![]() The NYPD told BuzzFeed News and the New York Post previously that it had “no institutional relationship” with Clearview AI, “formally or informally.” The department did disclose that it had trialed Clearview AI, but the emails show that the technology was used over a sustained time period by a large number of people who completed a high volume of searches in real investigations. NYPD lied about the extent of its relationship with Clearview AI and the use of its facial recognition technology We reviewed the emails, and talked to top surveillance and legal experts about their contents. (“See if you can reach 100 searches,” its onboarding instructions urged officers.) The emails show that trial accounts for the NYPD were created as late as February 2020, almost a year after the trial period was said to have ended. Throughout the exchanges, Clearview AI encouraged more use of its services. ![]() The documents show that many individuals at NYPD had access to Clearview during and after this time, from department leadership to junior officers. The emails also show how NYPD officers downloaded the app onto their personal devices, in contravention of stated policy, and used the powerful and biased technology in a casual fashion. The emails reveal that the NYPD gave many officers outside the facial recognition team access to the system, which relies on a huge library of public photos from social media. Both policies seem to have been circumvented with Clearview AI. This is particularly problematic because stated policies limit the NYPD from creating an unsupervised repository of photos that facial recognition systems can reference, and restrict the use of facial recognition technology to a specific team. The NYPD has run over 5,100 searches with Clearview AI. But the emails show that the relationship between them was well developed, with a large number of police officers conducting a high volume of searches with the app and using them in real investigations. ![]() The NYPD has previously downplayed its relationship with Clearview AI and its use of the company’s technology. ![]() The documents, obtained through freedom of information requests by the Legal Aid Society and journalist Rachel Richards, track a friendly two-year relationship between the department and the tech company during which time NYPD tested the technology many times, and used facial recognition in live investigations. Many of those agencies replied to the accusations by saying they had only trialed the technology and had no formal contract with the company.īut the day before, the definition of a “trial” with Clearview was detailed when nonprofit news site Muckrock released emails between the New York Police Department and the company. ![]() On April 6, Buzzfeed News published a database of over 1,800 entities-including state and local police and other taxpayer-funded agencies such as health-care systems and public schools-that it says have used the company’s controversial products. It’s been a busy week for Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition company that uses 3 billion photos scraped from the web to power a search engine for faces. ![]()
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