Available Now
Shortlisted for the Royal Society’s Trivedi Science Book Prize
Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award
A best book of the year: Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Wired
The story of a small AI company that gave facial recognition to law enforcement, billionaires, and businesses, threatening to end privacy as we know it. Buy from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your favorite book retailer.
Published by Random House in the U.S.; Simon & Schuster in the U.K.; POM in the Netherlands; Orville Press in Italy.
“The dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Kashmir Hill’s fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality.”
““Hill’s book provides a sharply reported history of how Clearview came to be, who invested in it, and why a better-resourced competitor like Facebook or Amazon didn’t beat this unknown player to the market. The saga is colorful, and the characters come off as flamboyant villains; it’s a fun read. But the book’s most incisive contribution may be the ethical question it raises, which will be at the crux of the privacy debate about facial-recognition technology for many years to come.””
“Combining vivid reportage with a chilling overview of facial recognition technology’s capabilities, this unnerves.”
“In its focus on the ambiguous duality of tech, this is a parable for our times.”
“The book is illuminating. The scope and sophistication of the technology is striking. So, too, is the way in which the building blocks needed to make it are so readily available, from open-source code to public databases of faces. A walk down the street will not feel quite the same again.”
“Kashmir Hill all but invented the tech dystopia beat, and no one is a more exuberant and enjoyable guide to the dark corners of our possible future than she is.”
“It’s a classic piece of the shoe leather journalism about internet privacy in which [Kashmir Hill] specialises and excels.”
“A gripping account.”