Washington, March 5 (RHC)-- In the U.S., a top Democratic lawmaker is demanding answers from a secretive artificial intelligence company over its sale of facial recognition technology to repressive governments including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey sent a letter to Clearview AI demanding information about the company’s database of billions of images scraped from Facebook and other social media sites.  Senator Markey wrote: “The use of sophisticated facial recognition technology is concerning even in a democracy with strong civil liberties, but its export to certain foreign countries could enable mass surveillance and repression of minorities.” 

In recent days, students at three dozen U.S. universities held protests against administrators’ plans to use facial recognition on their campuses.