Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It by Kashmir Hill

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

by Kashmir Hill

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Tech & FutureCrime & Justice

Google and Facebook developed similar technology and held it back. Clearview AI built a facial-recognition app anyway, from billions of scraped online photos, and sold it to police. Hill, who broke the story for the New York Times in January 2020, shows you how a small startup crossed that line.

Core ideas
  • An unlikely crew: Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz, a former Giuliani adviser, founded it, and an early version was pitched for identifying people's political leanings.
  • Police first: Indiana State Police became the first official customer in 2019, Homeland Security followed, and more than 200 agencies were using it by January 2020.
  • Limits that skip police: Lawsuits and settlements restricted private use and left police use intact, even as misidentification led to wrongful arrests.
Published2023
Pages336
ISBN9780593448564
ReadSep 2026

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