The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
March 4, 2020

Clearview AI Probed for Selling Facial Recognition Software to Repressive Regimes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A top Democratic lawmaker is demanding answers from a secretive
artificial intelligence company over its sale of facial recognition
technology to repressive governments including Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates. Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey sent a letter to
Clearview AI on Tuesday demanding information about the company's
database of billions of images scraped from Facebook and other social
media sites. Senator Markey wrote, "The use of sophisticated facial
recognition technology is concerning even in a democracy with strong
civil liberties, but its export to certain foreign countries could
enable mass surveillance and repression of minorities." In recent days,
students at three dozen U.S. universities held protests against
administrators' plans to use facial recognition on their campuses.


.