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USPS Reportedly Uses Clearview AI to Spy on Americans
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is reportedly using the facial recognition technology Clearview AI to spy on American citizens.
According to interviews and documents reviewed by Yahoo News, the use of the technology by the USPS Inspection Service is part of a program that tracks citizens social media activity and shares the information with law enforcement agencies.
Under the Service s Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), analysts use Clearview’s collection of images scraped from public websites to identify unknown targets and report on them to the authorities.
According to Yahoo News, iCOP accesses Clearview’s facial recognition database of over 3 billion images from arrest photos uploaded to social media “to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals.”
Analysts are reported to have used intelligence tools to track social media posts
Their work falls under the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP)
That was first revealed in April when it came under scrutiny for tracking Americans social media posts ahead of protests
Now it emerges iCOP is more far reaching than previously thought
The USPIS is said to use Clearview AI to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals
It also uses Zignal Labs - which runs keyword searches on possible threats - and Nfusion - which creates anonymous online accounts - in its tracking
Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office s covert internet operations program Jana Winter
The post office’s law enforcement arm has faced intense congressional scrutiny in recent weeks over its Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), which tracks social media posts of Americans and shares that information with other law enforcement agencies. Yet the program is much broader in scope than previously known and includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools and employ facial recognition software, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Yahoo News.
Among the tools used by the analysts is Clearview AI, a facial recognition software that scrapes images off public websites, a practice that has raised the ire of privacy advocates. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service uses Clearview’s facial recognition database of over 3 billion images “to help identify unknown tar