Face recognition software is known from smartphones or from investigations by American investigators. Such programs are now helping Ukraine to identify dead Russian soldiers.
The war in Ukraine claims casualties on both sides every day, who need to be identified, as here in the city of Bucha.
In mid-March, Ukrainian police officers were once again faced with a difficult task: they were presented with photos of two Russian soldiers, but they were only able to identify one of them by the uniform. Who was the second man?
The answer to this was relevant in Kiev’s effort to remind Russian people of the humanitarian costs of the war in Ukraine. “We want to dispel the myth that this is a ‘special operation’ where there are ‘no recruits’ and ‘no one dies’.” shared the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Fedorov recently. Identifying dead Russian soldiers and informing their relatives plays an important role. “Out of courtesy to the mothers,” Fedorov wrote, Ukraine is posting the names of the dead via social media and offering families to pick up the bodies.
But how were the officials supposed to find out who the second dead Russian soldier was? With just a few clicks of the mouse, as it turned out, they loaded the photo of the stranger into the database of the American company Clearview AI, which was recently made available to them. As the The New York Times describedthe software actually gave them results – namely profile pictures of a 33-year-old man, taken from the Russian social network Odnoklassniki.
Almost 100 percent accuracy
The New York-based company Clearview AI is one of the leading platforms for facial recognition software; Paypal founder Peter Thiel is behind it as an investor. With more than 10 billion photos, the company says it has the “largest known database” made up of images from publicly accessible websites, search archives and social networks. at Tests by American authorities Last year, Clearview was one of the most reliable products of its kind: the program found the right face from 12 million photos with a probability of 99.85 percent. American law enforcement agencies are already using it to identify suspects.
Now the software is also being used in the Ukraine war. For Kyiv, Clearview is useful in that the database has over 2 billion photos from the popular Russian network V-Kontakt. Clearview founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That says he was outraged when he saw in the media that Moscow had labeled captured Russian soldiers as actors. “I figured if Ukrainians could use Clearview, they would have more information to confirm their identities.”
More than 5000 searches performed
Clearview has been in use since mid-March, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Fedorov recently confirmed in an interview. To do this, the software was translated from English into Ukrainian and more than 200 user accounts were created for five Ukrainian government agencies. More than 5000 searches have already been carried out with it.
The software reliably identifies people even if they have war wounds on their faces, says company founder Ton-That. In addition, Clearview can help verify the identities of undocumented travelers and verify that they are who they say they are, Ton-That told CNN. In view of the growing refugee crisis, Clearview can also facilitate family reunifications.
Modern Warfare
It is the first time that facial recognition software has been used so widely in a military conflict, American security expert Peter Singer from the New America think tank told the NZZ. But it will definitely not be the last time. “Similar to how facial recognition will be used in our cities by governments and companies in the future, the technology will be used in wars from now on.”
Other facial recognition software is also being used in the Ukraine conflict. While Clearview basically only provides its services to government and law enforcement agencies, providers such as Pim Eyes or Find Clone are also open to private individuals. The Dutch research group Bellingcat, for example, recently analyzed video footage from a surveillance camera in a Belarusian post office. These showed how men in uniform loaded all kinds of goods such as televisions, washing machines and clothes for transport. Find Clone allowed researchers to identify the men as Russian soldiers who brought goods looted from homes in Ukraine back home sent.
However, it is unclear how long Bellingcat and other external observers will have access to Find Clone, as the company is based in Russia. It is to be expected that sooner or later Moscow will cut access for foreign observers. The providers Pim Eyes and Clearview, on the other hand, have already taken a stand in the war and made it clear that they do not want to make their services available to Moscow.
Criticism from Washington
But in its homeland, the top dog Clearview in particular is highly controversial because the company built up its huge database without the knowledge or consent of the people depicted. In the state of Illinois, for example, a lawsuit is pending against the company because its photo collection violates data protection laws in force there. The social network Facebook has prohibited Clearview from scraping photos from its platform. In Washington demand several senators currently the ban on any facial recognition software because it sometimes delivers incorrect results for non-white people. In individual cases, blacks have already been unlawfully arrested for this reason.
The software was also banned in principle in Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Italy and France; In March, Italy fined Clearview €20 million for violating the European General Data Protection Regulation.
Some privacy advocates are also upset that facial recognition software is now being used in the Ukraine war. “Companies like Clearview are taking advantage of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine to normalize the use of their malicious and invasive software,” says Evan Greer of data protection organization Fight for the Future. War zones are often used to test new surveillance methods that will later be used against civilians.
Satellite recordings and cloud storage for free
In fact, such software could possibly be misused, says security expert Singer, but it also offers new opportunities: it can make it easier to track down war criminals and call them to account. False hits are possible – but this risk is reduced by using other technological evidence such as satellite images or audio recordings.
In turn, it helps that other Western companies are also supporting Ukraine with their technologies: The Canadian company MDA, for example, supplies Kyiv with its satellite images in real time, Amazon Web Services makes its storage available free of charge, and Elon Musk secures Internet access with its Starlink satellites. Along with facial recognition software, Ukraine is a digitally armed state.
The NZZ correspondent Marie-Astrid Langer follow on twitter.