Thread by @doctorow

Clearview is the grifty facial recognition startup that created a database by scraping social media and now offers cops secretive deals on its semi-magic, never-peer-reviewed technology.

1/

The company became notorious in January after the NYT did a deep dive into its secretive deals and its weird, Trump-adjascent ex-male-model founder.

(the Times piece was superbly researched but terribly credulous about Clearview's marketing claims)

nytimes.com/2020/01/18/tec…

2/

Yesterday, Clearview warned its customers that it had been hacked and lost its customer database. Today, that customer database was published.

buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…

3/

It seems that the NYT weren't the only ones to take Clearview's marketing claims at face value. Its client list includes @TheJusticeDept, @ICEgov, @Macys, @Walmart, and the @NBA.

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All in all the dump includes more than 2,200 users, including "law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the world."

Included: state AGs, university rent-a-cops, and clients in Saudi Arabia.

5/

"BuzzFeed News authenticated the logs, which list about 2,900 institutions and include details such as the number of log-ins, the number of searches, and the date of the last search."

6/

What does Clearview, a sercurity company, say about this ghastly security breach? ""Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century."

Big shrug energy.

7/

“Government agents should not be running our faces against a shadily assembled database of billions of our photos in secret and with no safeguards against abuse,” ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, said to BuzzFeed News.

It is amazing that this needs to be said.

8/

"More than 50 educational institutions across 24 states named in the log. Among them are two high schools."

They are:

* Central Montco Technical High School in Pennsylvania
* Somerset Berkley Regional High School in Massachusetts

The log also has an entry for Interpol.

eof/