Time Magazine Lauds Clearview AI Despite Its Sketchy Facial Recognition Tech

Time Magazine released its inaugural list of the 100 Most Influential Companies, featuring an array of large and small corporations that “are helping to chart an essential path forward.” Disturbingly, among its choices of “disruptors” is Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition start-up known for illicitly scraping Americans’ images and demographic information from social media and selling the data to law enforcement. By celebrating a company that engages in illegal mass surveillance, Time is complicit in the degradation of our privacy and our civil liberties.

Even cursory scrutiny by Time would have uncovered Clearview AI’s disreputable practices. Perhaps Time was satisfied with the vague explanation from Clearview AI’s CEO, Hoan Ton-That, that the company is “working with law enforcement to balance privacy and security.” But it’s hard to understand why, after substantial reporting by other members of the media, Time chose to accept Ton-That’s word when there is conclusive evidence that Clearview AI continues to violate civil liberties by supplying law enforcement agencies, private banks and sports teams with billions of illegally collected images.

Widespread concern about facial recognition technology’s threats to civil liberties and its propensity for inaccuracy and racial bias fueled the public outcry that ensued after the New York Times first broke news about Clearview AI. Amid calls from civil rights advocates for lawmakers to ban the use of facial recognition technology, members of Congress questioned Clearview AI about its technology and its potential for abuse against First Amendment-protected activity. Since then, a growing list of U.S. cities have banned police use of the technology.