Facial Recognition Database Firm Clearview Reports Data Breach

Clearview, the secretive tech startup that has compiled a reported 3 billion facial images into a massive face recognition database that it shares with law enforcement, said on Wednesday that it had suffered a massive data breach. While there is no indication that the actual database of facial images, mainly taken from social media and other online sources, was infiltrated, in a memo sent to customers the company admitted that an “intruder” stole its entire list of clients, as well as information about how many face-recognition searches each client had conducted, and the number of accounts created by the clients, according to a report by The Daily Beast. Facial recognition is already being used as a tool to track sex workers and porn performers, and well as porn customers. In Australia, the government is reportedly planning to use a massive facial recognition database to implement a possible “age verification” system to restrict access to online porn sites, as AVN.com has reported.  A social media user in Germany has claimed to have used facial recognition to “identify” women who have appeared in porn videos, in order to “help others check whether their girlfriends ever acted in those films.” Facial recognition also makes it “easy for law enforcement to find a digital trail of crimes committed online,” according to the sex worker advertising site Slixa, “if a sex worker got caught up in the legal system.” In other words, any type of data breach by a massive face recognition database could have potentially disastrous human costs for workers, consumers, and producers in the adult industry. But even though none of the facial data held by Clearview was breached, at least according to the Daily Beast report, the leak has called into question the security of the company used by dozens of law enforcement agencies.  Photo By Abyssus / Wikimedia Commons