“I’ve come to the conclusion that because information constantly increases, there’s never going to be privacy,” Scalzo said. “Laws have to determine what’s legal, but you can’t ban technology. Sure, that might lead to a dystopian future or something, but you can’t ban it.”
… One helped design a program that can automatically collect images of people’s faces from across the internet, such as employment sites, news sites, educational sites, and social networks including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and even Venmo. Representatives of those companies said their policies prohibit such scraping, and Twitter said it explicitly banned use of its data for facial recognition.
…
“With Clearview, you can use photos that aren’t perfect,” Ferrara said. “A person can be wearing a hat or glasses, or it can be a profile shot or partial view of their face.”
…
One reason that Clearview is catching on is that its service is unique. That’s because Facebook and other social media sites prohibit people from scraping users’ images; Clearview is violating the sites’ terms of service.
“A lot of people are doing it,” Ton-That shrugged. “Facebook knows.”
…
“It’s creepy what they’re doing, but there will be many more of these companies. There is no monopoly on math,” said Al Gidari, a privacy professor at Stanford Law School. “Absent a very strong federal privacy law, we’re all screwed.”
