Re: Disagreement on the purpose of technology
So you are fundamentally stating that technologists have no moral investment in decisions made about how the technology they develop can potentially be used.
And you see no problem in this. Because it is easier to point a single finger to a single violator and say "It's all his / her fault". It's easier to point to the demagogue standing on the podium, versus the 1 million armed followers in his army who are actively suppressing and killing anyone who stands in their way.
This is just one of the fundamental reasons why humanity never moves forward. Because they never see the problems that need fixing.
Some logical and careful thought brings only one conclusion: Clearview built a technology that they knew would be used in a governmental / law enforcement profile. Exactly who else would buy facial recognition and roll it out in a large enough scale to make monetizing this idea worthwhile??!
So even though Clearview knew that their ideas would certainly empower those who wanted to leverage such technologies to hold on to, to increase, their power, a very technology warned about in 1984...they did it anyway.
And governments around the world are beating a path to their door.
And you are both surprised AND looking to allow Clearview to wash their hands of any responsibility, even though any idiot would certainly have told them where their technology would eventually lead.
...
I'm sorry, but I don't. Thanks to a different outlook on the lessons of history I've learned that EVERYONE is responsible, from the leaders to the followers. The leaders did not have to lead *and* the followers did not have to follow.
Clearview is as guilty as anyone in creating the technology and rolling it out regardless of decades of warning from everywhere from science fiction to futurists warning you what would happened when such types of technology were allowed unchecked. They DON'T get a pass simply because they were only 'capitalists' creating a tool...that only had one potential application.
Rights, privacy, democracy and freedom starts from the very bottom - anyone and everyone understanding, and respecting, lines in the sand. Clearview very obviously created a technology who's only possible intent was to impose a proto-totalitarian authority - identifying every person within sight of a camera to those using the technology. There is only ONE possible use for the technology itself: why would you NEED to identify every passer by as a private operator??