Your Face Belongs to Us - by Kashmir Hill (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In this riveting feat of reporting, Kashmir Hill illuminates the improbable rise of Clearview AI and how Hoan Ton-That, a computer engineer and Richard Schwartz, a Giuliani associate, launched a terrifying facial recognition app with society-altering potential. They were assisted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles Johnson and billionaire Trump backer Peter Thiel. The app can scan a blurry portrait, and, in just seconds, collect every instance of a person's online life. It can find your name, your social media profiles, your friends and family, even your home address (as well as photos of you that you may not even have known existed). The story of Clearview AI opens up a window into a larger, more urgent one about our tortured relationship to technology, the way it entertains and seduces us even as it steals our privacy and lays us bare to bad actors in politics, criminal justice, and tech. This technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. Ubiquitous in China and Russia, it was also developed by American companies, including Google and Facebook, who decided it was too radical to release. That did not stop Clearview. They gave demos of the tech to interested private investors and contracted it out to hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the country. American law enforcement, including the Department of Homeland Security, has already used it to arrest people for everything from petty theft to assault. Without regulation it could expand the reach of policing-as it has in China and Russia-to a terrifying, dystopian level"--

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The story of a small AI company that gave facial recognition to law enforcement, billionaires, and businesses, threatening to end privacy as we know it

"The dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Kashmir Hill's fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality."--John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Wired

Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award - Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person's online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed to be, it would be the ultimate surveillance tool, and it would open the door to everything from stalking to totalitarian state control. Could it be true?

In this riveting account, Hill tracks the improbable rise of Clearview AI, helmed by Hoan Ton-That, an Australian computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, and its astounding collection of billions of faces from the internet. The company was boosted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles C. Johnson and billionaire Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel--who all seemed eager to release this society-altering technology on the public. Google and Facebook decided that a tool to identify strangers was too radical to release, but Clearview forged ahead, sharing the app with private investors, pitching it to businesses, and offering it to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world.

Facial recognition technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. This technology has already been used in wrongful arrests in the United States. Unregulated, it could expand the reach of policing, as it has in China and Russia, to a terrifying, dystopian level.

Your Face Belongs to Us is a gripping true story about the rise of a technological superpower and an urgent warning that, in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, Clearview AI is one of many new technologies that challenge what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called "the right to be let alone."

Review Quotes

"As I read Your Face Belongs to Us, it dawned on me that the dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Whether you like it or not, your face has already been scraped from the internet, stored in a giant database, and made available to law enforcement agencies, private corporations, and authoritarian governments to track and surveil you. Kashmir Hill's fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality."--John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood

"Kashmir Hill all but invented the tech dystopia beat, and no one is a more exuberant and enjoyable guide to the dark corners of our possible future than she is. Reaching deep into the past to paint a terrifying portrait of our future, Hill's thorough, awe-inspiring reporting and compelling storytelling paint a fascinating tale of tech's next chapter. This is the most fun you can have reading a real-life nightmare."--Garrett Graff, author of The Only Plane in the Sky

About the Author

Kashmir Hill is a tech reporter at The New York Times, where her writing about the intersection of privacy and technology pioneered the genre. Hill has worked and written for a number of publications, including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Gizmodo, Popular Science, Forbes, and many others.