The focus on police & government use of this sort of technology strikes me as misguided when there are an increasing number of publicly available tools that do the same thing.
I’m sure that Clearview has depth that other tools don’t, but Pimeyes does a pretty damned good job of identifying almost any face you feed into it - it’s also free and publicly available!
I’m all for restricting the use of this sort of technology by police departments and government, but this becomes a moot point if we only focus on government sanctioned software purchases. If I were a detective I’d just be feeding a suspects’ picture into Pimeyes on my personal device. I’m also equally if not more afraid of a future where these tools are available to private companies and the general public.
Nothing in recent years about the culpability of local US police departments in constitutional violations, crimes, corruption, and their lack of accountability and tendency to hire bullies who have been 'fired' from other departments for blatantly illegal actions has led you to question giving them access to more surveillance tools with no oversight?
> a moot point if we only focus on government sanctioned software purchases.
As far as I know, the public doesn't legally have the ability to bust your door down, shoot your dog, and put you in a room you can't leave until you pay them a bunch of money so you can wait for someone to tell you didn't do anything wrong.
I don’t disagree with anything you said - I just think it’s a case of missing the forest for the trees if we single out government purchases when many of these tools are well on their way to broad availability anyway. It feels like suspicion of and focus on government is occluding the larger problem here. The public may not have the legal authority to break down doors and generally take matters into their own hands, but that certainly doesn’t stop people from doing so.
Access to the tools by the public seems like a thorny legislative issue. There are no new laws that need to be passed to require cops to tell everyone how they found evidence.
That they call these 'investigative tools' and don't disclose their use is something very fixable.
Law enforcement can't think they don't have to be transparent from those who hold them accountable (including defense lawyers -- remember that 'free on a technicality' means that someone in the justice system did something very wrong and got called on it).
I’m sure that Clearview has depth that other tools don’t, but Pimeyes does a pretty damned good job of identifying almost any face you feed into it - it’s also free and publicly available!
I’m all for restricting the use of this sort of technology by police departments and government, but this becomes a moot point if we only focus on government sanctioned software purchases. If I were a detective I’d just be feeding a suspects’ picture into Pimeyes on my personal device. I’m also equally if not more afraid of a future where these tools are available to private companies and the general public.