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Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The story of a small AI company that gave facial recognition to law enforcement, billionaires, and businesses, threatening to end privacy as we know it
“The dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Kashmir Hill’s fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality.”—John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood
Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award
New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed to be, it would be the ultimate surveillance tool, and it would open the door to everything from stalking to totalitarian state control. Could it be true?
In this riveting account, Hill tracks the improbable rise of Clearview AI, helmed by Hoan Ton-That, an Australian computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, and its astounding collection of billions of faces from the internet. The company was boosted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles C. Johnson and billionaire Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel—who all seemed eager to release this society-altering technology on the public. Google and Facebook decided that a tool to identify strangers was too radical to release, but Clearview forged ahead, sharing the app with private investors, pitching it to businesses, and offering it to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world.
Facial recognition technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. This technology has already been used in wrongful arrests in the United States. Unregulated, it could expand the reach of policing, as it has in China and Russia, to a terrifying, dystopian level.
Your Face Belongs to Us is a gripping true story about the rise of a technological superpower and an urgent warning that, in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, Clearview AI is one of many new technologies that challenge what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “the right to be let alone.”
“The dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Kashmir Hill’s fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality.”—John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood
Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award
New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed to be, it would be the ultimate surveillance tool, and it would open the door to everything from stalking to totalitarian state control. Could it be true?
In this riveting account, Hill tracks the improbable rise of Clearview AI, helmed by Hoan Ton-That, an Australian computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, and its astounding collection of billions of faces from the internet. The company was boosted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles C. Johnson and billionaire Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel—who all seemed eager to release this society-altering technology on the public. Google and Facebook decided that a tool to identify strangers was too radical to release, but Clearview forged ahead, sharing the app with private investors, pitching it to businesses, and offering it to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world.
Facial recognition technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. This technology has already been used in wrongful arrests in the United States. Unregulated, it could expand the reach of policing, as it has in China and Russia, to a terrifying, dystopian level.
Your Face Belongs to Us is a gripping true story about the rise of a technological superpower and an urgent warning that, in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, Clearview AI is one of many new technologies that challenge what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “the right to be let alone.”
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 208 reviews
October 17, 2023
I think this book is super helpful to understand what is going on with facial recognition and the ways the US is woefully behind in protections for citizens compared to the EU. I liked the pacing and style of the book and got a good sense of the big picture. Some of the more technical stuff went over my head (maybe if I hadn't been listening on audio I would have gotten it better). Overall very good.
September 5, 2024
Hill's investigative reporting on Clearview AI first broke in this New York Times article: The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It in 2020, and her 2024 YOUR FACE BELONGS TO US goes much deeper into the history of facial recognition and mass surveillance (first used on analog train tickets with punch holes for body shapes, skin and hair color in the 19th century) to the modern 24/7 surveillance state, and the history of Clearview AI, the facial recognition software that is used by many law enforcement and government entities, and whomever else can afford and have access to the extremely powerful tools. Marketed to law enforcement, Clearview AI can identify faces and instantly pull up a large portfolio of that same face (and oftentimes several doppelgangers) over many years - in CCTV footage, background of public events, group photos from 20 years ago on Flickr, and even when wearing masks, hats, facial hair, sunglasses, etc.
Hill focuses her investigation on the Clearview AI founders and their path to build this software using source material from public photos, Facebook images, Venmo transactions, and caches of people who scan their faces to "find your celebrity lookalike", or make their face look like an animal or robot for memes and social media posts.
The lack of regulation in certain regions/countries, the urgency of this message, and the exponential speed of growth in the technology make this a sobering, yet necessary, read.
Related reading:
We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State
Hill focuses her investigation on the Clearview AI founders and their path to build this software using source material from public photos, Facebook images, Venmo transactions, and caches of people who scan their faces to "find your celebrity lookalike", or make their face look like an animal or robot for memes and social media posts.
The lack of regulation in certain regions/countries, the urgency of this message, and the exponential speed of growth in the technology make this a sobering, yet necessary, read.
Related reading:
We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State
October 29, 2023
Remove the politics and it's a great story
It's clear throughout the whole story how Ms. Hill feels about former President Trump, and anyone who shares his politics. It was hard to find a chapter that didn't highlight how much MAGA, "the far right", or any member of the GOP bothers her.
If that could be filtered out of the story I would highly recommend it. The story is great, I don't want to know the politics of the author and be shaped by what they thought.
Clearview is a fascinating story and I hope people continue to dig into facial identity, AI, and everything. There's a lot of good for technology and a lot of bad. More reporting and digging into it can only help
It's clear throughout the whole story how Ms. Hill feels about former President Trump, and anyone who shares his politics. It was hard to find a chapter that didn't highlight how much MAGA, "the far right", or any member of the GOP bothers her.
If that could be filtered out of the story I would highly recommend it. The story is great, I don't want to know the politics of the author and be shaped by what they thought.
Clearview is a fascinating story and I hope people continue to dig into facial identity, AI, and everything. There's a lot of good for technology and a lot of bad. More reporting and digging into it can only help
September 19, 2023
Over the last six years, Clearview AI has secretly expanded as a facial recognition tool to be used by law enforcement and the elite. But that changed when Kashmir Hill was able to break open the story of Clearview AI and make the public aware of their powerful facial recognition tool. Clearview AI achieved the goal of capturing billions of images of people online and using it as a search database of faces. While researchers have spent decades theorizing about this technology, Clearview AI released a workable version. Google and Facebook made their own versions of the technology, but chose to shelve the projects from fears of lawsuits and the death of anonimity.
Clearview AI was made by Hoan Ton-That, a computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, who took their technology and courted silicon valley elite to fund and expand their technology, eventually finding a lucrative market in law enforcement. Clearview AI became an open secret among the elite and law enforcement, but hidden from the public. Once it became public, Clearview faced lawsuits from advocates trying to protect biometric information, settling for restricting the company from private use, but permitting law enforcement use. As we move into the future, Clearview AI's story will become an important example of how data-mining companies are created, the dangers they pose to society, and the potential measures people can take to resist these companies.
Kashmir Hill takes her widely publicized New York Times reporting about facial recognition and expands it into a broader history of facial recognition as a technology and Clearview AI as a company. This book is a fascinating narrative of a company moving forward with a potentially dangerous product, contextualized by a lengthy history of facial recognition originating in the eugenics movement before decades of trial and error in making the technology function. I highly recommend this book for someone who wants to understand the risks facial recognition technology has in the world, as the third part does a great job analyzing the dangers of facial recognition's use by law enforcment, like wrongful arrests, a focus on street arrests for minor crimes, and the end to anonymity.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for a copy of Your Face Belongs to Us in exchange for an honest review.
Clearview AI was made by Hoan Ton-That, a computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, who took their technology and courted silicon valley elite to fund and expand their technology, eventually finding a lucrative market in law enforcement. Clearview AI became an open secret among the elite and law enforcement, but hidden from the public. Once it became public, Clearview faced lawsuits from advocates trying to protect biometric information, settling for restricting the company from private use, but permitting law enforcement use. As we move into the future, Clearview AI's story will become an important example of how data-mining companies are created, the dangers they pose to society, and the potential measures people can take to resist these companies.
Kashmir Hill takes her widely publicized New York Times reporting about facial recognition and expands it into a broader history of facial recognition as a technology and Clearview AI as a company. This book is a fascinating narrative of a company moving forward with a potentially dangerous product, contextualized by a lengthy history of facial recognition originating in the eugenics movement before decades of trial and error in making the technology function. I highly recommend this book for someone who wants to understand the risks facial recognition technology has in the world, as the third part does a great job analyzing the dangers of facial recognition's use by law enforcment, like wrongful arrests, a focus on street arrests for minor crimes, and the end to anonymity.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for a copy of Your Face Belongs to Us in exchange for an honest review.
November 10, 2023
This book is terrifying and everyone should read it. It’s a good way to even pose questions to yourself about what privacy means to you as an individual and for a society. I did feel like this book ended too abruptly - what practical things can / should a reader do next? I would love to go back in time and never have joined Facebook (never joining again) but it’s too late, everything ever uploaded to it is out of my control - and really never was in it.
February 15, 2024
In January 2020, the New York Times published the article ‘
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It
’, that revealed the activities of Clearview AI, an American company specialising in automated facial recognition. In Your Face Belongs to Us, journalist Kashmir Hill tells her story ‘behind’ the article, with more background information. It is therefore primarily a journalistic report, similar to Brittany Kaiser’s Targeted, rather than a philosophical or technical contribution to the discourse on artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition.
Hill delved deep into the business. She unravels the origins of Clearview AI and its founder Hoan Ton-That, a young migrant from Australia who ends up in far-right circles. Hill explains why police departments are frenzied about the new technology, why privacy activists have major concerns and why companies like Facebook or Google would not have dared to introduce it in this way.
Hill’s research reveals interesting facts. Here and there she provides some more historical information, for instance when she writes about the origins of behavioural genetics and biometrics and the controversial work of figures like Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon, who pioneered with the use of fingerprints and mug shots but were also accused of scientific racism.
Despite her great work, I could not get into the story. I found it too fragmented: instead of presenting the bigger picture, Hill offers examples of what is currently happening, jumping from one topic to another. Although she broaches overarching themes, she keeps returning to yet another narrative with numerous details and names. This may be useful to legitimise her work as a journalist, but it didn’t work for me as an outside reader. As a result, I also missed focus. Hill is as interested in facial recognition as a threatening technology as she is in the intertwining of Clearview AI with the far-right. Ultimately I was unable to discern a central message.
Hill delved deep into the business. She unravels the origins of Clearview AI and its founder Hoan Ton-That, a young migrant from Australia who ends up in far-right circles. Hill explains why police departments are frenzied about the new technology, why privacy activists have major concerns and why companies like Facebook or Google would not have dared to introduce it in this way.
A rogue police officer could use Clearview to stalk potential romantic partners. A foreign government could dig up secrets about its opponents to blackmail them or throw them in jail. People at protests could be identified by police, including in countries such as China and Russia with track records of repressing, and even killing, dissidents. With increasingly ubiquitous surveillance cameras, an authoritarian leader could use this power to track rivals’ faces, watching where they went and with whom they associated, to find compromising moments or build a dossier to be used against them. Keeping secrets for any reason, even safety, could prove impossible.
Beyond Big Brother and the danger of powerful governments was the even more insidious Little Brother: your neighbor, a possessive partner, a stalker, a stranger who bears you ill will. If it became widely available, Clearview could create a culture of justified paranoia.
Hill’s research reveals interesting facts. Here and there she provides some more historical information, for instance when she writes about the origins of behavioural genetics and biometrics and the controversial work of figures like Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon, who pioneered with the use of fingerprints and mug shots but were also accused of scientific racism.
Despite her great work, I could not get into the story. I found it too fragmented: instead of presenting the bigger picture, Hill offers examples of what is currently happening, jumping from one topic to another. Although she broaches overarching themes, she keeps returning to yet another narrative with numerous details and names. This may be useful to legitimise her work as a journalist, but it didn’t work for me as an outside reader. As a result, I also missed focus. Hill is as interested in facial recognition as a threatening technology as she is in the intertwining of Clearview AI with the far-right. Ultimately I was unable to discern a central message.
May 25, 2024
a MUST READ !! genuinely will be recommending this book to everyone for the foreseeable future. informative and shocking, the text shines light on the current state of face recognition in the united states and begs the question, where are we to go from here?
April 16, 2024
A terrifying examination of the lack of privacy in the digital age. Very well written, I learned a lot.
I have a few qualms with this book for what it DOESNT do, but Hill’s explanation of the factors that led to Clearview is excellent. Hill does not try to examine the ethical alternatives to Clearview, or the situations in which facial recognition technology can be used dutifully. To me, if a book wants to critique something it’s important to present alternatives, or to discuss the dearth of good options, Hill does neither. I also feel that too much attention is given to the Clearview founders ties to MAGA. It’s a relevant point that should be acknowledged, but to me the recurrence of this point felt a bit like an ad hominem.
I have a few qualms with this book for what it DOESNT do, but Hill’s explanation of the factors that led to Clearview is excellent. Hill does not try to examine the ethical alternatives to Clearview, or the situations in which facial recognition technology can be used dutifully. To me, if a book wants to critique something it’s important to present alternatives, or to discuss the dearth of good options, Hill does neither. I also feel that too much attention is given to the Clearview founders ties to MAGA. It’s a relevant point that should be acknowledged, but to me the recurrence of this point felt a bit like an ad hominem.
March 15, 2024
Dopo aver letto questo libro, che poi è una grande inchiesta portata avanti dalla giornalista del New York Times Kashmir Hill, ho disattivato il riconoscimento facciale dell’iPhone e ho cancellato tt le app inutili alle quali avevo regalato gratuitamente dati, ma soprattutto il mio volto, consapevole che si tratti di misure ormai inutili.
Uno scenario distopico, alla Minority Report, si è aperto di fronte ai miei occhi, rendendomi consapevole di quanto il riconoscimento facciale sia uno strumento che non nasce come buono o cattivo ma che se usato con gli intenti sbagliati, e da governi dittatoriali, porterebbe conseguenze infauste. E il diritto alla privacy dell’individuo nn può essere messo sotto le scarpe dalle necessità di “sicurezza” dell’ordine pubblico. Perché nelle mani sbagliate può trasformarsi in un “Grande fratello” le cui conseguenze non possiamo prevedere.
Da leggere assolutamente
Uno scenario distopico, alla Minority Report, si è aperto di fronte ai miei occhi, rendendomi consapevole di quanto il riconoscimento facciale sia uno strumento che non nasce come buono o cattivo ma che se usato con gli intenti sbagliati, e da governi dittatoriali, porterebbe conseguenze infauste. E il diritto alla privacy dell’individuo nn può essere messo sotto le scarpe dalle necessità di “sicurezza” dell’ordine pubblico. Perché nelle mani sbagliate può trasformarsi in un “Grande fratello” le cui conseguenze non possiamo prevedere.
Da leggere assolutamente
December 15, 2023
Did you know that if you have a profile picture of yourself online, for any social media account, that there is a very high likelihood that these photos are in a facial recognition database? And through this database your personal information, like name, address and who your friends are, can be obtained in seconds by merely uploading a picture of yourself to this app?
This book shares the story of how Clearview AI evolved to become the favored facial recognition app used by law enforcement in the United States. The company "scraped" other websites to upload billions of pictures. Except for the state of Illinois, there are no protections in place to prevent this from occurring without your express permission. The genie is out of the bottle, so there is no going back, if your photo is online chances are you are in this database.
Why would we care about this? Well, it is not a perfect software and police have used it incorrectly to arrest innocent people. And it basically removed your ability to be anonymous, anyone with access to the app can invade anyone's privacy, you, your parents, even your children. Creepiness to the extreme.
The book takes us down the path to understand how we got here and raises poignant questions on where we go from here. Hopefully it isn't too late, but it just may be...
This book shares the story of how Clearview AI evolved to become the favored facial recognition app used by law enforcement in the United States. The company "scraped" other websites to upload billions of pictures. Except for the state of Illinois, there are no protections in place to prevent this from occurring without your express permission. The genie is out of the bottle, so there is no going back, if your photo is online chances are you are in this database.
Why would we care about this? Well, it is not a perfect software and police have used it incorrectly to arrest innocent people. And it basically removed your ability to be anonymous, anyone with access to the app can invade anyone's privacy, you, your parents, even your children. Creepiness to the extreme.
The book takes us down the path to understand how we got here and raises poignant questions on where we go from here. Hopefully it isn't too late, but it just may be...
August 16, 2023
So, I am so thankful to Random House Publishing Group, PRH Audio, and Kashmir Hill for granting me advanced audio access to this twisted/gray novel, depicting where our world is headed with AI not necessarily on our side, but also not completely opposing us. I work in Technology so I'm quite familiar with the positive aspects of AI, but to see how several government agencies are invoking fear and total control over their people, revoking their privacy and sanity... makes me second guess everything. And that's the point of non-fiction books, right? To inform and to make you question and rethink things, and that's definitely what I did.
October 26, 2023
***These are my random thoughts after finishing the book. Some of the thoughts are an overall review of the book, or any questions/feelings that nagged at me throughout. There will almost definitely be spoilers. Read at your own risk.*** ‐----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 stars
Well-written investigative journalism
Informative
Did feel a little biased (need to present both liberal and conservative abuse of technology and privacy)
Feels a little too late for us
4 stars
Well-written investigative journalism
Informative
Did feel a little biased (need to present both liberal and conservative abuse of technology and privacy)
Feels a little too late for us
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 2, 2023
Interesting read about a legitimately scary technology (Clearview AI - facial recognition software). I just felt that it had a ton of fluff about the different players in the story, and not enough emphasis on the technical details of what they were doing, or any kinds of calls to action or recommendations on how to deal with all of this. So in the end, it was a bit disappointing, because I felt that I could have learned what I needed to know about the topic in something closer to a long read, not a full blown book. But I did enjoy it, and I recommend it.
6/10
6/10
November 27, 2023
"Deze technologie vormt zo'n groot gevaar voor onze samenleving dat elk mogelijk voordeel in het niet valt bij de potentiële schade"
Laten we alsjeblieft niet dezelfde fouten maken bij AI en aanverwante technologieën als dat we bij sociale media hebben laten gebeuren.
Laten we alsjeblieft niet dezelfde fouten maken bij AI en aanverwante technologieën als dat we bij sociale media hebben laten gebeuren.
July 3, 2024
3.5 Stars!
“The future is already here-it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
William Gibson
Something that I continue to find terrifying is how quickly and readily the vast majority of the world has enthusiastically surrendered ideas of privacy and how corporate interests with the help of political ones have successfully shifted the framing to make so much of society believe that privacy is a dirty word, something to stigmatise and be suspicious of rather than a fundamental human right and a thing to be respected and held as sacred.
Hill spends a few chapters giving us a brief, loose history of similar techniques going back to the likes of Bentham’s panopticon and the dark days of Francis Galton and Cesare Lombroso and their disturbing and depressingly popular ideas around eugenics, which led to suspects being convicted on nothing more than “sinister physiognomy” which all really boils down to cold, hard racism and ignorance.
We get treated to some delightful terms like “privacy armour” and “security theatre”, the latter is the name given to the performance where the illusion of security is embraced over uncomfortable reality, as seen in the post-9/11 madness which swept through American airports, although much of this costly technology wasn’t even up to the job it claimed to do…a bit like those faulty bomb detectors from the same conflict.
The people who create and promote these tools have no interest whatsoever about ideas of privacy or regulation, the creators excel at self-promotion more than anything else and these tools are a dream come true for stalkers, blackmailers and oppressive regimes and anyone else who has sinister intentions, which extends to the police and other security agencies around the world. It’s all about profit for the makers, and control and surveillance for the users and they are rarely interested in those many lives their toys and games could destroy.
This also reminds us what can and does happen when we willingly surrender all our reservations and judgments and give them over to external systems and we continue to fall into that comfortable trap of believing that these systems are always trustworthy and infallible and this is a very dangerous road to travel down, as we have seen happen in so many other cases of algorithms which have wreaked much havoc and devastated many lives through wrong information and bad intelligence.
July 16, 2024
I picked this up in the airport. I’ve read a few of Kashmir Hill’s articles on technology/surveillance in the NYT and thought this might be relevant to my PhD research. It offers a very basic historical/technical overview of facial recognition technology, and recounts the rise of “Clearview AI”, America’s most controversial, and high performing, facial recognition company. Getting to know the shady, MAGA-associated characters behind Clearview was fascinating, and the book gives insight into how the technology is deployed by police departments in various cities across the US. However, Hill’s analytical and historical approach to thinking about FRT beyond privacy and critiques of bias (soon to be surpassed by advancements in the technology) was lacklustre, but not surprising as this is investigative journalism and not an academic text. I guess my qualm is that a lot of other books have already told this general story. I would have been more interested in deeper analysis of Clearview itself - what does its success (and failures) reveal about our current political climate? The resurgence of the far right/authoritarianism AND the mass expropriation of wealth towards the 1% under late capitalism is obviously correlated with new technological and political techniques of social control - facial recognition and biometric surveillance being one. The end of anonymity itself! I digress. Just wish this book did more because it was running with a fascinating story.
December 26, 2023
this was a super easy book to read and easy to follow. i read kashmir's original article on clearview (and have been a fan of her work generally!) but beyond that hadn't been following the story or clearview. i enjoyed the history of facial recognition as context, the privacy/ethics angle (though I wish it went a more in depth here -- this was the part i was most familiar with before this book, and it felt like the arguments were only presented at a superficial level and were repeated throughout rather than explored further), and investigation into how different law enforcement saw/used the technology. there were also figures named that i know / have worked with, which is so surreal. i did finish feeling like it wasnt totally satisfying, like i had just read a long article rather an a book. there wasnt that sense of tension or resolution that i would expect of a book, and it still felt quite surface level, even though it was clear she had done a lot of research and there was a lot of information in there. im glad i read this though!
March 28, 2024
Welp. Well written and reported, this is a great overview of the current state of facial recognition technology and how prevalent this “futuristic” tech already is. I appreciated the detailed context of flawed appearance-based correlational methods of the past and the (brief) look beyond just the American legislative landscape and application.
I am moderately careful to not upload pictures of myself online, I don’t use social media and I try to limit my digital footprints…but it really doesn’t matter. We’ll all hooped, essentially.
I am moderately careful to not upload pictures of myself online, I don’t use social media and I try to limit my digital footprints…but it really doesn’t matter. We’ll all hooped, essentially.
August 1, 2024
Depressing to read, too much talk about the NYT article. A lot of reoccuring information, it feels like a netflix documentary series which could’ve been one 20 minute explainer, for dramatic effect I guess.
January 9, 2024
“[…] called eigenfaces, invoking a German mathematical term for directional stretching”
Next time, please just ask any STEM major what an eigenvalue or eigenvector is instead of going with a dictionary definition
Next time, please just ask any STEM major what an eigenvalue or eigenvector is instead of going with a dictionary definition
October 22, 2023
Sobering account of Clearview, the leading face-recognition company and government contractor in the U.S. Hill recreates the company’s history, displaying
the moral spinelessness and blind ambition of its founder, Hoan Ton-That and his partners. Clearview does not operate in this space alone, but its strategies mirror those of its global competitors. The final chapters are the most galling (not Hill’s fault) in that they record how the American legal system was blindsided, distracted, and bought off to slow-walk regulation efforts. I wish Hill had concluded with a chapter on how readers can mobilize to evade privacy infractions but she makes it sound like the train has left the station. I hope this book will make people reconsider posting their faces everywhere—though it’s likely too late.
the moral spinelessness and blind ambition of its founder, Hoan Ton-That and his partners. Clearview does not operate in this space alone, but its strategies mirror those of its global competitors. The final chapters are the most galling (not Hill’s fault) in that they record how the American legal system was blindsided, distracted, and bought off to slow-walk regulation efforts. I wish Hill had concluded with a chapter on how readers can mobilize to evade privacy infractions but she makes it sound like the train has left the station. I hope this book will make people reconsider posting their faces everywhere—though it’s likely too late.
July 13, 2023
Thank you to both #NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group, #RandomHouse for providing me an advance copy of Kashmir Hill’s #nonfiction work, #YourFaceBelongstoUs, in exchange for an honest review.
#YourFaceBelongstoUs is a sharp, well-researched account of the facial recognition tech startup, #ClearviewAI. The book is divided into three parts and opens with a spine-chilling prologue that recounts how Kashmir Hill pursued a tip down the rabbit hole, which resulted in an investigative NY Times article that exposed #ClearviewAI and the Orwellian technology it released upon the world, much to the delight of global law enforcement agencies.
The work reads more like #fiction than nonfiction despite the contrary, making it all the more thrilling for the reader. I encourage even those who have already sifted through the numerous articles published about #ClearviewAI since the book also delves into the origins of personal data collection, facial recognition, surveillance, and artificial intelligence.
Regardless of whether you are a technologist or layperson, this book deserves wide recognition and should be read by anyone. Our #privacy and other civil liberties may very well depend on educating the general public about such technologies to prevent or at least curb some of the examples of mass surveillance detailed in the work.
#YourFaceBelongstoUs is a sharp, well-researched account of the facial recognition tech startup, #ClearviewAI. The book is divided into three parts and opens with a spine-chilling prologue that recounts how Kashmir Hill pursued a tip down the rabbit hole, which resulted in an investigative NY Times article that exposed #ClearviewAI and the Orwellian technology it released upon the world, much to the delight of global law enforcement agencies.
The work reads more like #fiction than nonfiction despite the contrary, making it all the more thrilling for the reader. I encourage even those who have already sifted through the numerous articles published about #ClearviewAI since the book also delves into the origins of personal data collection, facial recognition, surveillance, and artificial intelligence.
Regardless of whether you are a technologist or layperson, this book deserves wide recognition and should be read by anyone. Our #privacy and other civil liberties may very well depend on educating the general public about such technologies to prevent or at least curb some of the examples of mass surveillance detailed in the work.
July 1, 2024
A dictators dream..... Your Face Belongs to us is about the creation of a facial recognition service that is able to detect anyones face regardless of sunglasses, masks, hats etc with up to 99.7% accuracy. That was as the time of this books publication, with improvements in GPU chips, cloud services and transformer architecture that accuracy may have increased. As an ML engineer, I am guessing the company has set up various web crawlers that can surf and mine the entire internet, store billions of images, create a database of the images using vector embeddings. Turn the input image into vector embeddings, insert it into the model and then have an algorithm that searches through its database based upon the models output for similarity through its database and return a list of matches to the user.
Okay, let me translate what this nerd shit means... Basically if your face is on the internet and someone has access to this technology, they could simply insert your image into the database and find every image that has ever been put onto the internet and easily find your name, address, job and other intimate details about your life. At the time of this book, the creators only open up this technology to law enforcement but have slowly been releasing it more and more to governments across the world. Let's run through some examples of what this means and slowly increase the Orwellian meter.
Level 1: You're a woman, you're out with your friends at a bar, maybe blowing off steam, celebrating a new job etc. A creepy guy takes a picture of your face, inputs this into the app and boom. This man now could possibly find information about your life based off of data you didn't even know was on the internet. This man could start stalking you. This could easily be the plot for a law and order episode or a serial killer movie.
Level 2:
Police set up cameras at open public spaces and scan everyones face that happens to walk by and run it through the model to see if they can catch criminals. (This something that actually happened in London).
Level 3: You're at an anti-war rally protesting against your government, it gets violent, cops are sent out to beat protestors, although you were protesting peacefully. You decide to leave due to the violence. The next day unbeknownst to you, you have 3 cops show up at your job to arrest you for trumped up charges and now you face prison time.
You may think the examples I provided are hyperbolic but the use cases for abuse vastly outweigh the benefits of this technology. This technology is not even that hard to create on your own, many tech giants flirted with facial recognition but quietly stepped away from it once it gave negative press coverage but for smaller companies who're more desperate or greedy, there are no moral limits. We're entering a time where the despotic sci-fi novels where technology is used by the powerful for ruthless submission to an economic order to the masses is becoming more and more possible. There are countless reasons why this company has its services requested from both democratic and dictatorships across the world. Mass surveillance from the state is now a reality.
This technology is being marketed as a way to catch murders, rapists and serial killers. Who would object to that? That is the thing, we're most ready to give up our freedoms when we're scared or feel threatened like after 9/11 and the following patriot act which allowed the government to engage in mass surveillance. Julian Assange was just released from prison after 12 brutal years for releasing war crimes done by the U.S government, the people that committed those crimes? Never saw a day in a jail cell, this is the reality of power. The way these tools become normalized is by being marketed as a way to protect us when in reality they're a way to control us.
As I speak, Trump is doing dinners with donors where he is literally telling them "donate to me and I'll cut your taxes" to a room full of millionaires and billionaires. Biden is at Hollywood fundraisers raising millions with elites as well. This type of open fund raising used to be hidden and done tactfully but more and more its aggressively out in the open where both parties are engaging in rampant quid pro quos with donors in exchange for favorable policies. This is the underpinning of our current global economy. Capitalists on tv shows preach free markets in public and rail against government intervention while behind close doors ensuring that they receive subsidies, tax breaks and pass laws to distort market competition so no competitor can challenge them. This is why Google bought a company every week for an entire year.
When we talk about economic inequality, people can accept a certain amount of inequality if they feel that the system is merit based but this current system where we have extreme economic stagnation where a few companies in every industry can control the market and raise prices in tandem to price gouge its customers... Where the customers have no other choice but to purchase from this company.... Thats not capitalism that's oligarchy. In the past few weeks, the G7 was held where multiple leaders in various European countries have double digit negative polling ratings... Some as high as NEGATIVE FIFTY Percent. If the gains from the elite seem more and more to be political corruption rather than merit based which is this case globally right now with a deep resentment for neo liberal governments like Britain, France, Germany and Italy. You're going to need tools like this to combat the population. Despot governments failed against the people it sought to steal from because they did not have the tools that existed today. I think these type of tools will be more frequently available and adopted as an extremely rich minority in the world seeks to hold on to every cent it has through whatever tactic that is available.
With that being said, I enjoyed this book I would give it between 4 and 5 stars. I decided to give it 5 stars since I am in the field and am interested in this kind of stuff. I like the authors writing style, at times I think she was too partisan and showed a democratic bias when I wish she realized that Washington isn't about red vs blue its about power. It's about the donor class vs everyone else.
Okay, let me translate what this nerd shit means... Basically if your face is on the internet and someone has access to this technology, they could simply insert your image into the database and find every image that has ever been put onto the internet and easily find your name, address, job and other intimate details about your life. At the time of this book, the creators only open up this technology to law enforcement but have slowly been releasing it more and more to governments across the world. Let's run through some examples of what this means and slowly increase the Orwellian meter.
Level 1: You're a woman, you're out with your friends at a bar, maybe blowing off steam, celebrating a new job etc. A creepy guy takes a picture of your face, inputs this into the app and boom. This man now could possibly find information about your life based off of data you didn't even know was on the internet. This man could start stalking you. This could easily be the plot for a law and order episode or a serial killer movie.
Level 2:
Police set up cameras at open public spaces and scan everyones face that happens to walk by and run it through the model to see if they can catch criminals. (This something that actually happened in London).
Level 3: You're at an anti-war rally protesting against your government, it gets violent, cops are sent out to beat protestors, although you were protesting peacefully. You decide to leave due to the violence. The next day unbeknownst to you, you have 3 cops show up at your job to arrest you for trumped up charges and now you face prison time.
You may think the examples I provided are hyperbolic but the use cases for abuse vastly outweigh the benefits of this technology. This technology is not even that hard to create on your own, many tech giants flirted with facial recognition but quietly stepped away from it once it gave negative press coverage but for smaller companies who're more desperate or greedy, there are no moral limits. We're entering a time where the despotic sci-fi novels where technology is used by the powerful for ruthless submission to an economic order to the masses is becoming more and more possible. There are countless reasons why this company has its services requested from both democratic and dictatorships across the world. Mass surveillance from the state is now a reality.
This technology is being marketed as a way to catch murders, rapists and serial killers. Who would object to that? That is the thing, we're most ready to give up our freedoms when we're scared or feel threatened like after 9/11 and the following patriot act which allowed the government to engage in mass surveillance. Julian Assange was just released from prison after 12 brutal years for releasing war crimes done by the U.S government, the people that committed those crimes? Never saw a day in a jail cell, this is the reality of power. The way these tools become normalized is by being marketed as a way to protect us when in reality they're a way to control us.
As I speak, Trump is doing dinners with donors where he is literally telling them "donate to me and I'll cut your taxes" to a room full of millionaires and billionaires. Biden is at Hollywood fundraisers raising millions with elites as well. This type of open fund raising used to be hidden and done tactfully but more and more its aggressively out in the open where both parties are engaging in rampant quid pro quos with donors in exchange for favorable policies. This is the underpinning of our current global economy. Capitalists on tv shows preach free markets in public and rail against government intervention while behind close doors ensuring that they receive subsidies, tax breaks and pass laws to distort market competition so no competitor can challenge them. This is why Google bought a company every week for an entire year.
When we talk about economic inequality, people can accept a certain amount of inequality if they feel that the system is merit based but this current system where we have extreme economic stagnation where a few companies in every industry can control the market and raise prices in tandem to price gouge its customers... Where the customers have no other choice but to purchase from this company.... Thats not capitalism that's oligarchy. In the past few weeks, the G7 was held where multiple leaders in various European countries have double digit negative polling ratings... Some as high as NEGATIVE FIFTY Percent. If the gains from the elite seem more and more to be political corruption rather than merit based which is this case globally right now with a deep resentment for neo liberal governments like Britain, France, Germany and Italy. You're going to need tools like this to combat the population. Despot governments failed against the people it sought to steal from because they did not have the tools that existed today. I think these type of tools will be more frequently available and adopted as an extremely rich minority in the world seeks to hold on to every cent it has through whatever tactic that is available.
With that being said, I enjoyed this book I would give it between 4 and 5 stars. I decided to give it 5 stars since I am in the field and am interested in this kind of stuff. I like the authors writing style, at times I think she was too partisan and showed a democratic bias when I wish she realized that Washington isn't about red vs blue its about power. It's about the donor class vs everyone else.
October 10, 2023
Top class journalism following in detail one of the many threats to basic human rights. More a story about deluded ideas of one start up and their real life costs than a systemic book on mechanisms and technology behind it, Your Face Belongs To Us still provides a great cautionary tale.
And as a side effect, you can recommend it to anyone doubting the benefits of EU GDPR.
And as a side effect, you can recommend it to anyone doubting the benefits of EU GDPR.
January 7, 2024
Not bad, but a bit disappointing because I think it’s a great topic and it should’ve been a great book. The subject of facial recognition is super interesting, but I don’t think this went deep enough on what’s interesting about it. I didn’t come away with a real sense of how a neural network works, for example. And while she talks a bit about some of the existing and possible future uses for the technology, ranging from the good (catching dangerous criminals) to the neutral (remembering people’s names at parties) to the awful (targeting dissidents and stalking strangers), I wish the book had sketched out the philosophy of privacy and surveillance to help think through the extent to which we have a right to anonymity. I found myself unexpectedly intrigued by the possible benefits of the technology, but there wasn’t enough here to really make your mind up one way or another about how it should be regulated (or whether it should exist at all).
Instead, the book goes deep on Clearview AI, which isn’t particularly interesting, IMO. The main goss is that it was cofounded by Twitter provocateur/right-wing dillweed Chuck Johnson, but the story isn’t that interesting beyond that. It seems like it’s one facial recognition firm among many – whenever the book turns away from chronicling Clearview to talk about facial recognition used in the real world, it’s generally different companies’ software being employed – and I’m not convinced that Clearview itself is significant enough to justify the attention. Also, for most of the book, the chapters alternate between a history of facial recognition technology and a history of Clearview, making it harder to follow either one. And the writing is patchy, including some annoying sections where she spends paragraphs rehashing the basic facts of the 2016 election or COVID or 9/11 or whatever. 2.5 stars, and I think I’ve talked myself into rounding down.
Instead, the book goes deep on Clearview AI, which isn’t particularly interesting, IMO. The main goss is that it was cofounded by Twitter provocateur/right-wing dillweed Chuck Johnson, but the story isn’t that interesting beyond that. It seems like it’s one facial recognition firm among many – whenever the book turns away from chronicling Clearview to talk about facial recognition used in the real world, it’s generally different companies’ software being employed – and I’m not convinced that Clearview itself is significant enough to justify the attention. Also, for most of the book, the chapters alternate between a history of facial recognition technology and a history of Clearview, making it harder to follow either one. And the writing is patchy, including some annoying sections where she spends paragraphs rehashing the basic facts of the 2016 election or COVID or 9/11 or whatever. 2.5 stars, and I think I’ve talked myself into rounding down.
January 4, 2024
I loved the weirdo beginnings of Clearview, but as it got more boring, I found myself less convinced that police departments being able to identify you at basically all times was (gulp) a big deal? If we don't like it, then we should write it out of their policies, because we actually can do that (the police are us, democracy means they have to bargain with...us). But I'm not totally sure that facial recognition would be that bad if police departments hired better cops, or promoted better cops. As a tool towards finding leads, it could actually save a ton of time, and if they use better facial recognition trained on more faces (especially not just white ones) then it would be accurate more often. If they aren't using Clearview, they might just use some free knockoff app that's worse, and as the book makes clear, a free knockoff facial recognition app is right around the corner: they're not hard to build at all.
The future seems like one where we just need smart regulation of facial recognition, not a ban on it. This is basically how I feel about most things, except for social media, which should be banned, say I on social media.
The future seems like one where we just need smart regulation of facial recognition, not a ban on it. This is basically how I feel about most things, except for social media, which should be banned, say I on social media.
November 9, 2023
Incredibly well written, and with enough technical details to keep me searching on GitHub and elsewhere for the tools mentioned without getting lost in the details. The backgrounds in the players involved was also extremely well done, with enough detail to make them flesh and blood humans without being fawning or glossing over their very human failings.
I will say, the book is INCREDIBLY depressing: this is an inevitable marching progress of dystopian horror, but it was a well written documentation thereof. The author herself even noted at multiple points that she should have been horrified…
I will say, the book is INCREDIBLY depressing: this is an inevitable marching progress of dystopian horror, but it was a well written documentation thereof. The author herself even noted at multiple points that she should have been horrified…
July 8, 2024
A proper journalist (Kashmir Hill) got hold of the story and didn't let go until she told the story of an app with scary accuracy at identifying human faces from photos or even partial photos. The story is told well and paced well, and well worth reading.
The second theme of this book -- the question of what we do about the inevitable encroachment of privacy-destroying applications, isn't as deeply explored. There's a rich and deep set of problems and questions to explore that I wish had received more of the focus of the book, even if it meant cutting some of the details of the story of the one specific application that was the primary focus.
The second theme of this book -- the question of what we do about the inevitable encroachment of privacy-destroying applications, isn't as deeply explored. There's a rich and deep set of problems and questions to explore that I wish had received more of the focus of the book, even if it meant cutting some of the details of the story of the one specific application that was the primary focus.
January 3, 2024
An excellent read, shining a light on the invasion of privacy through face recognition technology and the company Clearview AI. Reads like a thriller at points. I really enjoyed this and would recommend to anyone interested in personal privacy and the encroaching reach of technology into our lives. Watch_dogs was closer than we thought!
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