LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Just a thought on facial recognition technology. What I'm about to tell you is really important – kinda freaky – and you need to know about it.
"There's a secretive company that might end privacy as we know it."
Those aren't my words, it's the headline of a New York Times article. The author is talking about a company called Clearview AI. The guy behind it hasn't done much besides making an app that lets you put the president's hair on other people's faces -- until he made this.
Clearview AI works like Google, but someone can search for you with a picture of your face. The site pulls up public pictures of you and links to where they came from.
That might not sound alarming at first, but think about the implications.
Let's say I'm a bad guy. I see you at a restaurant, think you look interesting and I secretly take a picture of you. If I had access to this system, in minutes, I could have links that tell me where you went to school, who you're friends with and maybe even the address of where you live.
Don't take it from me, experts are already really worried about this. Google, YouTube and Twitter have all sent Cease and Desist Letters to the company asking them to stop scraping photos. A quick search shows so many books and studies warning about, "effects that may harm the very populations it's meant to protect," or "hidden dangers that most aren't aware of."
Another study notes, "in China it is even used to control the whole population" by trying "to anticipate crimes in order to avoid them or to catch the perpetrators red-handed."
Anticipating crimes? Sound like something out of a movie! Well, that's because it is a movie called Minority Report starring Tom Cruise...which is actually pretty good, but maybe not in real life.
Going back to the words from the article – this company "made a tool that could end your ability to walk down the street anonymously, and provided it to hundreds of law enforcement agencies, ranging from local cops in Florida to the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security."
The company claims Indiana State Police were the first paying customers. Our local police said they don't know about this and when we asked about the guy mentioned in the article, they said he works for a special unit. Regardless of who's using this technology, it's only in the hands of law enforcement right now.
But what if that changes?
There comes a time where we have to decide between protection and privacy. We have to decide if catching bad guys is worth the possibility of a bad guy catching us with just one photo.
It's not my job to tell you how to feel about this, just to give you a picture of what the future might look like if this technology goes into the wrong hands. Look at it through that lens, and you might not like what you see.
Just a thought.
Just a Thought expresses the views and opinions of WHAS11 anchor Daniel Sechtin. Contact him at dsechtin@whas11.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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