Public records requests associated with the expose of Cleaview AI, a shady facial recognition startup that scraped billions of images from social media and then sold access to that database to at least 2,200 customers, reveal that the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department was a prolific Clearview AI user.
Buzzfeed had previously reported the SMC Sheriff had conducted “about 2,000” searches. The email correspondence between Clearview staff and county staff show the actual number to be “2700+”.
Jimmy Chan, deputy sheriff in San Mateo County asks for “clarification” on the data breach reported by Clearview AI in order to “answer inevitable questions that will come from our command staff and to help formulate a response to any media/public relations query that will be forthcoming”.
The email correspondence dates from February 25-27, 2020 and can be viewed here.
San Mateo County’s written policy on facial recognition use, titled policy #346, was adopted with a revision to specify that “Sheriff’s office personnel shall only have access to Facial Recognition software on approved Sheriff’s Office computers or secured networks, which require a secure log-in and authenticated password. Access to the software shall require security identification, password authentication and incident documentation” on January 1, 2020. This date is 7 weeks prior to the email confirming 2,700+ facial recognition searches.
A publicly available copy of the entire policy manual of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department as of January 1, 2019 confirms that Policy #346 nor any other policy addressing the use of facial recognition was in effect as of a year earlier.
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