by Juliette Rihl
“Dystopian” and “’Black Mirror’-esque” are among the ways critics have described Clearview, a facial recognition technology startup founded in 2016. The program’s ability to scrape photos off of the web and instantly aggregate information on just about anyone with an online presence, without their knowledge, has drawn the ire of privacy advocates, Democratic lawmakers and the same social media companies it relies on for data.
The system has been used by more than 600 law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad — including, as newly obtained records show, the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office.
Emails obtained by PublicSource through an open records request show that Clearview trial accounts were linked to email addresses of four employees in the office of District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr.: analysts Andrew Colvin, Ted DeAngelis and Norah Xiong, and detective Lyle Graber. The trials started at different times, with emails first referencing a trial on Feb. 7 and last noting a log in on March 17. Three of the employee accounts were signed in to more than once. The emails do not provide detail about how the system was used.
But they do show some of the interactions between the county employees and Clearview representatives. Clearview invited the four employees who had access to the technology on a trial basis, and one additional employee, Matt Baumgard, to a Feb. 28 introductory Zoom video briefing on the technology, according to the emails.
Previous facial recognition technologies have been found to have significant racial and gender biases in their algorithms, meaning they’re less accurate at correctly identifying faces of people of color, especially Black people, and women. Clearview has said that, according to an independent review panel, its algorithm achieved 100% accuracy and did not show any racial or gender bias. Yet some researchers and advocates find the claims dubious.
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https://www.publicsource.org/emails-show-allegheny-county-district-attorneys-office-used-trial-of-controversial-facial-recognition-technology-clearview/
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