home << Policy << auto after being notified of info it should have already been aware of lapd bans clearview use by investigators
Fri, 04 Dec 2020
After Being Notified Of Info It Should Have Already Been Aware Of, LAPD Bans Clearview Use By Investigators
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The Los Angeles Police Department is shutting down a very small percentage of its facial recognition searches. Last month, public records exposed the fact that the LAPD had been lying about its facial recognition use for years. Up until 2019, the department maintained it did not use the tech. Records obtained by the Los Angeles Times showed it had actually used it 30,000 times over the past decade.The most recent development in the LAPD's mostly dishonest use of this tech is that it will not allow personnel to mess around with certain third-party offerings. As Buzzfeed reports, the LAPD has forbidden the use of Clearview by officers following the release of information the department already should have already been aware of.Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News showed that more than 25 LAPD employees ran nearly 475 searches with Clearview AI over a three-month period beginning at the end of 2019.[...]LAPD officials confirmed that investigators were using Clearview AI but declined to say which officers and which specific cases it was used for. They also refused to say whether the facial recognition software has led to arrests of any suspects. Now that the public knows what the LAPD already should have known, the department is changing its policy to exclude Clearview… and probably not much else.The Los Angeles Police Department has banned the use of commercial facial recognition systems, following inquiries from BuzzFeed News about its officers' use of a controversial software known as Clearview AI. Have to love the fact that the LAPD needed to be apprised of what its own investigators were doing by journalists. That's the level of internal oversight we've come to expect from the nation's law enforcement agencies. If you don't look for anything, it's almost impossible to find misconduct and abuses of power. No news is the best news. And it can easily be achieved by doing nothing at all.This ban only affects "commercial" software which means investigators will still be able to use (and misuse) more official products, like the facial recognition system owned by the county -- the same one the LAPD spent years denying it used.And, although it's an incremental change that seems to only forbid the use of one particular facial recognition product, it's still good to see another law enforcement agency kick Clearview to the curb. Clearview's unproven AI trawls a database of photos scraped from the internet, making it a highly questionable addition to any government agency's surveillance repertoire. And Clearview has been highly irresponsible in its marketing and distribution of its tech, making unverified claims about law enforcement successes while encouraging government employees to test drive the software by feeding it faces of friends, family members, celebrities, etc.If more agencies uninvite this third-party interloper, law enforcement critical mass will make Clearview's business plan untenable. It's already ditched most of its private customers in response to lawsuits. If the potential customers it has left refuse to do business with it, it will soon become little more than a horrible memory.
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posted at: 12:00am on 04-Dec-2020
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