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<ul class="summary-list"><li>Five Illinois residents are suing Pimeyes.</li><li>The plaintiffs say the state's privacy law by including them in search results.</li></ul>A group of five Illinois residents is suing Pimeyes, which offers a publicly available facial recognition tool, under the state's privacy law. They say the company violated their privacy by collecting and using their photos in face search results.The lawsuit alleges "intentional or reckless" violations of their privacy.They are also asking for Pimeyes to change its practices going forward to comply with Illinois's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The 2008 law makes it illegal for companies to collect or store data, including data about Illinois residents' faces, without their consent.The complaint, filed in the Madison County Third Judicial Circuit Court, claims that when Pimeyes made photos and information of the residents available in search results, allowing unauthorized people to view and use them, the company caused "great and irreparable injury." The complaint doesn't detail specific incidents of harm.Pimeyes acts as a search engine that uses an input picture to locate other pictures of that person online. It can be used as a digital hygiene tool for yourself, or as a weapon for stalkers. People have used Pimeyes to stalk and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.404media.co/the-end-of-privacy-is-a-taylor-swift-fan-tiktok-account-armed-with-facial-recognition-tech/">unmask the identities of strangers</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wired.com/story/kashmir-hill-privacy-surveillance-facial-recognition/">porn actors</a>. They've also used it to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wired.com/story/kashmir-hill-privacy-surveillance-facial-recognition/">surface compromising images</a> of targeted individuals. Cher Scarlett, one critic of the company, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/technology/pimeyes-facial-recognition-search.html">tested Pimeyes on herself</a> and found images from a years-old pornography audition that she soon regretted. In October, the company started <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/23/technology/pimeyes-blocks-searches-childrens-faces.html">blocking images of children</a> in search results, fearing nefarious use cases.Multiple tech companies have been sued under BIPA and been forced to make major settlements and concessions. In 2020, Meta (then still called Facebook) <a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/01/facebook-illinois-class-action-bipa/">paid $650 million to settle</a> a class action BIPA lawsuit that alleged its automatic face-tagging system, powered by facial recognition, violated the law. The facial recognition company Clearview AI, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html">known for making a database</a> from billions of scraped photos from the open web, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/big-win-settlement-ensures-clearview-ai-complies-with-groundbreaking-illinois">settled a BIPA lawsuit in 2022</a>. It escaped paying millions in fines, but had to agree to remove Illinois residents from its database and to restrict businesses and private actors from using its database (though Clearview can sell other products to private customers).The Pimeyes complaint, which seeks $15,000 for each victim harmed, names the company, its Polish cofounders Lucasz Kowalczyk and Denis Tatina, and its current CEO Giorgi Gobronidze as defendants. It also names EMEARobotics and Carribex LTD, companies Gobronidze registered in Dubai and Belize while acquiring Pimeyes in 2021.The case also names "Public Mirror," a company that appears to have been founded by Kowalczyk and Tatina in 2020, shortly before they sold Pimeyes. The company, which advertised itself as the <a target="_blank" href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/public-mirror-implements-algorithm-face-185100059.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAh5hmNe3sVIEewkzylRaZfcDSmwGWjL9yG3vdz7aqLEkWecYw9kj3W4RQhwDFQklalCLuoDDt_6Lbhu-8_d3XVQUE0fc3QWJAc5lHdClQinSLLFknFwIi_VEat5OkbzCIRtdOo_O0mnYhGK_HGtqMCzSJs6S1C3sB6yrMINHXUe">"next generation of media monitoring,"</a> had almost identical features to Pimeyes, but it also allowed users to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbRvAqW9mj8">get email notifications</a> about each new time a face appeared on the internet.Unlike Pimeyes, which allows users to search for anyone's face, Public Mirror asked that users only searched for their own face. To do so, it asked users to verify their identities by uploading three photos of themselves at different angles before searching. Similar systems <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwCNG9KFdXs">have been bypassed</a> using methods such as 3D printing. The company <a target="_blank" href="https://rejestr.io/krs/855054/public-mirror">dissolved and began liquidation</a> in May 2023, according to a Polish business registry, but public documents don't indicate what led to its dissolution.Kowalczyk and Tatina went on to found Expertum LTD, which sells a facial recognition algorithm to clients without a facial recognition database. Several former Public Mirror employees appear to have joined Expertum LTD, according to their LinkedIn profiles.The Pimeyes lawsuit in Illinois had a hearing on Wednesday. The lead attorney on the case, Brandon Wise, told Business Insider that Pimeyes has not been officially served yet. The Wednesday hearing focused on updates of the attempts to serve papers to the Pimeyes-related business entities around the world, which has to be done in that country and in its native language.Kowalczyk and Tatina did not respond for comment. Reached by email, Gobronidze said Business Insider's request for comment was the first time he had heard of the lawsuit."Unfortunately I have absolutely no information related to the lawsuit, I have read it in your email for the first time and honestly I am [a] bit surprised," Gobronidze said in an email to Business Insider. "I will hesitate to give any official comment, till we receive any official information related to the lawsuit."The complaint argues that under BIPA, Pimeyes did not obtain permission from Illinois residents before collecting and storing their information.Pimeyes notes on its website that its database doesn't contain photos, but "faceprints" of photos. "Faceprints," sometimes called "facial geometry," refers to the data derived from a face photo, such as the distances between different parts of the face. Facial recognition systems identify people by making matches between those mathematical measurements.However, under BIPA, both photos of a person's face and facial geometry data from a picture are protected as biometric information.Wise told Business Insider that he believes Pimeyes exemplifies "a pretty clear violation" of BIPA. He added that there's an additional risk because Pimeyes, whose headquarters is in the country Georgia, is not based in the US."Especially when it's a foreign company, we don't know who has access to this data, what's going on, how it's being used," he said.

Facial recognition tool Pimeyes — which has been used to unmask pornstars and stalk people — is sued by 5 Illinois residents for 'irreparable injury'

<ul><li><keyword id="14058613" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pimeyes" source="Orion">PimEyes</keyword> offers paid and free service that finds photos of a person from across the internet.</li><li>The company uses AI and reverse image search technology.</li><li>The real founder of PimEyes chooses to remain anonymous.</li></ul>A facial recognition tool, PimEyes is making easy to find pictures of people across the internet. The company has incorporated facial recognition technology into a search engine along with reverse image search technology to analyse and find similar images. The PimEyes was designed back in 2017 and its new owner is Giorgi Gobronidze as the original founder wished to remain anonymous. Gobronidze is a 34-year-old academic whose interest lies in advanced technology. He tends to believe that PimEyes can be a promising tool that will help people to keep tabs on their online reputation. It takes a few seconds for PimEyes to get results. According to<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/technology/pimeyes-facial-recognition-search.html"> New York Times</a>, they used PimEyes on a dozen of journalists with their consent and it found photos of every journalist even that had never seen. The results of journalists wearing sunglasses and masks also came 100% correct. PimEyes also found the photo of a girl who was crying after being proposed to. Photographer used her photo to advertise his business on Yelp. Unlike <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/controversial-facial-recognition-company-clearview-ai-banned-from-selling-to-private-us-businesses/articleshow/91453094.cms">Clearview AI</a>, PimEyes does not include images from social media instead it uses news, articles, review sites, blogs and pornography sites. How to find all your photos on the internet using PimEyes? According to the company, PimEyes is a multi-purpose tool which uses the latest technology, machine learning, reverse image search and artificial intelligence to find pictures on the internet. In order to use it, open the <a href="https://pimeyes.com/en">PimEyes website</a> and you will see a search section with an ‘Upload a photo’ option. Click on the camera icon to upload an image, once uploaded click on search. The search process will take a few seconds as it uses blogs, news, company websites, and much more before showing results. Note that the service is not completely free. In order to get a deeper insight into the search, you need to subscribe it by choosing between one month and annual subscription plans starting from $29.99. As a subscriber, you can narrow down the search by using filters. Additional, you will get access to sources of images and share the results by using URLs. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/united-states-looking-at-nuclear-powered-spacecraft-in-space-by-2027/articleshow/91882813.cms">After banning destructive satellite tests, US plans to use nuclear power systems in space</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/after-putting-the-44-billion-twitter-deal-on-hold-musk-opens-a-motivational-class-on-twitter/articleshow/91885669.cms">After putting the $44 billion Twitter deal on hold, Musk opens a motivational class on Twitter</a>

This shockingly accurate face search tool can find all your photos on the internet in seconds for free

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Harvard students rigged their <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ray-bans-have-new-features-smart-glasses-2024-9">Meta Ray-Bans</a> to do facial recognition, 404 Media reports.</li><li>Meta's smart glasses can't do this by default, but in 2021, executives considered the idea.</li></ul>The idea of smart glasses that can dox people in real time — long a futuristic concept — is getting closer to reality.404 Media reported on two Harvard students who hacked <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meta">Meta</a> Ray-Ban glasses to do just this. AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio created software that would scan a video stream from the smart glasses for faces and then identify them using the facial recognition tool <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facial-recognition-company-pimeyes-sued-under-illinois-privacy-law-2023-12">Pimeyes</a>. Upon finding a face match, the software would track down other personal information like addresses and jobs. In a demo video, the students showed examples of finding a stranger on the subway and identifying where that person worked.It's important to note that the facial recognition wasn't executed on the glasses themselves. Meta Ray-bans can stream video to your Instagram account or to a device; the students fed that video into the software. All the rest — the facial recognition and retrieval of identifying details — was completed by a program on a laptop that worked separately from anything Meta had done.Nguyen told Business Insider that the experiment wasn't meant to show that <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-gen-z-friends-review-photos-2023-11">popular Meta Ray-Bans</a> are a problem."We do not want this to be a criticism of their product at all, and we just had them on hand —this could have been done on a phone camera," he said. "This is mainly a demonstration of what's possible today."Another goal of the experiment, he said, was to help spread awareness on how to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iWCqmaOUKhKjcKSktIwC3NNANoFP7vPsRvcbOIup_BA/edit">protect</a> yourself digitally against facial recognition software.This isn't the first time the two students have played around with a dangerous homemade technology: they also made a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://x.com/CaineArdayfio/status/1841135434619109862">flamethrower that singed off Ardayfio's leg hair</a>.<h2 id="12eca401-6df2-4cc1-acf2-d7ebbcbe7e53">Meta's glasses can't recognize faces by default</h2>A spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider, "To be clear, Ray-Ban Meta glasses do not have facial recognition technology. From what we can see, these students are simply using publicly available facial recognition software on a computer that would work with photos taken on any camera, phone, or recording device."Glasses are more discrete than most recording devices, however, and hands-free. (Meta Ray-Bans feature a small light that glows while recording. The light was easy to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-smart-glasses-ray-ban-light-recording-privacy-2021-9">cover with tape in the first model</a>, but the newer version prevents people from disabling it.)404 Media pointed out that other tech companies like Google have experimented with the idea of putting facial recognition in smart glasses, and then tossed the idea because it was too dangerous.Business Insider's Peter Kafka tested out <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/orion-meta-ar-smart-glasses-review-2024-9">Meta's new Orion smart glasses</a> prototype and found that it could do some really mind-blowing things that showed immense promise for the future of AR/VR wearables. But one thing that Orion does not do? Facial recognition.It's important to note, however, that Meta executives have considered adding the tech to its smart glasses.<h2 id="9a879719-f0c1-4e65-b7b2-97a98973dafa">Meta considered adding facial recognition</h2>In early 2021, BuzzFeed News <a target="_blank" href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-considers-facial-recognition-smart-glasses">reported</a> that Andrew Bosworth, now Meta's CTO and head of their Reality Labs department, had said at a companywide meeting that Meta was weighing whether it had the legal capacity to offer the software in its smart glasses."Face recognition ... might be the thorniest issue, where the benefits are so clear, and the risks are so clear, and we don't know where to balance those things," Bosworth said in response to an employee question, according to BuzzFeed. He said one benefit could help you, or anyone with face blindness, remember someone's name at a dinner party.At the time, Bosworth followed up with a (now deleted) tweet saying, "Face recognition is a hugely controversial topic and for good reason and I was speaking about was how we are going to have to have a very public discussion about the pros and cons." Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses debuted a few months later in the fall of 2021.It's now been three years since Meta executives weighed the possibilities of facial recognition in smart glasses — and no such feature has yet been added. And it isn't because it's too much of a technical challenge (hey, a couple of college kids can do it!).It would appear that Meta has decided that either consumers find it too creepy or that doing it is too legally thorny. Illinois, Texas, and the European Union have laws against certain uses of facial recognition technology.Legal issues aside, consumer attitudes change. When the Meta Ray-Bans first launched, many people were freaked out by the idea of camera glasses. But over the last few years, the glasses have become a hit product. Meta has sold more than 700,000 pairs since last October, according to the market intelligence firm IDC. It's possible that at some point in the future, facial recognition in glasses will seem like a welcome convenience rather than a privacy nightmare.

Harvard students made Meta Ray-Bans do facial recognition. Meta execs once thought this was a good idea.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A <keyword id="11894211" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="police" source="Orion">police</keyword> officer that leads workshops across the US has advised cops use <keyword id="12320770" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="facial-recognition" source="Orion">facial recognition</keyword> at traffic stops.</li><li>Thousands of police have taken this officer's course on using social media or other tools to identify people.</li></ul>An instructor for the influential police workshop company Street Cop Training has advised <keyword id="11899820" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="law" source="Orion">law</keyword> enforcement to use facial recognition at traffic stops in order to find out a person's identity and if they have a warrant out for their arrest, even if it's unclear whether that person committed a crime.The recommendation, made during a podcast intended for police and hosted by members of the training organization, shows how controversial uses of facial recognition and social media can make their ways into conventional forms of <keyword id="11911207" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="policing" source="Orion">policing</keyword>, and the often murky legal applications of their use. It also calls into question how new technology may be used to sidestep otherwise barred policing methods. For example, the landmark 1968 <keyword id="11893011" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="supreme-court" source="Orion">Supreme Court</keyword> case Terry v. Ohio ruled that police must have "reasonable suspicion" that a person might have committed a crime before they can compel that person to identify themselves. Due to that ruling, it may not be lawful for to police use facial recognition software to compel identity without having reasonable suspicion first.The instructor, Nick Jerman, has taught thousands of police officers around the country how to do social media investigations through Street Cop Training. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/police-trained-create-fake-social-media-accounts-using-ai-images-2022-1">Insider previously reported</a> that he has advised police to make fake social-media accounts for work using AI-generated profile images, violating some rules on platforms like Facebook. Jerman <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/police-trained-create-fake-social-media-accounts-using-ai-images-2022-1">has also encouraged</a> using these social-media investigative methods to gather information about "hot" women in order to lie to and manipulate them.Jerman is a detective for Maryland's Montgomery County, where <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/police-trained-create-fake-social-media-accounts-using-ai-images-2022-1">he is facing an internal investigation</a> after Insider asked the county police department to comment on rape jokes Jerman made on his personal Twitter account and Trayvon Martin jokes he made on his personal Tumblr account.In a <a href="https://streetcoptraining.com/captivate-podcast/social-media-and-online-tactics-feat-nick-jerman/">July 2021 episode</a> of the Street Cop Podcast with Dennis Benigno, the company's founder, Jerman encouraged using facial recognition software to determine the identity of the person pulled over. The Street Cop Podcast is advertised as "The training that cops deserve" and, along with Street Cop Training's other programs, is marketed to active-duty police."Let's say you're on a <keyword id="12320469" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="traffic-stop" source="Orion">traffic stop</keyword> and we have someone in the car that we suspect may be wanted," Benigno asked during the episode. "What do we do in that situation?""Well there's a couple of paid programs you can use where you can take their picture, and it'll put it in," Jerman said, referring to facial recognition tools, before recommending "another one called PimEyes you can use." PimEyes is a free, public-facing facial-recognition search engine.Those recommendations would not be legal if the police don't have reasonable suspicion that the person pulled over has committed a crime, according to Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and co-director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy &amp; Technology. In Benigno and Jerman's example, it's unclear if this is the case or not. Benigno and Jerman did not respond to Insider's requests for comment.Jerman teaches police departments around the country about how they can use social media and facial recognition technology.Insider obtained a document called "<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21195743-street_cop_training_-_social_media_and_osint_bookmar_1srosjhetcpr8dzq5mjm8wru7lctysfjq1aoxbge_u14docx?responsive=1&amp;title=1">Street Cop Training Social Media and OSINT Bookmarks</a>" through a public-records request filed with the Maryland State Police. The document, which lists resources from Jerman's social-media investigation course, includes facial recognition tools. <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21195743-street_cop_training_-_social_media_and_osint_bookmar_1srosjhetcpr8dzq5mjm8wru7lctysfjq1aoxbge_u14docx?responsive=1&amp;title=1">The document</a> lists PimEyes, which Jerman mentioned on the podcast. It also lists Clearview AI, a facial recognition tool that tries to match faces with billions of images the company scraped from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Police have to pay to use Clearview AI long-term, though the company does offer <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facial-recognition-local-police-clearview-ai-table">30-day free trials</a>.<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21195743-street_cop_training_-_social_media_and_osint_bookmar_1srosjhetcpr8dzq5mjm8wru7lctysfjq1aoxbge_u14docx?responsive=1&amp;title=1">It also lists</a> Thorn Spotlight, a facial-recognition tool for finding victims of child sex trafficking, and FacePlusPlus, another facial recognition tool.Jerman and Benigno also discussed another scenario on the July 2021 podcast: An officer pulls someone over on a traffic stop, but the officer can't compel the person to show their identification. Based on the Terry v. Ohio ruling, this probably means the officers don't have reasonable suspicion."How about, you're in a situation where you can't compel ID and before you even ask you're like there's something not right with this guy and he's gonna lie," Benigno said.Jerman suggested getting the person's phone number, either by asking the person, or by accusing the person of stealing a phone in the car and asking if they can call the phone in order to exonerate them. "[Say] 'I see that phone in the car, we've had a lot of thefts of phones,' say 'Is that really your phone?' and then you can call it to see if that's the real phone number," Jerman said. "If you can get the phone number from your target, the world is your oyster."Then, Jerman said police should see if there are any social media accounts associated with the phone number. He said they should also use services like Truecaller, which shows the names associated with a phone number by finding how it's labeled in other people's contact lists. (Truecaller gets this information by asking users to share the contacts in their phone.)"A person who gives up their phone number makes a choice," Nojeim, the Center for Democracy and Technology lawyer, told Insider. "I think they should be informed of whether they are obliged to give up their phone number and what the police intend to do with it."Got a tip? Contact this reporter at <a href="mailto:chaskins@insider.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">chaskins@insider.com</a> or <a href="mailto:caroline.haskins@protonmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">caroline.haskins@protonmail.com</a>, or via secure messaging app Signal at +1 (785) 813-1084. Reach out using a non-work device.

A popular workshop for police encouraged cops to use face scans to ID people they pull over at traffic stops

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="11892960" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="facebook" source="Orion">Facebook</keyword>'s decision to stop using facial recognition <keyword id="6358815" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="tech" source="Orion">tech</keyword> on its flagship platform reveals how problematic this tech really is.</li><li><keyword id="12343176" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="facial-recognition-technology" source="Orion">Facial recognition technology</keyword> is a threat to our core constitutional rights.</li><li>We need strong, enforceable <keyword id="6355135" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="privacy" source="Orion">privacy</keyword> laws that prohibit companies from using <keyword id="12505729" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="biometric" source="Orion">biometric</keyword> identification tech without our knowledge and consent.</li><li>Kate Ruane is a senior legislative counsel with the ACLU.</li></ul>Last week, Facebook - or Meta, or whatever we're supposed to call it now - <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/technology/facebook-facial-recognition.html">announced</a> that the company will cease using facial recognition technology (FRT) on Facebook, its flagship platform, and that it will delete all of its existing face scan data. The company cited privacy and societal concerns as its reason for ending some of its current use of the technology. The decision is estimated to affect about 1 billion people.But there's a catch.Facebook is still keeping its facial recognition system. It has not promised to not use it again. It has reserved the right to deploy facial recognition on future products. And it <a href="https://gizmodo.com/don-t-go-cheering-facebook-for-killing-its-face-recogni-1847983584">has not said</a> what this means for its many other properties, including Instagram.In fact, it's abundantly clear that Facebook is planning to find new ways to use facial recognition technology, which raises even larger concerns. For instance, Facebook and RayBan recently teamed up to create "Stories" <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-smart-glasses-surveillance-steal-your-data-2021-9">sunglasses</a>, a new line of eyewear that can take photos, record videos, answer phone calls, and play music and podcasts. The glasses could eventually be equipped to use FRT in real time in the real world without the knowledge or consent of the people out in public that wearers of Stories might look at. Facebook is also exploring technology that would help you <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/22/tech/facebook-ai-memory-research/index.html">"remember everything"</a> by recording your every move and allowing you to play it back to yourself. The ways in which FRT could be used are endless and endlessly terrifying for those of us who value our personal privacy and autonomy. <h2>Facial recognition tech is racist and problematic</h2>For years now, we at the ACLU have said facial recognition technology is a threat to our core constitutional rights and has a disturbing record of racial bias and inaccuracy that endangers people of color and other marginalized groups. False matches can have real, harmful consequences. For example, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/15/22578801/black-teen-skating-rink-inaccurate-facial-recognition">a skating rink</a> in Michigan kicked out a 14-year old Black girl because its FRT system mismatched her with a different person who had been disruptive in the rink. Correct matches can have devastating impacts too. Emerging FRT apps <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/04/tech/pimeyes-facial-recognition/index.html">like PimEyes</a> allow users to search for the identity of literally any person they meet if they are able to snap a picture of them. This feature could easily be used by domestic abusers to track survivors to new addresses or learn names that survivors may have changed to evade abuse. Facebook's decision reveals how problematic face recognition technology really is. That is why, while we should celebrate the purging of so many faceprints from the world, Facebook's news should not distract us from the goal. We need strong, enforceable privacy rules that prohibit companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, or Clearview AI from using FRT and other biometric identification technologies - such as voice recognition - on us without our knowledge and affirmative consent. And we need <keyword id="11893699" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="congress" source="Orion">Congress</keyword> and our state governments to quickly enact those rules. Study after study reveals the flaws of FRT. In 2018, an MIT research team led by doctoral candidate Joy Buolamwini <a href="http://gendershades.org/">found</a> alarming racial and gender disparities in commercial face classification systems, including Amazon's Rekognition software. While the systems were relatively accurate when analyzing the faces of white men, they failed up to one in three times when classifying the faces of Black women. Subsequent studies confirmed these findings. A study by <a href="https://privacysos.org/blog/five-fast-facts-from-the-federal-study-of-demographic-bias-in-facial-recognition/">the National Institute of Standards and Technology</a> also found that FRT performs more poorly on people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. Not even members of Congress are safe - when the ACLU ran a test on Rekognition, it falsely matched 28 members of Congress with a mug-shot database, with false matches disproportionately affecting lawmakers of color. <h2>We need legal protections now</h2>The good news is that states have already begun to create common sense solutions to these problems. And they're working. In Illinois, under the <a href="https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=3004&amp;ChapterID=57D=57">Biometric Information Privacy Act</a>, companies cannot collect or use biometric identifiers, including faceprints, without the affirmative written consent of those to whom the identifier pertains. A record <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/01/facebook-illinois-class-action-bipa/">$650 million settlement</a> against Facebook for violating that law surely contributed to its decision to shut down its current facial recognition system. There are protections in <a href="https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/business-and-commerce-code/bus-com-sect-503-001.html">Texas</a> and <a href="https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=19.375.020">Washington</a>, as well, but those can only be enforced by the state attorney general, not by individuals directly harmed by violations of the law. That's why only Illinois' law protecting biometric privacy has been robustly enforced, including by the ACLU in our <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/were-taking-clearview-ai-to-court-to-end-its-privacy-destroying-face-surveillance-activities">suit against Clearview AI</a>. In 2021, 24 other states have introduced similar legislation, but none were enacted, and few would have given residents the ability to take companies to court, a provision critical to ensuring meaningful enforcement. Active legislation in <a href="https://custom.statenet.com/public/resources.cgi?id=ID:bill:MA2021000S220&amp;ciq=ncsl&amp;client_md=c27c67f579713a267ca50f36a59717ea&amp;mode=current_textcurrent_text">Massachusetts</a>, <a href="https://custom.statenet.com/public/resources.cgi?id=ID:bill:WA2021000H1433&amp;ciq=ncsl&amp;client_md=503a16ab9d268099df732b37f994237c&amp;mode=current_textcurrent_text">Washington</a>, <a href="https://custom.statenet.com/public/resources.cgi?id=ID:bill:NY2021000A27&amp;ciq=ncsl&amp;client_md=7ba6a1dccdeabf7b47c070121343f61b&amp;mode=current_textcurrent_text">New York</a> and elsewhere would provide strong protections, but haven't moved forward. Meanwhile in Congress, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon previously introduced the <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s4400/text">National Biometric Information Privacy Act</a>, but the bill never advanced and has not been reintroduced.Facebook's decision is further proof that the harms of FRT are clear and growing. We know the right solution to the problem: preventing companies from collecting and using our biometric identifiers without our consent. We also need to make sure people are able to take companies that violate these basic protections to court. It is past time for a wave of legislation protecting our biometric privacy to sweep this country. And if Facebook is serious about recognizing those harms, it must join with the growing coalition of privacy, racial justice, and consumer protection organizations in pushing lawmakers to impose strong, enforceable protections.

Facebook's deceptive announcement about an end to their use of facial recognition technology is a reminder that lawmakers need to crack down on invasive tech

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Facial recognition tool Pimeyes — which has been used to unmask pornstars and stalk people — is sued by 5 Illinois residents for 'irreparable injury'

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This shockingly accurate face search tool can find all your photos on the internet in seconds for free

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Facebook's deceptive announcement about an end to their use of facial recognition technology is a reminder that lawmakers need to crack down on invasive tech

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