Clearview AI's facial recognition goes creepier than most surveillance tech

[SOUND] One of the wildest things I read this weekend, the New York Times reported on a facial recognition company called Clearview, which is partnered with hundreds of police departments across the US. Most facial recognition works this way. You have a photo in a database, and when it scans faces in public, it matches that person with that photo. So unless you're already logged in there, it doesn't really work on you. Clear View Works in a much different way the entire internet is basically the database so the Clear View a I had basically scraped Facebook venmo YouTube anywhere where there's a photo of available online attached to a name publicly. It has it, so the way that Clearview would work is if I took a photo of you, it would scour this massive database that already scraped the entire Internet, to match it with somebody instead. So that is the future that we have to look forward to with it Ai and facial recognition. So if I'm reading into this correctly to clear view what they did goes against the terms and conditions of a lot of those websites. But again, it's completely legal for them to do that, like they were able to create this database. I believe of billions of different photos. And it doesn't go against anything from the government. The government can't say, you weren't allowed to do that. No, yeah, there are no laws on facial recognition, or at least federally. There are laws in Illionis and Texas, but this is different Where it's scraping the websites. It's perfectly legal. But there are also some additional laws in what, Somerville, Massachusetts. That's different. San Francisco. That's specifically for police are banned from using facial recognition. So, those are Some additional layers but yeah, there are some pretty gaping holes here as well. Yeah. So the way that this works is is more like if I had taken a photo of you It's like she's zamfir faces where it looks through this whole database. Yeah, I've entered fine like maybe your photo on LinkedIn and find your photo on Facebook. More likely than not, it would probably find your photo from this video, and be able to say, that is Ben of CNET. He covers Amazon, and I'm not gonna say on air where you live, or anything like that. But it would be able to note that detail, and connect it with you there. Yeah, we have an editor that works here that is extremely suspicious of getting his photo taken and putting it anywhere online. And I used to think he was super paranoid, but apparently, he was very much onto something. Yeah, I was looking for my ski mask before I came onto this show, but I think I threw it out by accident. But- That's too bad. Yeah, I mean, that's just how it is, we are all logged in. Some database in the future, where anyone can find us. Which, that is the future. I mean, obviously, there are privacy advocates working against it, and lawmakers who are hoping to establish rules against this, but Honestly like the way it is right now they can just do all this and that's just how it is. Yeah. So if you ever vote online, you know most more than likely are being tracked. [MUSIC]