Technology is wonderful, I absolutely love it but one area that requires heavy regulation is the use of facial recognition software and Canadian privacy regulators have come to a damning conclusion against the police & private companies.

A joint investigation by Canadian privacy regulators has concluded that Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition technology — a tool used by dozens of police services and private companies across the country — represented “the mass identification and surveillance of individuals by a private entity.”

“What Clearview does is mass surveillance and it is illegal,” said Daniel Therrien, Canada’s privacy commissioner.

“It is an affront to individuals’ privacy rights and inflicts broad-based harm on all members of society who find themselves continually in a police lineup. This is completely unacceptable.”

Source: The Star

Sigh it’s a bit late and pandora’s box has been opened, I’m sure Clearview has competitors that do pretty much the same thing and this definitely needs a close watch by regulators. Also shame on the police forces for using such technology, they should obtain a warrant to go through pictures of people and we’re all suppose to be given the presumption of innocence.

LOL I get it may be odd of me to have this stance since I post so much information online already but that’s by my choice, I do think it’s wrong for a company to scrape the internet and put everything together, it probably won’t be used for too nefarious purposes in Canada but in countries that are less free well it gets scary very quickly.