John Oliver explains why you should fear facial recognition technology, offers an easy way to fight back

"Our main story tonight involves facial recognition," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "The technology behind facial recognition has been around for years, but recently, as it has grown more sophisticated, its applications have expanded greatly," bringing "a host of privacy and civil liberties issues." To demonstrate "just how terrifying" the technology can be, Oliver highlighted a Russian stalker app. "One of the biggest users of facial recognition is, perhaps unsurprisingly, law enforcement," he said, and there's a good chance the FBI has searched your face.

"There are currently very serious concerns that facial recognition is being used to identify Black Lives Matter protesters," which is "a pretty sinister way to undermine the right to assemble," Oliver said. "So tonight, let's take a look at facial recognition," which "governments all over the world have been happily rolling it out," even though "there haven't been many rules or a framework in place for how it is used."

China's embrace of facial recognition had escalated into a "terrifying level of surveillance," Oliver said. "Imagine the Eye of Sauron, but instead of scouring Middle Earth for the one ring, he was just really into knowing where all his orcs like to go to dinner." The technology is already being used in the U.S., too, despite being "very much a work in progress," he said. And "we're about to cross a major line."

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That line is Clearview.ai. Founder Hoan Ton-That's "willingness to do what others have not been willing to do — and that is scrape the whole internet for photos — has made his company a genuine game-changer in the worst possible way," Oliver said. "The notion that someone can take your picture and immediately find out everything about you is alarming enough, even before you discover that over 600 law enforcement agencies have been using Clearview's service. And you're probably in that database, even if you don't know it," and even if your account is private, because the company has discarded cease-and-desist letters from Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, claiming a nonresistant "First Amendment right to harvest data from social media."

Some cities and states are stepping up, but we need "a comprehensive, nationwide policy" on using facial recognition, "and we need it right now," Oliver said. In the meantime, he suggested you send Clearview — and law enforcement — a message by posting special photos to social media. Peter Weber

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