Schwartz and Ton-That met in 2016 at a book event at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Schwartz, now 61, had amassed an impressive Rolodex working for Giuliani in the 1990s and serving as the editorial page editor ofin the early 2000s. The two soon decided to go into the facial recognition business together: Ton-That would build the app, and Schwartz would use his contacts to drum up commercial interest.
Maybe it could be used to vet babysitters or as an add-on feature for surveillance cameras. What about a tool for security guards in the lobbies of buildings or to help hotels greet guests by name? "We thought of every idea," Ton-That said. In February, the Indiana State Police started experimenting with Clearview. They solved a case within 20 minutes of using the app. Two men had gotten into a fight in a park, and it ended when one shot the other in the stomach. A bystander recorded the crime on a phone, so police had a still of the gunman's face to run through Clearview's app.
The company's main contact for customers was Jessica Medeiros Garrison, who managed Luther Strange's Republican campaign for Alabama attorney general. Brandon Fricke, an NFL agent engaged to Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren, said in a financial disclosure report during a congressional campaign in California that he was a "growth consultant" for the company.
In Gainesville, Florida, Detective Sergeant Nick Ferrara heard about Clearview last year when it advertised on CrimeDex, a group email list for investigators who specialise in financial crimes. He said he had previously relied solely on a state-provided facial recognition tool, FACES, which draws from more than 30 million Florida mug shots and Department of Motor Vehicle photos.
Federal law enforcement, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, are trying it, as are Canadian law enforcement authorities, according to the company and government officials. "We have no data to suggest this tool is accurate," said Clare Garvie, a researcher at Georgetown University's Centre on Privacy and Technology, who has studied the government's use of facial recognition. "The larger the database, the larger the risk of misidentification because of the doppelganger effect. They're talking about a massive database of random people they've found on the internet.
Some law enforcement officials said they didn't realise the photos they uploaded were being sent to and stored on Clearview's servers. Clearview tries to preempt concerns with an FAQ document given to would-be clients that says its customer support employees won't look at the photos that police upload.
The memo appeared to be effective; the Atlanta police and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office soon started using Clearview. But if your profile has already been scraped, it is too late. The company keeps all the images it has scraped even if they are later deleted or taken down, though Ton-That said the company was working on a tool that would let people request that images be removed if they had been taken down from the website of origin.