A Quick Professional Update on The Clearview.AI Lawsuit
Some quick thoughts delivered even quicker!
I’m still currently litigating against facial recognition startup Clearview.AI and my two cofounders, Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz but I have made a change of strategy which may well be interesting to some of my readers who periodically ask me about the case.
Lacking both time and ability to reply to them all directly and worried about any messages being hacked or leaked anyway, I thought it would be wise just to put out what’s happened and where things are going and how I hope they might go.
Recent events in the United Kingdom have persuaded me that I needed a different sort of lawyer for the next phase of the lawsuit. I have a few grumblings with Alston Bird — it’s a bit too Tory of law firm for me — but in the main, I think they did an okay job.
Now it’s time for a closer. Judge Katherine Polk Failla has preserved several of my claims and so we are pursuing them with vigor as we hope for a just settlement with Hoan and Richard.
Over the next few days I’m going to be assembling a list of all the people I connected to Clearview.AI and how Ton-That rejected all of those claims and violated both the spirit and letter of the contract we signed in order to commit securities fraud and protect himself from removal by the board. Ton-That did all of this so as to keep raising money (often from my own network!) and control over the company.
For rejecting this theft for what it is Clearview’s counsel Ron Giller who worked for now disbarred Mayor Rudolf Giuliani had tried to smear me as an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier — oh dear me! — so, having a bit of a sense of humor, I got a Jewish-American attorney with a top secret clearance for the next phase of the case.
His name is Bernard Kleinman and Mr. Kleinman exemplifies the best in the Jewish-American tradition of working to do good in the world, albeit in some pretty dark places. But it’s precisely in those darkest of places where the light of enlightenment thinking is most needed. Tikkun olam indeed.
I must confess that I did not expect to be represented by the same lawyer who had represented Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — what on earth would my youthful self think of me?! — but these are strange times and well, if John Adams could represent the British in the Boston massacre and also be a founding father, well, there you have it.
I informed Kleinman when I hired him that we would do our duty to our country and to the public first and foremost — “that is, after all, why we started the company, Bernie” — and that if the company were to go to zero because of our actions I could live with that. Of course I want a just outcome but if Clearview is bankrupted, well, c’est la vie.
It’s become a little annoying — when did I stop beating my wife-style questions — so I thought I’d address them here and perhaps put them to rest. (I’m of no illusions that this will end them but perhaps it can be a place where I can direct friends.)
I’m not there with a lot of the anti-Semitism on Twitter or elsewhere. The Jewish friends, business partners, ex-girlfriends and family I have I cherish. Many of them quietly and not so quietly applaud the work I do to hold the Netanyahu regime accountable. I was reminded of that at my sister’s wedding last year when several Jewish members of the wedding whom I hadn’t seen in a while encouraged me to stick up for what’s right. I told them I would and so far I have.
These Proud American Jews and patriotic Israelis know full well how dangerous it is for the Israeli Defense Forces front the Anti-defamation League and its media allies be the final word on Israeli — and increasingly American Jewish — politics.
The clandestine work I have done exposing criminal syndicates who hide behind the tragedy of the Jewish people speaks for itself and is well known to the law enforcement and intelligence communities of many countries. I’m proud of that work though I oftentimes don’t get to talk about it.
Do I have specific beef with criminal Jews and their accomplices? You’re damn right I do. But it’s precisely because I love my Jewish friends and family that I take on the fight against those who would harm the reputation of the Jewish people.
One of the fastest ways to disrupt a lot of the Nazi network in the United States is to be aware of how much of it is run from Russia and Israel. When you understand that a lot of these fake Nazis are designed to ruin the reputation of their targets it’s a badge of honor to be targeted by them. I’ll have more to say at a later date about the problems of these informants and double agents and all of that.
It gives me great comfort that so many of the foes of comity between all peoples see me—and run. But I am coming for them and I am bringing an army of good people of all types with me. In the main you should I can take whatever they throw at me. Anytime they focus their Israeli or Russian troll bots at me they aren’t focusing on a weaker target.
In much the same way we needed Muslim Americans to address the extremism in their community — an extremism that Kleinman knows all too well — we also need Jewish Americans to work to address the criminality and racism in theirs.
You can expect me working on technologies and policies which seek to protect all people and hold criminals of all colors, creed and class accountable.