Following the steps of Twitter and Google, social media giant Facebook has recently taken a legal step against facial recognition platform Clearview AI. Reportedly, Facebook issued a cease-and-desist letter to Clearview, restricting it to take data from Instagram and Facebook.
Facebook’s spokesperson clarified the company’s stand by saying that scraping user's information violates their policies, which is why it wants Clearview to stop using or accessing information from Instagram or Facebook.
According to reliable sources, Facebook had previously tried various other approaches in order to obtain compliance from Clearview. The social media firm had issued numerous letters that clarified its policies to Clearview. Moreover, Facebook had even asked for detailed information from Clearview regarding its procedures and practices, demanding them to stop using data from Facebook and its products.
For the record, Clearview came under the radar when New York Times revealed that the face recognition app has been scraping numerous images from prominent sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook without their consent to create its own facial recognition database.
Apparently, Clearview works with over 600 North American police departments and guarantees that its technology has a 99.6 % accuracy rate in identifying individuals.
Clearing the air, Hoan Ton, CEO, Clearview, said that the firm would nullify these demands by arguing that it has First Amendment right to publicly avail info. Moreover, Hoan compared his platform with Google’s search engine by saying that Google fetches information from various other websites as well.
Lack of effective federal law in the U.S. that regulates the use of facial recognition is further complicating the whole case. Few cities like San Francisco have gone ahead to issue partial bans on the technology, but a majority consensus between different states and cities is still an imminent need.
Source Credit: https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/06/facebook-venmo-cease-and-desist-clearview-ai/