US Border Patrol Gets Clearview AI's Controversial Face Scanner
CBP signs one-year deal for facial recognition tech built on billions of scraped internet photos.
US Customs and Border Protection just inked a one-year contract with Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition company that built its database by hoovering up billions of photos from the internet.
Border Patrol intelligence units will use the tool for "tactical targeting" and "strategic counter-network analysis." Translation: scanning faces and matching them against Clearview's massive image trove.
Clearview's tech has long been a lightning rod for privacy advocates. The company scraped photos from social media platforms and websites without consent to build what's essentially a searchable database of human faces.
Now that database gets pointed at the border. The deal gives federal agents access to one of the most powerful — and legally contested — face recognition systems ever built.