A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.

H/T: New York Times

The House Oversight Committee held a facial recognition hearing on Wednesday, as lawmakers grapple with the use of facial recognition in public spaces by both private companies and government agencies. During the hearing, Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, said “We're going to have to really grapple with what are the parameters of protecting privacy and controlling the use of this technology.”

Hopefully, not too many more hearings will be needed before lawmakers decide on some form of regulation that will protect everyday American's right to privacy from frightening technologies that are already in use by law enforcement agencies.

A startup company took billions of photos from Facebook and other websites to create a facial-recognition database, and hundreds of law-enforcement agencies are using it https://t.co/7DUTWKTLhp — DeepClips (@DeepClips) January 19, 2020

#CyberpunkisNow Clearview AI's app allows you to take/upload a person's picture & find their online images + links to sites where the images appear via a database of 3 billion + scraped images.



AR glasses compatible.



Companies & LE use it.



TY @InfoSecZhttps://t.co/SyQonFLolU pic.twitter.com/zIKcx6qR8l — ΜΔDΞRΔS (@hackermaderas) January 19, 2020

There are so many jaw-dropping moments in this @kashhill feature on law enforcement’s use of face recognition tech from the secretive company Clearview AI (backed by Peter Thiel!)



And the reporting goes so deep. I have reporter’s envy. Everyone go read it https://t.co/iUde7K4ogz pic.twitter.com/sw6gpi8ii7 — Davey Alba (@daveyalba) January 18, 2020