Techmeme
January 19, 2020, 7:30 PM

Top News

Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
A look at Clearview AI, a facial recognition app claiming it scraped 3B+ images from sites like Facebook, YouTube, and that 600+ law enforcement agencies use it  —  A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Nathaniel Popper / New York Times:
An analysis of 40 studies finds that the link between social media use and both depression and anxiety among adolescents is small and inconsistent  —  A growing number of academics are challenging assumptions about the negative effects of social media and smartphones on children.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram removes the IGTV button from its home page; Sensor Tower: IGTV's standalone app was downloaded 1.1M times in the US since its launch in June 2018  —  TikTok saw 80X more installs  —  At most, 7 million of Instagram's 1 billion-plus users have downloaded its standalone IGTV app in the 18 months since launch.
Dave Gershgorn / OneZero:
US Army contracted two firms for $4.5M to create a facial recognition system that analyzes infrared images to identify people at a distance of 10 to 500 meters  —  Infrared cameras recognize the heat emitted from your face  —  he U.S. military is spending more than $4.5 million …
The Verge:
Profile of Armslist, the “Craigslist of guns” that offers nearly any kind of gun imaginable and where all transactions are done peer to peer  —  Inside Armslist, the online ‘gun show that never ends’  —  Thomas Caldwell was a veteran in his 60s with a soft physique, oval glasses …
The Intercept:
Court docs: after a search warrant, Facebook gave Puerto Rico private info from student news outlets; some fear it was a politically motivated search for crimes  —  As seven University of Puerto Rico students prepare to face trial in February for participating in a nonviolent protest more than two years ago …
AnnaMaria Andriotis / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Amazon is working with Visa to test checkout terminals that let consumers pay for purchases with their palms  —  Tech giant plans terminals to let consumers link credit card information to their hands  —  Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.70% wants to make your hand your credit card.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Microsoft knows about an actively exploited bug in Internet Explorer on all Windows versions, but likely won't have a fix until the next Patch Tuesday on Feb 11  —  Microsoft has confirmed a security flaw affecting Internet Explorer is currently being used by hackers, but that it has no immediate plans to fix.
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:
FBI seizes the domain of WeLeakInfo, a site offering usernames and passwords from data breaches for sale; WeLeakInfo claims to have 12B+ usernames and passwords  —  Site aggregated 12 billion usernames and passwords from over 10,000 breaches.  —  On Wednesday, police in the Netherlands …

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More News

Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Asif Iqbal Shaik / MySmartPrice:
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Samuel Stolton / EURACTIV.com: