More than 2,200 agencies and companies have tried Clearview, report finds

Secretive startup Clearview AI distributes an apparently very powerful facial recognition tool that matches anyone against an enormous database of photos—it claims more than 3 billion—scraped from basically every major US platform on the Internet. A leaked list now reveals that more than 2,200 government agencies and private businesses have tried the service. Clearview, which first came to light courtesy of a New York Times report from January, claims to have about 600 customers, all in law enforcement. The company has repeatedly refused to make a client list public, however, and previous reports find that at least some of its marketing claims are significantly exaggerated. Earlier this week, Clearview disclosed that its client list and some information about searches those customers have run was lost in a data breach. Reporters at BuzzFeed ended up with access to a copy and found far more in it than Clearview has ever admitted. A total of 2,228 entities have performed a collective 500,000 searches using the app, BuzzFeed found, with every one of those tracked and logged by Clearview. The majority performed their searches during 30-day free trials and did not subsequently sign up for the service. Clearview does not release its app to the public—although Gizmodo found a copy sitting on a publicly accessible server—and the company has repeatedly asserted that the app is not consumer-facing and instead is intended only for "trained professionals" among "law enforcement agencies and select security professionals." Apparently "security professionals" includes retailers such as Best Buy, Kohl's, Walmart, and Macy's, with Macy's on the actual paying customers list. Other customers with paid contracts include US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Individuals with the FBI, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and "hundreds" of local police departments have access to the app, BuzzFeed found. Nor is Clearview's spread limited to the US market: users affiliated with Interpol and a sovereign wealth fund in the United Arab Emirates both used the app, and accounts were found in several other nations, including Saudi Arabia and Australia. Users affiliated with two dozen educational institutions, including two high schools, also created and used accounts. Here in the US, ICE and the Justice Department have both been particularly busy with Clearview, BuzzFeed found:

Clearview has also been used inside the Department of Justice, where the list of government organizations trialing the company’s facial recognition software includes multiple offices at the US Secret Service (some 5,600 searches); the Drug Enforcement Administration (about 2,000 searches); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (more than 2,100 searches); and the FBI (5,700 searches across at least 20 different field offices). Spokespeople for all these agencies either declined comment or did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for ICE told BuzzFeed that its use of facial recognition technology, including Clearview, is primarily used for child exploitation and cybercrime cases. That said, the agency has been greatly expanding its use of facial recognition across the board while also cracking down broadly on immigrants and immigration in recent years. When questioned by BuzzFeed, Clearview attorney Tor Ekeland replied, "There are numerous inaccuracies in this illegally obtained information. As there is an ongoing Federal investigation, we have no further comment."