
"What if I'm travelling and I get flagged for this and then I'm not able to get back into Canada?" "Let's say I get mistaken for another person because this technology is so basically anti-black that it can't tell the difference between two black people," Lamers said. Josh Lamers, Law student, University of Windsor
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Google, for example, was forced to issue an apology in 2015 after its Photos application mistakenly identified people with dark skin as "gorillas." Black, Indigenous and racialized communities are often overpoliced and over-surveilled. In addition to issues raised by the use of tools like Clearview AI, Lamers said he's concerned because facial recognition tools have historically done a poor job of identifying people of colour, especially black people. "Black, Indigenous and racialized communities are often overpoliced and over-surveilled, and these technologies are often built off of our experience," he said. Josh Lamers - a first-year law student at the University of Windsor, as well as a black community organizer and activist - said the use of facial recognition tools like Clearview AI by law enforcement is concerning for marginalized groups.

Josh Lamers is a first-year law student at the University of Windsor, as well as an activist and community organizer. In its Tuesday email statement, Windsor police clarified that Chief Pam Mizuno ordered officers to stop using Clearview AI after a number of privacy commissioners across the country - including the federal privacy commissioner - launched investigations in February into the use of the tool in Canada. and Canada.Īmong those agencies is the RCMP, which initially denied using Clearview AI's software, only to later acknowledge that the federal police service had been using the tool for months.
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Widespread concern over the Clearview AI tool came to the fore earlier this year, after a New York Times investigation revealed that the software had extracted more than three billion photos from public websites like Facebook and Instagram, to build a database used by more than 600 law enforcement agencies across the U.S. The tool works by scraping publicly available information about an individual online - including names, phone numbers and addresses - based on little more than a photograph.

Exclusive Windsor police admit use of controversial Clearview AI facial recognition software
