Time Magazine Lauds Clearview AI Despite Its Sketchy Facial Recognition Tech
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TimeMagazine released its inaugural list of the 100 Most InfluentialCompanies, featuring an array of large and small corporations that“are helping to chart anessentialpath forward.”Disturbingly, among its choices of “disruptors” isClearview AI, the controversial facial recognition start-up known forillicitly scraping Americans’ images and demographicinformation from social media and selling the data to lawenforcement. By celebrating a company that engages in illegal masssurveillance, Time is complicit in the degradation of our privacy andour civil liberties.Even cursoryscrutiny by Time would have uncovered Clearview AI’sdisreputable practices. Perhaps Time was satisfied with the vagueexplanation from Clearview AI’s CEO, Hoan Ton-That, that thecompany is “working with law enforcement to balance privacy andsecurity.” But it’s hard to understand why, aftersubstantialreporting by other members of the media, Time chose toaccept Ton-That’s word when there is conclusive evidence thatClearview AI continues to violate civil liberties by supplying lawenforcement agencies, private banks and sports teams with billions ofillegally collected images.Widespread concernabout facial recognition technology’s threatsto civil liberties and its propensity for inaccuracy and racial biasfueled the public outcry that ensued after the New York Times firstbroke news about Clearview AI. Amidcalls from civil rights advocates for lawmakers to ban the use offacial recognition technology, membersof Congressquestioned Clearview AI about its technology and its potential forabuse against First Amendment-protected activity. Since then, agrowing listof U.S. cities havebanned police use of the technology.Despitethe bans and lawsuits, both locallyand internationally,against Clearview AI, the company’s indiscriminate collectionof Americans’ personal data without specific links tocriminality continues unabated. ClearviewAI’s troubling history and ongoing illegal activity should havedissuaded Time from elevating it in the public sphere. Yet the outletonly vaguely summarizes serious concerns about Clearview AI in itsprofile, mentioning briefly that “civil rights advocates fearabuses” of its technology despite reports of both the companyand its clients misleadingthe public. Without evidence, Time also credits Clearview AI for assisting in the arrest of individuals connected to the breach of the U.S. Capitol earlier this year, while sweeping aside Clearview AI's ties to misinformation.ClearviewAI’s secretive practices that Time lauds as “influential”and “disruptive” represent a dangerous disregard for oursocial norms and expectations of privacy. We have come to expect tocertain tradeoffs with technology providers: we share somedemographic information in exchange for the ease, convenience andconnectivity their products bring to our daily lives. However, anymarginal benefits of Clearview AI do not hold up against itssignificant potential for harm, and Time should have acknowledgedthat. The company’s technology paves the way to a dystopianfuture devoid of privacy and anonymity, both online and offline.Clearview AI is creating an environment where anyone - an ICE agent,a stalker or an individual bad actor within government – cantake a photo of an individual anywhere and automatically pull up thatperson’s Instagram, TikTok, blog, or other personal informationwithout their knowledge or consent.Itis a future civil society advocates have long warned about and willcontinue to fight against. Time should acknowledge these warnings inits report, especially since its readers are among Clearview AI’stargets. As an iconic publication that has been a part of America’smedia and social landscape for almost 100 years, Time has effectivelychronicled the struggle for civil liberties over the decades. It is adisgrace that when it came to covering today’s most influentialcompanies, Time instead chose to endorse a company that isdistinguished only for its unrelenting commitment to destroying thosesame liberties.FreddyMartinez is a policy analyst at Open The Government.
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