For Whatever Reason, NASA’s Inspector General Has Decided To Buy Itself Some Clearview Access

Get ready for some more unexpected uses of the world’s most controversial facial recognition tech. Clearview has amassed a 10-billion-image database — not through painstaking assembly but by sending its bots out into the open web to download images (and any other personal info it can find). It then sells access to this database to whoever wants it, even if Clearview or the end users are breaking local laws by using it.

Not for nothing do other facial recognition tech firms continue to distance themselves from Clearview. But none of this matters to Clearview — not its pariah status, not the lawsuits brought against it, nor the millions of dollars in fines and fees it has racked up around the world.

Here’s why none of this matters to Clearview: government entities still want its product, even if that means being tainted by association. While we know spies and cops similarly don’t care what “civilians” think about them or their private contractors, we kind of expect some government agencies to show some restraint. But as we’ve seen in the past, “have you no shame?” tends to earn a shrug at best and a “no” at worst.

Clearview is relatively cheap. And no other tech firm can compete with the size of its web-scraped database. So we get really weird stuff, like the IRS, US Postal Service, FDA, and NASA buying access to Clearview’s tech.

The IRS has always been an early adopter of surveillance tech. The origin of the steady drip of Stingray info began with an IRS investigation in the early 2000s. The Postal Service claims its Clearview use pertains to investigations of burgled mail or property damage to postal buildings/equipment. NASA hasn’t bothered to explain why it needs Clearview. But it bought a short-term license in 2021. And, as Joseph Cox reports for 404 Media, it (following taking a two-year break) purchased another Clearview license two months ago.

NASA bought access to Clearview AI, a powerful and controversial surveillance tool that uses billions of images scraped from social media to perform facial recognition, according to U.S. government procurement data reviewed by 404 Media.

[…]

“Clearview AI license,” the procurement record reads. The contract was for $16,000 and was signed in August, it adds.

While it would make sense NASA might employ some sort of facial recognition tech (or other biometric scanner) to ensure secure areas remain secure, what’s needed there is one-to-one matching. Clearview offers 1-to-10 billion matching, which would make zero sense if NASA just needs to ensure solid matches to keep unauthorized personnel out of certain areas.

The twist to this purchase is that it doesn’t belong directly to NASA, so to speak. It belongs to its oversight.

The part of NASA that will use the Clearview AI license is its oversight body, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which has special agents who sometimes carry concealed firearms, perform undercover operations, and develop cases for criminal or civil prosecution.

Now, that makes a little more sense. But if the investigation involves unauthorized access to facilities or equipment, it still seems like a one-to-one solution would do better at generating positives and negatives without increasing the chance of a false match.

If there’s something else going on at NASA that involves non-NASA personnel doing stuff at NASA (or committing crimes on NASA property), then Clearview would make more sense, but only in the sense that it isn’t limited to one-to-one searches. Any other product would do the same job without NASA having to put money in Clearview’s pockets. But at $16,000, it’s safe to assume the NASA OIG couldn’t find a cheaper option.

Even so, it’s still weird. While the OIG does engage in criminal investigations, those target government employees, not members of the general public. If there’s criminal activity involving outsiders, it’s handled by federal law enforcement agencies, not NASA’s oversight body.

Maybe the questions this purchase raises will be answered in a future OIG report. Or maybe that report will only raise more questions. But it seems pretty clear from even the limited information in this report that Clearview licenses are probably far less expensive than anything offered by its competitors. And, for that reason alone, we’re going to see an uptick in explicable purchases by governments all over the nation for as long as Clearview can manage to remain solvent.