Microsoft Deletes Facial Recognition Database Used by China’s Surveillance State
6th June 2019
According to the FT, the database, known as MS Celeb, was first published in 2016. At the time, it was described by the company as the largest publicly available facial recognition data set in the world, containing more than 10 million images of nearly 100,000 individuals.
Those whose images were included in the database did not give their permission for the images to be used. Instead, their images were scraped off the web and off search engines.
Two other data sets have also been taken down since the FT exposed how they were being used by the Chinese. They include: the Duke MTMC surveillance data set built by Duke University researchers and a Stanford University data set called Brainwash.
Going by professional citations, Microsoft’s MS Celeb has been used by a handful of corporations, including Sensetime and Megvii, two suppliers of the growing state security apparatus in China’s Northwestern Xinjiang province.
Somebody at Microsoft grew a pair.
June 7th, 2019 at 14:26
Chances China’s state-sanctioned hackers didn’t make a copy: 0%