Patent Awarded To Clearview AI For Its Innovative, Web-Scraping Fuckery
Clearview AI has secured a federal patent for its facial recognition technology, marking a significant step toward regaining legitimacy after widespread condemnation for scraping billions of images from the web without consent. The patent protects the unique method of using an automated web crawler to index and match faces across the internet, rather than the underlying recognition algorithms themselves. This government approval provides intellectual property protection for a business model based on non-consensual data collection, effectively shielding the company from legal challenges regarding its core operational method in the United States. The company has attempted to rebrand itself as a respectable entity by ending sales to private entities and submitting its technology for independent accuracy testing. However, these efforts are undermined by the lack of transparent verification for these claims and the inherent flaws in facial recognition technology, which often exhibit significant bias. By pulling out of countries where its practices were deemed illegal only under regulatory pressure, Clearview’s rehabilitation appears strategic rather than ethical, relying on technical compliance rather than genuine respect for privacy rights or international laws. This development is critical to the open data movement because it legitimizes the unauthorized harvesting of publicly available online information as a protected commercial enterprise. It sets a precedent where the scale of data intrusion is rewarded with legal protection, potentially encouraging other entities to exploit public digital footprints without permission. The ruling highlights a dangerous disconnect between intellectual property laws and data privacy ethics, suggesting that innovative methods of mass surveillance can thrive even when they violate the fundamental principles of consent and transparency that open data advocates strive to uphold.
Source: techdirt.comPublished on 2023-05-14