The coalface of surveillance tech

Kashmir Hill's book blows the lid off a business model that smashes data-privacy, and delves into its evolution and deployment by states in recent years

Your Face Belongs to Us: The Secretive Startup That’s Dismantling Your Privacy

Author: Kashmir Hill

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 352

Price: Rs 799

In November 2019, the author, who is a technology reporter at The New York Times, received a leaked corporate memo from a contact. This was written by Paul Clement, who had served as Solicitor-General of the US in the George W Bush administration.

Mr Clement was representing Clearview AI, a company she had not heard of. He claimed Clearview had developed face-recognition algorithms which could identify anybody whose picture was publicly available with 99 per cent accuracy, given one snapshot.