Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: You love Love Hey like it or not? Everybody facial
Speaker 2: recognition technology.
Speaker 3: It is everywhere.
Speaker 2: You may not realize it, but it is everywhere. It uses,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of the applications vary from the
Speaker 2: mundane to well, you know, we use it right to
Speaker 2: open up our phone, yeah, open up other stuff. But
Speaker 2: it also the uses can be downright controversial.
Speaker 1: I mean just think about Madison Square Garden. Yes, you've
Speaker 1: heard about this. It reportedly uses facial recognition technology to
Speaker 1: weed out lawyers at firms that are suing the company
Speaker 1: and bevets them from going to concerts and shows at
Speaker 1: the arena.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the new reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it is. What can go wrong though,
Speaker 1: when law enforcement things or oppressed the governments get their
Speaker 1: hands on this technology. What happens when the technology gets
Speaker 1: so good that a company claims it can take a
Speaker 1: single photo of someone and then use that photo to
Speaker 1: find every detail of their life on the Internet.
Speaker 2: It's the premise of a new national best selling book
Speaker 2: by New York Times technology reporter kashmiir Hill. The book
Speaker 2: is called your face belongs to us, A secretive startups
Speaker 2: quest to end privacy as we know it, and is
Speaker 2: no doubt about it. Tim, A very timely conversation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The book has been longlisted for the Ft and Schroeder's
Speaker 1: Business Book of the Year awards. Kashmir right now joins
Speaker 1: us on Zoom from New York. Kashmir has been covering
Speaker 1: the intersection of privacy and tech for around fifteen years
Speaker 1: before people were even thinking about privacy online. So very
Speaker 1: pleased to have her with us this afternoon. Kashmir, good
Speaker 1: to talk to you. The book centers around Clearview AI.
Speaker 1: It's the secretive startup which you've been writing about and
Speaker 1: following for years. It's got some pretty incredible technology. Tell
Speaker 1: us what they do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hi Tim, Hi Carol, good to be here.
Speaker 4: So what CLEARVIEWI did was it went out and scraped
Speaker 4: billions of photos from the Internet from social media sites
Speaker 4: like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Venmo. It did that without anyone's consent.
Speaker 4: Now has a database of thirty billion faces and has
Speaker 4: this facial recognition app where you can take a photo
Speaker 4: of someone and it will bring up all these other
Speaker 4: places on the Internet where it's seen their face. Along
Speaker 4: with a link to where it appears, so you can
Speaker 4: find out someone's name, you know, where they live, who
Speaker 4: they know, maybe photos. They didn't even know we're on
Speaker 4: the internet. And they've been selling that app to police
Speaker 4: now for a few years.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's a really important point. It's not like
Speaker 1: you can go download this app from the app store
Speaker 1: and just start, you know, looking at photos of your
Speaker 1: colleagues and your friends on there. You've been able to
Speaker 1: see it in action though. Kashmir from the company tell
Speaker 1: us what it's like to kind of experience that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when I first started looking into Clearview AI, they
Speaker 4: were not happy about it, and they actually put an
Speaker 4: alert on my face so that they would know when
Speaker 4: police officers were I was talking to we're searching my face,
Speaker 4: and they blocked my face from having results, which was
Speaker 4: which was a bit chilling. But eventually the come and
Speaker 4: he started talking to me, and its founder, Wanton Tat,
Speaker 4: has run searches on me several times over these years
Speaker 4: now that I've been talking to him for my reporting
Speaker 4: for The Times and for the book, and I just
Speaker 4: remember the first time he did this search of my
Speaker 4: face and you know, it brought up photos I knew about,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, headshots that I have put out
Speaker 4: there in the world. But it was also photos I
Speaker 4: had never seen before, photos of me.
Speaker 3: With a source that I was interviewing for a story.
Speaker 4: We were out at a public event, a photo where
Speaker 4: it was somebody standing in Washington, d C. With somebody
Speaker 4: walking by in the background. And when I first looked
Speaker 4: at the photo, I didn't think I was in it
Speaker 4: until I recognized the jacket the person in the background
Speaker 4: was wearing, and it was a very distinctive coat that
Speaker 4: I had bought in Tokyo. And so, you know, when
Speaker 4: this technology works, it can be incredible the photos that
Speaker 4: it's able to pull up.
Speaker 2: Cash I would say that I think we all realize.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've got a security badge that I have
Speaker 2: to check into my office, right, I know that as
Speaker 2: I walk around the world out on streets, you know,
Speaker 2: you go over in Europe, like their cameras are everywhere.
Speaker 2: So I'm I have an awareness, and I think a
Speaker 2: lot of us do that. So much of what we
Speaker 2: do is being tracked digitally, right, we have these dossiers.
Speaker 2: Everything's being tracked. It's what people do with that information.
Speaker 2: I feel like we're at this era of trying to
Speaker 2: understand where that information goes, how it's used to either
Speaker 2: you know, help or you know, more worrisome hurt us.
Speaker 2: So what is it about this company is worrisome about
Speaker 2: kind of maybe the use of that data.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think what's worrisome about it is
Speaker 4: this idea that we were all put in this database.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm sure the three of us are in here, uh,
Speaker 4: and that we never got a choice in the matter.
Speaker 4: That it was operating secretly, you know, until I came
Speaker 4: along and discovered it. We didn't even know police had
Speaker 4: a technology like this. You know, the algorithm that they
Speaker 4: were using hadn't been tested. We'd actually didn't know how
Speaker 4: accurate it was. And now that the technology is is
Speaker 4: out there, I think it just raises concerns about our
Speaker 4: ability to kind of move anonymously in a public space
Speaker 4: and trust that people aren't going to know who we are.
Speaker 3: Clear UAI kind of broke this taboo.
Speaker 4: I write in the book it wasn't a technological breakthrough,
Speaker 4: is actually an ethical one, and we are going to
Speaker 4: see copycats and this will be available to all of us,
Speaker 4: and it will mean that you can't have a private
Speaker 4: conversation over dinner, and trust that the people around you
Speaker 4: can't identify you, you can't buy something sensitive to pharmacy,
Speaker 4: and trust that somebody sees you can't take your picture
Speaker 4: and know who you are. It just could really change
Speaker 4: our ability to just have you know, private going goings
Speaker 4: on in the world where anybody can take our picture.
Speaker 2: Just think of the story the Bloomberg Business Week's story
Speaker 2: about location services with Google right, and police using those also.
Speaker 1: It's just it's kind of the perfect segue to my
Speaker 1: next question for Kashmir, which is which is why Kashmir
Speaker 1: this is Clearview doing this and not Google or Facebook.
Speaker 1: You spent a big part of the book talking about
Speaker 1: that why it is Clearview even though technologically Google and
Speaker 1: Facebook could do this. I mean, think about all the
Speaker 1: pictures that Facebook has willingly from us, So Google, if
Speaker 1: we use Google Photos, has from us.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean when I first found out about Clearviewyi,
Speaker 4: I just assumed that they were super geniuses, that they
Speaker 4: had been able to accomplish this thing, that Facebook and
Speaker 4: Google hadn't released, that governments hadn't built.
Speaker 3: But I did find out in my reporting for.
Speaker 4: The book that Google, Google and Facebook both developed this
Speaker 4: kind of technology internally. Eric Schmidt as early as twenty
Speaker 4: eleven s that it was the one technology that Google
Speaker 4: had developed and decided not to release. I watched this
Speaker 4: video of engineers at Facebook and twenty seventeen in this
Speaker 4: little conference room and then Low Park with a smartphone
Speaker 4: on the brim of a baseball cap held in place
Speaker 4: by rubber bands, and when the person wearing it looked
Speaker 4: around at people in the room, it actually.
Speaker 3: Called out their names.
Speaker 4: And this was really striking to me, because neither one
Speaker 4: of these companies released the product, and they just felt
Speaker 4: like it was too dangerous to put this out in
Speaker 4: the world, that it could be used in a bad way.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, it is very striking that Clearview was
Speaker 4: the company to do it. And I think it's in
Speaker 4: part because those companies Facebook, Google, they're just under more scrutiny.
Speaker 4: They have more to lose, They've gotten in so much
Speaker 4: trouble over the years for privacy violations, whereas clear Views,
Speaker 4: this radical startup, you know, it has only only everything
Speaker 4: to gain by kind of putting this this radical technology
Speaker 4: out into the world.
Speaker 2: I want to get into, like maybe the investigations in
Speaker 2: terms of security forces around the world that maybe have
Speaker 2: been looking into this company. Having said this, if you're
Speaker 2: not already freaked out, we have about a minute and
Speaker 2: a half and then we'll come back and talk some more.
Speaker 2: But tell us about some of the individuals that have
Speaker 2: somehow been connected with this company or behind this company.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the main person I talked about before, Hwani ton Tat.
Speaker 4: He is the technical co founder. Grew up in Australia,
Speaker 4: loved technology nineteen years old, dropped out of college, moved
Speaker 4: to San Francisco, was just kind of trying to make
Speaker 4: it in the tech world, the tech gold rush in
Speaker 4: kind of the early two thousands, and he ended up
Speaker 4: moving to New York and really falling in with a
Speaker 4: more conservative crowd, people that were kind of on the
Speaker 4: alt right. He ended up partnering with Richard Schwartz, decades
Speaker 4: older than him, had worked for Rudy Giuliani in New
Speaker 4: York City when he was the mayor. Another person helped
Speaker 4: them in the early days Charles Johnson, kind of well
Speaker 4: known on the internet as a conservative provocateur, a little
Speaker 4: bit of a troll of liberals, and they were working
Speaker 4: on this together. Peter Thiel was their first investor, with
Speaker 4: two hundred thousand dollars for the company that became CLEARVIEWAI.
Speaker 3: It really kind of came out of those.
Speaker 4: Those kind of online right currents around the time that
Speaker 4: Trump was becoming president.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to continue with the conversation. I've
Speaker 2: got to say, we're all just kind of hanging on
Speaker 2: each word because I think it's you know, this is
Speaker 2: the reality of our world. Right now, we have an
Speaker 2: understanding of it, but you begin to wonder, Okay, how
Speaker 2: does it get used exactly?
Speaker 1: And when we come back, we're going to speak to
Speaker 1: Kashmir Hill, the author of this new book it's called
Speaker 1: Your Face Belongs to Us, A Secret of Startups, quest
Speaker 1: and Privacy as we know it. We're going to dive
Speaker 1: into the organizations that are using this technology, the law
Speaker 1: enforcement organizations, then also talk about how this technology is
Speaker 1: being used around the world by oppressive government.
Speaker 2: Right. We all kind of google ourselves, let's be honest.
Speaker 2: But like normal, things pop up, but if you start
Speaker 2: to see all of a sudden, these pictures come up
Speaker 2: and you're like, where did that come from? That would
Speaker 2: freak me out. Heykash were one thing we're wondering, you know,
Speaker 2: and you get into this in the book is just
Speaker 2: you know, global forces, global regulators around the world. I feel,
Speaker 2: especially when you go outside the United States, you go
Speaker 2: over in Europe, they're really concerned privacy issues when it
Speaker 2: comes to individuals. So what kind of scrutiny and what
Speaker 2: kind of oversight has Clearview kind of garnered from some
Speaker 2: of the regulators around the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how private your faces really varies depending on where
Speaker 4: you live. And so after I kind of expose the
Speaker 4: existence of CLEARVIEWAI, privacy regulators in Europe, Canada, Australia all
Speaker 4: announced investigations into the company, and they all came to
Speaker 4: the same conclusion, which is that CLEARVIEWAI violated their privacy
Speaker 4: laws by collecting all this data about their citizens, this
Speaker 4: kind of sensitive biometric information without their consent, and they said, hey,
Speaker 4: this is illegal. Some of the privacy regulators find them,
Speaker 4: and Clearview had been offering you know, its product to
Speaker 4: officers around the world, and this effectively kind of kicked
Speaker 4: a Clearview out of those countries.
Speaker 1: But not here in the US.
Speaker 3: No, here in the HUMANS has been very different.
Speaker 4: We just do not have a federal law that really
Speaker 4: applies to what CLEARVIEWAI is doing. There are some states
Speaker 4: that have privacy laws that give you the right to
Speaker 4: access the information that a company holds on you. So
Speaker 4: if you're in a place like California or Connecticut, or
Speaker 4: Colorado or Virginia, you can actually go to Clearview dot
Speaker 4: AI and request to know what they have in their
Speaker 4: database about you and ask that it be deleted. But
Speaker 4: the only state that has a very strong privacy law
Speaker 4: that's directly kind of about facial recognition technology is Illinois.
Speaker 4: And this law passed in two thousand and eight, the
Speaker 4: rare law that moved faster.
Speaker 3: Than the technology.
Speaker 4: And I tell the history in the book, but it
Speaker 4: says that if you want to use someone's biometric information,
Speaker 4: including their face print, you need to get their consent
Speaker 4: or pay up to five thousand dollars per use. And
Speaker 4: so there has been litigation against CLEARVIEWAI and Illinois. And
Speaker 4: you mentioned at the top of the program how Madison
Speaker 4: Square Garden uses facial recognition technology to ban lawyers anyone
Speaker 4: who works for a firm that sued the company. And
Speaker 4: they do that in New York City at Madison Square
Speaker 4: Garden and Beacon Theater and Radio City Music Hall.
Speaker 3: But Madison Square Garden also owns a theater.
Speaker 4: In Chicago, and they can't use the technology that way
Speaker 4: there because they can't use lawyers, you know, faced prints
Speaker 4: in Illinois without their consent.
Speaker 2: How much when police enforcement here in the United States
Speaker 2: have used this that it's led to mistakes or erroneous arrests,
Speaker 2: if you will.
Speaker 4: So there are hundreds of police departments that have used
Speaker 4: clearview AI's technology. The Department of Homeland Security has a
Speaker 4: contract with them. The FBI does I know of one
Speaker 4: case where this has gone wrong, and there may be
Speaker 4: others that haven't come to light, but in that situation.
Speaker 4: A man named Randall Karan Reid was pulled over the
Speaker 4: day after Thanksgiving in Atlanta, Georgia, and the there are
Speaker 4: four police.
Speaker 3: Cars that pulled him over.
Speaker 4: They asked him to step out of his vehicle on
Speaker 4: the side of the highway and started to arrest him
Speaker 4: and told him there was a worn out in Jefferson
Speaker 4: Parish for him for larceny. And he said, where's Jefferson
Speaker 4: Parish And they said it's in Louisiana. He said, I've
Speaker 4: never been to Louisiana in my life. And it turned
Speaker 4: out that he had been identified through running a surveillance
Speaker 4: still from a person who had been basically stealing purses
Speaker 4: in and around New Orleans and it had hit on
Speaker 4: Randall Reid, and when the police looked at his Facebook account,
Speaker 4: they said, wow, he has a lot of friends in
Speaker 4: New Orleans, and basically based on that, they issued this
Speaker 4: warrant for his arrest. He was held in jail for
Speaker 4: a week awaiting extradition until this was cleared up and
Speaker 4: it became clear he wasn't the same person. He basically
Speaker 4: took a lot of photos of his face and a
Speaker 4: video of his face, and when the police looked at it,
Speaker 4: they noticed he had a distinctive mole on his face
Speaker 4: that the person they were seeking did not have.
Speaker 1: Hey, Kashmir, Carol's died to get a question here. We
Speaker 1: have a couple of minute stare each other very very
Speaker 1: quickly talk a little bit about how oppressive governments have
Speaker 1: used this type of technology around the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, China and Russia are a bit further ahead
Speaker 4: of us in the deployment of facial recognition technology. And
Speaker 4: for example, Russia has rolled out kind of real time
Speaker 4: facial recognition on their surveillance cameras around Moscow and they've
Speaker 4: been used to identify.
Speaker 3: Protesters against the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: I've heard about doppelgangers who get stopped on the street
Speaker 4: because they look like somebody who's wanted. In China, it's
Speaker 4: also been used to identify, you know, protesters in Hong Kong,
Speaker 4: to to keep track of weaker Muslims there, and China's
Speaker 4: also used it for kind of these these wild use cases,
Speaker 4: like people who who wear pajamas in public in one
Speaker 4: city were identified with facial recognition and named and shamed
Speaker 4: on social media. If you jay walk there, you might
Speaker 4: just automatically get a ticket.
Speaker 2: One thing that stuck at struck me in your book.
Speaker 2: The Chinese government has also started collecting DNA and tracking phones,
Speaker 2: layering multiple systems in an attempt to create and all
Speaker 2: seeing eye on its population of one point four billion.
Speaker 2: We know that this is what China is doing when
Speaker 2: you look at this and we've just got about a
Speaker 2: minute left. More broadly, I mean, I do my fingerprint
Speaker 2: multiple times a day to check in. I mean, we've
Speaker 2: given up so much. What is the big concern about
Speaker 2: kind of where this goes beyond? Is it all about police,
Speaker 2: you know, arresting you falsely or what is it? And
Speaker 2: again just got about forty seconds.
Speaker 3: I love that I only have forty seconds. I would
Speaker 3: just say, I there's many ways.
Speaker 4: That's okay, that's many ways in which facial recognition technology
Speaker 4: can be beneficial and that we want to use it
Speaker 4: in our lives. But I think that we should have
Speaker 4: the ability to take what we want and not be
Speaker 4: forced to accept it just as being ubiquitous in our
Speaker 4: lives that were tracked all the time, that we just
Speaker 4: have no privacy. I think that's very dystopian and that
Speaker 4: we should be able to choose the future that we
Speaker 4: want and not just let what's possible with the technology
Speaker 4: determine it.
Speaker 2: Right safe to say we're living in a surveillance state already,
Speaker 2: it's just how it's all used and where it goes
Speaker 2: from here. What a fascinating book and so glad we
Speaker 2: could have you with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in YOURK Time Technology port Kashmir Hill. Her book
Speaker 1: is called Your Face Belongs to Us, A Secret of Startups,
Speaker 1: Quest to End Privacy as we know it. The book
Speaker 1: is out now. Also, we went to graduate school together
Speaker 1: and it's so cool to see all the success that
Speaker 1: Kashmir has had. Congrats on just a great book, Kashmir
Speaker 1: I really appreciate Kash taking the time to join us
Speaker 1: this afternoon.