Clearview AI, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to identify people in photos, is raising alarm among lawmakers who say the technology could end public anonymity if the federal government doesn't ditch it.

Democratic lawmakers are urging the federal government to stop using Clearview AI, a notorious surveillance firm, arguing that its tools "pose a serious threat to the public's civil liberties and privacy rights." The agencies named in the letters were all identified in a Government Accountability Office report released last year as having used Clearview AI tools in domestic law enforcement activities.
The lawmakers claimed Clearview AI’s tech—which reportedly relies on a database of more than 4 billion faces, many of which are scraped from the open internet—could effectively eliminate the notion of public anonymity if left unchecked. In their letter to the DHS, the lawmakers co-signed by four progressive politicians, Sens. Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley, claimed that the tech
The lawmakers wrote that the company's facial recognition capabilities can fundamentally dismantle Americans' expectation of privacy.
Clearview AI’s partnerships with government agencies are of particular concern, the authors argued, because a public that believes they are being surveilled by their government may be less likely to engage in civic discourse or other activities protected by the First Amendment. The lawmakers went on to express concerns over facial recognition’s “unique threats to marginalized communities,” citing previous research showing how the technology performs worse when trying to identify people with darker complexions.
In an emailed statement to Gizmodo, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That said a National Institute of Standards and Technology test of the company’s tech “shows no detectable racial bias.” He also said he wasn’t aware of any instance where Clearview AI’s technology has resulted in a wrongful arrest. In his statement, Ton-That pointed to data from the Innocence Project, which claims 70% of wrongful convictions result from eyewitness lineups, a figure he used to argue in favor of Clearview’s comparatively higher accuracy rates.
Ton-That claimed that Clearview AI can help create a world without bias policing, which is important to him as a person of mixed race.
Clearview's pervasive technology has raised privacy and civil liberties concerns for advocates. The figures on their own do not account for the sheer scope and scale of Clearview's technology, nor do they address any of the broader privacy or civil liberties concerns.
We are proud of our record of achievement in helping law enforcement agencies in the United States solve heinous crimes, such as crimes against children and seniors, financial fraud and human trafficking,” Hoan Ton-That added.
In their letters, the lawmakers partially addressed these points, arguing that the potential threats posed by facial recognition extend beyond accuracy claims.
Communities of color are more likely to be targeted by law enforcement, and the use of biometric surveillance tools will only increase the infringement of their privacy. Studies have shown that law enforcement professionals are more likely to use facial recognition technology on Black and Brown individuals than they are on white individuals.
This isn’t the first time these lawmakers have taken on facial recognition. Back in 2020, the same Democrats authored the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which sought to end federal use of real-time facial recognition technology. That bill would have also limited the state’s access to federal grants if they chose to continue using facial recognition. At the time, the legislation gained the endorsement of a litany of civil liberty and privacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Color of Change, MediaJustice, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Georgetown University Law Center’s Center on Privacy & Technology, among others.
A number of U.S. cities and states, including San Francisco, Boston, and Minneapolis, have been taking steps to restrict public facial recognition use in recent years, though a federal data privacy law has yet to be enacted.
You can read the letters in full here: You can read the letters here: You can read the letters here: You can read the letters here: