence critics — silence people that
are just trying to get transparency about how our criminal justice
system is operating and what tools are being used by law enforcement
agencies — that's pretty problematic,” Brody said.
Open the Government and MuckRock shared their research about police use
of surveillance — including Clearview’s technology — with the New York
Times, and the paper published several reports last year
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html>
detailing the startup’s work with law enforcement.
Authorities have been using Clearview’s software for several years to
try to match images in government databases and surveillance footage
with billions of personal photos posted to the internet. Privacy, human
rights and civil liberties advocates have long raised alarm about the
technology as both intrusive and biased. It has been shown
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/technology/facial-recognition-bias.html>
to disproportionately misidentify women and people of color.
Clearview's attorney Andrew J. Lichtman said in a statement that
“Clearview AI is vigorously defending itself against claims in
multi-district litigation and therefore has served subpoenas to
appropriate parties relating to its defense.”
That litigation is a privacy case in Illinois district court that does
not appear to involve Open The Government, Martinez or Lucy Parsons
Labs. Clearview did not respond to a question on how the communications
with journalists were relevant to the Illinois case.
Brody said it can be a taxing and expensive process to contest a
subpoena — and that can be especially troublesome for nonprofits and
smaller advocacy organizations without the legal or financial might to
fight it off. Lisa Rosenberg, executive director of Open the Government,
argued it’s a way for Clearview to threaten critics.
"They presumably have massive amounts of resources at their disposal; we
do not,” Rosenberg said in an interview, adding that “nonprofits could
potentially be bullied by Clearview."
Open the Government has secured pro bono legal representation from the
firm Ballard Spahr. It was not immediately clear whether other advocates
or civil society groups that have been outspoken about Clearview were
targeted with subpoenas.
Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance
Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit that litigates and advocates
against government mass surveillance, argued the subpoenas could
intimidate or undermine watchdog groups like his.
“There is absolutely no justification for a vendor to be able to target
civil society groups; we know just how chilling that can be,” he said.
Rosenberg also called the subpoenas “a backhanded way” of targeting
journalists’ sources. “If a court did make us turn over those records,
that precedent would be terrifying for First Amendment reasons,” she
said. Journalists “would have to be worried that you could maybe protect
your sources, but your sources couldn't protect themselves.”
Clearview**Founder Hoan Ton-That has stood by his “search engine for
faces
<https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/02/10/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-orig.cnn-business>,”emphasizing
that
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clearview-ai-google-youtube-send-cease-and-desist-letter-to-facial-recognition-app/>
Clearview uses only publicly available photos and arguing that there is
a First Amendment right to public information.
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Public backlash to the technology has prompted tech giants like
Microsoft and IBM to pull out of the market for good, and Amazon has
halted police use of its Rekognition product indefinitely to give
Congress time
<https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/we-are-implementing-a-one-year-moratorium-on-police-use-of-rekognition>
to implement safeguards.
But federal laws governing the technology are far off, and momentum on
the issue seen last Congress has largely petered out. And even as action
to regulate or ban the technology grows at the state and local levels,
an August report <https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-526> from the
Government Accountability Office shows that almost half of federal
agencies plan to expand their use of facial recognition in the next two
years.
At the same time, Clearview is building up its presence in Washington.
The company hired its first lobbyistsearlier this year
<https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2021/05/10/k-street-thinks-virtual-lobbying-is-here-to-stay-795201>,
bringing on Klein/Johnson Group, which was started by aides to Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to provide
“education” about facial recognition software, according to a disclosure
filing.
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