Rogue New York City Police Department officers are using a controversial facial recognition app on their cell phones to help in their investigations, even after the department passed on the technology last year because of privacy concerns.
The NYPD tried Clearview AI in April and decided against using the app, due to possible security risks and potential for abuse, sources said.
Despite the decision against the app’s use, a company spokesperson confirmed to the New York Post that the last photo search by an NYPD cop was registered at 10:56 a.m. Thursday.
Rogue New York City Police Department officers are reportedly using a controversial facial recognition app on their cell phones to help in their investigations, even after the department passed on the technology last year because of concerns.
The NYPD tried a complimentary, 90-day version of Clearview AI in April and decided against using the app, due to possible security risks and potential for abuse, sources said. Pictured, an image from the app-maker’s website
‘Numerous investigators from around the department are using the app to this day,’ with about 36 active accounts using the program for months and logging thousands of searches, a Clearview spokesperson told the Post.
An NYPD spokesperson told DailyMail.com that ‘there is no institutional relationship between the NYPD and Clearview, when asked if officers had been using the app.
The department did not elaborate on whether officers using Clearview face disciplinary action.
Clearview AI scrapes the internet for images from social media and other sources to provide potentially millions of pictures that can aid in identifying the suspects of crime.
More than 600 police departments are reportedly using the facial recognition app which is capable of comparing uploaded photos with three billion images in its database culled from social media and other websites.
Clearview AI allows users to take a photo of a person and upload it to the app, which then matches it up to to publicly-available photos of that person, displaying those images along with links to where they appeared online.
The publicly-available photos of people are said to be in a database that Clearview pulled together from outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but also Venmo, YouTube, employment and educational websites and supposedly millions of other online sites.
But the NYPD wasn’t taking any chances using the technology after its trial run, sources told the New York Post.
Among concerns are app creator Hoan Ton-That’s ties to viddyho.com, a site that was caught up in a 2009 phishing scam, sources said.
NYPD officials also worried about the app because Clearview can’t say who had access to the images once cops load them into the department’s system, the Post reports.
‘They’re playing with fire,’ an insider told the news outlet.
Traditionally, law enforcement agencies use facial recognition software that primarily searches government images like mugshots and driver’s license pictures.
However, the NYPD’s own facial recognition unit was wary about the technology.
‘While the NYPD looked at it, the facial indication section never used it for investigations,’ a police source told the Post.
A law enforcement email is required to sign up for the app. But the rogue NYPD officers are loading it onto their personal mobile devices because they are restricted from doing so on department-issued phones.
To convince law enforcement of the app’s effectiveness against competitors, Clearview has touted the app’s role in catching an alleged terrorist who planted rice cookers made to look like bombs in New York’s subways in August.
The man was arrested after an investigation, but the NYPD tells DailyMail, that the claim was not accurate.
‘The NYPD did not use Clearview technology to identify the suspect in the August 16th rice cooker incident,’ a spokesperson told DailyMaily.com.
‘The NYPD identified the suspect using the Department’s facial recognition practice where a still image from a surveillance video was compared to a pool of lawfully possessed arrest photos,’ the spokesperson explained.
‘A facial recognition match is merely a lead— no one has ever been arrested solely on the basis of a computer match, no matter how compelling.’
Clearview did not immediately respond when DailyMail.com reached out.