The real price of the free facial recognition tech for Ukraine
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has accepted an offer from an American surveillance company Clearview AI to use their facial recognition software for free. But can you fight totalitarianism by adopting its infrastructure of control? That’s the question on the minds of privacy advocates who are warning against a possible rushed launch of an already controversial software in the middle of a war zone, making future abuse harder to track and easier to implement.
“The use of facial recognition and online surveillance in a warzone sets a dangerous precedent,” said Lucie Audibert, legal officer at Privacy International. "The deployment of any technology in a war context has to be extremely carefully thought through, as the implications are much more difficult to assess than in peaceful times.”
It’s not clear how Clearview AI software may be used in Ukraine, but possible uses include identifying Russian assailants or vetting people at checkpoints.
The controversial reputation of Clearview AI adds to the skepticism. The facial recognition company has ended up in hot water in a number of countries — the U.K., Italy, Canada just to name a few — for the ways the company gathered facial data from users without permission and offered its facial recognition to law enforcement without transparency.