I Know What You Did Last Summer

I Know What You Did Last Summer

I Know What You Did Last Summer

and fall, winter and spring

We don’t live in China, where even how a person reacts emotionally to just about anything (like school instruction) can now be tracked with a very sophisticated (perhaps the most rigorous on earth) system of facial recognition analytics driven by advanced artificial intelligence. China does not care about privacy at all. They continue to develop their intrusive analytics and are even selling them the world over, including to buyers (private and public in the United States). But without a vast data base of photographic information, AI-driven programs cannot maximize their reach. If local governments in the U.S. are pulling back their facial recognition programs because of consumer pressure (are they really?), private industry in the United States, generally governed by a different set of laws than those applicable to governmental agencies, is not holding back.

But even for photographs of individuals posted on open and public forums, under a growing set of enhanced state privacy laws – with so many variations (Congress is too gridlocked to create national standards) – exactly what can third parties do if they harvest and amass a humongous amalgamation of those easily copied photographs? Like with your Instagram or Facebook pictures? Year books? Corporate presentations? Creating entire algorithmic dossiers on you? Without your consent? And in California, with one of the strictest privacy/data protection laws in the law may just answer that question.

“Clearview AI has amassed a database of more than 3 billion photos of individuals by scraping sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Venmo. It’s bigger than any other known facial-recognition database in the U.S., including the FBI’s. The New York company uses algorithms to map the pictures it stockpiles, determining, for example, the distance between an individual’s eyes to construct a ‘faceprint.’… This technology appeals to law enforcement agencies across the country, which can use it in real time to help determine people’s identities.

“It also has caught the attention of civil liberties advocates and activists, who allege in a lawsuit filed Tuesday [3/9] that the company’s automatic scraping of their images and its extraction of their unique biometric information violate privacy and chill protected political speech and activity… The plaintiffs — four individual civil liberties activists and the groups Mijente and NorCal Resist — allege Clearview AI ‘engages in the widespread collection of California residents’ images and biometric information without notice or consent.’

This is especially consequential, the plaintiffs argue, for proponents of immigration or police reform, whose political speech may be critical of law enforcement and who may be members of communities that have been historically over-policed and targeted by surveillance tactics… Clearview AI enhances law enforcement agencies’ efforts to monitor these activists, as well as immigrants, people of color and those perceived as “dissidents,” such as Black Lives Matter activists, and can potentially discourage their engagement in protected political speech as a result, the plaintiffs say.

“The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, is part of a growing effort to restrict the use of facial-recognition technology. Bay Area cities — including San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda — have led that charge and were among the first in the U.S. to limit the use of facial recognition by local law enforcement in 2019.

“Yet the push comes at a time when consumer expectations of privacy are low, as many have come to see the use and sale of personal information by companies such as Google and Facebook as an inevitability of the digital age… Unlike other uses of personal information, facial recognition poses a unique danger, said Steven Renderos, executive director of MediaJustice and one of the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit. ‘While I can leave my cellphone at home [and] I can leave my computer at home if I wanted to,’ he said, ‘one of the things that I can’t really leave at home is my face.’

“Clearview AI was ‘circumventing the will of a lot of people” in the Bay Area cities that banned or limited facial-recognition use, he said… Enhancing law enforcement’s ability to instantaneously identify and track individuals is potentially chilling, the plaintiffs argue, and could inhibit the members of their groups or Californians broadly from exercising their constitutional right to protest.

“Imagine thousands of police officers and ICE agents across the country with the ability to instantaneously know your name and job, to see what you’ve posted online, to see every public photo of you on the internet,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, a senior campaign organizer at Mijente. “This is a surveillance nightmare for all of us, but it’s the biggest nightmare for immigrants, people of color, and everyone who’s already a target for law enforcement.”

“The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would force the company to stop collecting biometric information in California. They are also seeking the permanent deletion of all images and biometric data or personal information in their databases, said Sejal R. Zota, a legal director at Just Futures Law and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the suit. The plaintiffs are also being represented by Braunhagey & Borden.

“‘Our plaintiffs and their members care deeply about the ability to control their biometric identifiers and to be able to continue to engage in political speech that is critical of the police and immigration policy free from the threat of clandestine and invasive surveillance,’ Zota said… ‘And California has a Constitution and laws that protect these rights.’… In a statement Tuesday [3/9], Floyd Abrams, an attorney for Clearview AI, said the company ‘complies with all applicable law and its conduct is fully protected by the 1st Amendment.’” Johana Bhuiyan writing for the March 10th Los Angeles Times. Ever since the egregious 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs FEC – according business entities (SuperPACs) the rights of individuals – the first amendment was bastion for individual liberties. Today, that Amendment has morphed into a corporate sword to be used to exert the influence only big money can buy… and which individual are powerless to defend against.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you remember what they call a society governed by those with wealth – a plutocracy – you just might not be so happy about this rolling distortion of our individual constitutional rights.