Is NASA A.I. Facial Recognition Technology Watching You? Why?
Keith’s note: According to 404 (free subscription required) “Here is NASA’s Contract with Clearview AI“ – “Clearview AI is an OSINT [open source intelligence] platform used to aid in the identification and investigations of persons of interest, by allowing users to search its database of 50+ billion facial images sourced from public-only web sources, including news media, mugshot websites, public social media, & many other open sources,” one part of the documents reads.” … “Previously, NASA told 404 Media that that license was purchased on behalf of the agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).” According to Futurism “Clearview’s value proposition is basically to scrape billions of photos from Facebook, Google, and Twitter – without anybody’s consent – and then charge cops to use all that private data to help identify “suspects.” Why does any part of NASA need this technology? Security? Or something new? Who are they watching and how could they use this new software to match this information up with other sources – such as (private) public social media accounts? NASA is not talking about this. Ask your manager. See if they know. Doubtful.
7 responses to “Is NASA A.I. Facial Recognition Technology Watching You? Why?”
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No conspiracies here.
They actually demo’d this last month at KSC IT group meeting.
Not an active initiative, done using open source and hand me down hardware. The way it is currently out there is to ensure secure areas do not have people moving about and is more safety concern. There is no budget behind this. Much of IT initiatives are bare bone (often time getting outdated stripped down military hand me downs and attempt to make functional). Imagine the good we could do if actually funded properly.
If there is “no budget behind this” then how did NASA pay for the software?
I work with, not for the team working on this and do not know details. Annual contract could be 2k or slightly more.
The lenses purchased for cameras cost far more.
Folks with a work ethic making magic out of decommissioned gear shows how great a majority of employees we have at KSC.
Companies love to pilot software and hardware at NASA facilities, for little to no money. They get compensated by being able to say their tech is used by NASA,
Yea but NASA also bought this.
My two pennies…. It’s for the same reasons that prompted us to change when the Japanese had a knock-off version of TDRS (COMETS); why the Russian shuttle looked and functioned VERY similar to ours; and why NASA (Jurczyk) mandated encryption on uplink commanding a few years back. It’s to monitor spaces, vetting who should/shouldn’t be in an area when ITAR/EAR is exposed, and protecting our assets. We already have constrained budgets at NASA to maintain our superiority in science and exploration, have to make sure we don’t give away the keys to the castle adding salt to our wounds and giving gifts to our adversaries.
Another example of a young person with no morals given the keys to our PII. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html