The Clearview app is something that Black people need to know all about. Our history of having our privacy violated by both public institutions and private companies goes back a long way. Now there’s potential for new attacks against us on a much larger scale.
Clearview is an app that is supposed to give law enforcement even more ability to spy on us than it already has. By sweeping the web and collecting our data, it’s become a far-reaching tool that could be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. Unfortunately, it’s already been abused.
The New York Times reports “the app had been freely used in the wild by the company’s investors, clients and friends.” Many wealthy investors were allowed to play with this app, which identifies people and violates their privacy with little to no effort. It gave them disturbing power.
Using billions of photos and data scraped from the web, they could instantly identify people through facial recognition and more. The app is shady, to say the least, and has come under intense scrutiny at a time when Black people are fighting mass surveillance around the country.
Facial recognition tech is biased against Black people. It misidentifies and is used to further abuse us. The app has been strongly criticized and has run into many roadblocks, but it’s still out there. We have to watch out for it while it watches us - and demand our right to privacy!