The CEO of Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition app, said the app saw a 26% increase in searches the day after the violence at the Capitol.
Juliette Rihl, Public Source
The facial recognition app Clearview AI saw an increase in use the day after the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, the New York Times reported. As police departments throughout the United States are helping the FBI identify rioters, some are reportedly using facial recognition technology.
The use of facial recognition last year to investigate suspected crimes related to Black Lives Matter protests raised privacy and First Amendment concerns from activists, advocates and some lawmakers. Studies show the technology, which attempts to match an uploaded image of a person to other images in a photo database, is less accurate at identifying people of color and women. Facial recognition has also resulted in at least three Black men being wrongfully arrested.
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Privacy and ethical technology advocates PublicSource spoke to warned against ramping up surveillance technology following the overwhelmingly white and male insurrection at the Capitol.
Since last summer, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County lawmakers have been grappling with the ‘ifs’ and ‘hows’ of regulating facial recognition. Pittsburgh City Council in September passed a bill regulating the technology. Allegheny County introduced a similar bill in October. It has not yet come up for a vote.
Pittsburgh’s legislation requires city council’s approval of facial recognition and predictive policing technologies but allows, in emergency circumstances, for the public safety director or police chief to temporarily authorize their use without council’s approval.
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Councilman Corey O’Connor, who sponsored the city bill, said that the emergency exception was included to account for extreme situations like the Capitol riot. “You’re dealing with, in my opinion, domestic terrorism there,” O’Connor said, as opposed to “robbing a convenience store.”
The city legislation was prompted by a PublicSource investigation of facial recognition use by local law enforcement, including a trial of Clearview by the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office.
