Apple has blocked Clearview AI’s iPhone app for violating its rules

INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
An iPhone app built by controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI has been blocked by Apple, effectively banning the app from
use. Apple confirmed to TechCrunch that the startup &violated& the terms of its enterprise developer program. The app allows its users —
which the company claims it serves only law enforcement officers — to use their phone camera or upload a photo to search its database of 3
billion photos
But BuzzFeed News revealed that the company — which claims to only cater to law enforcement users — also includes many private-sector
users, including Macy&s, Walmart and Wells Fargo. Clearview AI has been at the middle of a media — and legal — storm since its public
debut in The New York Times last month
The company scrapes public photos from social media sites, drawing ire from the big tech giants that claim Clearview AI misused their
services
But it also gained attention from hackers
On Wednesday, Clearview AI confirmed a data breachin which its client list was stolen. The public Amazon S3 page containing the iPhone app
(Image: TechCrunch) TechCrunch found Clearview AI iPhone app on an public Amazon S3 storage bucket on Thursday, despite a warning on the
page that the app is &not to be shared with the public. The page asks users to &open this page on your iPhone& to install and approve the
company enterprise certificate, allowing the app to run. But this, according to Apple policies, is prohibited if the app users are outside
of Clearview AI organization. Clearview AI use of an enterprise certificate on an iPhone (Image: TechCrunch) Enterprise certificates are
issued by Apple to allow companies to build and approve iPhone and iPad apps designed for internal company use only
It common for these certificates to be used to test apps internally before they are pushed out to the App Store
Apple maintains a strict set of rules on use of enterprise certificates, and says they cannot be used by consumers
But there have been cases of abuse. Last year, TechCrunch exclusively reported that both Facebook and Google were using their enterprise
certificates for consumer-facing apps in an effort to bypass Apple App Store
Apple revoked the tech giants& enterprise certificates, disabling the infracting app but also any other app that relied on the certificate,
including their catering and lunch menu apps. The app was labeled as &beta& — typically a pre-release or a test version of the app
Besides this claim, there is no evidence to suggest this app was not used by Clearview AI customers. Clearview AI chief executive Hoan
Ton-That told TechCrunch: &We are in contact with Apple and working on complying with their terms and conditions. A brief analysis of the
app through network traffic tools and disassembly tools shows it works largely in the same way as Clearview AI Android app, which was
discovered by Gizmodo on Thursday. Like the Android app, a user needs a Clearview AI-approved username and password to use the
app. Clearview said its facial recognition app was only for law enforcement as it courted private companies