Hackers have gained unauthorized access to the customer database of the US company Clearview. Clearview itself had recently hit the headlines because the facial recognition company had collected around three billion photos on the Internet.
How TheDailyBeast reported, Clearview informed its own customers that hackers had stolen the entire customer list, but that their own systems or internal network had not been compromised.
The company also affirmed that the hackers had not stolen search histories from law enforcement agencies that work with Clearview. A company lawyer told TheDailyBeast:
"Security is a top priority for Clearview. Unfortunately, data breaches are part of everyday life in the 21st century. The attackers never accessed our servers. We fixed the bug and are working to improve our security measures."
Clearview for questionable practices in criticism
The data breach at Clearview is likely to pour water on the mills of data protectionists who had already sharply criticized the collection of photos via the Internet. The New York Times published a detailed report in mid-January 2020 about Clearview's practices.
Meet Clearview AI, the secretive company that might end privacy as we know it
From The New York Times https://t.co/RUNmSC0GAs
– Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) January 19, 2020
As a result, the company has collected a massive amount of images on Facebook and YouTube, among other things, and thereby violated the terms of use of the platforms. Clearview itself justified this approach by saying: "A lot of people do it. Facebook knows."
But despite this sheer volume of data, no one knows exactly how often Clearview's facial recognition software generates false matches: "The larger the database, the greater the risk of false identification due to the lookalike effect," said Clare Garvie of the New York Times, who at the Center on Privacy and Technology at the University of Georgtown.
Even so, over 600 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. already use Clearview software, including F.B.I and Homeland Security as well According to Buzzfeednews, authorities outside the United States, among others Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Great Britain.
Clearview’s facial recognition tech, built by illicitly scraping billions photos, has been used at every level of US government https://t.co/gfI2ft9jg4
– BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 28, 2020
It remains to be seen whether the hacker attack will suffice to question the company's security concept and induce customers to end their cooperation with Clearview. In any case, data protection experts around the world are increasingly calling for a basic ban on facial recognition software to combat crime.
