Paresh Dave

OAKLAND (Calif.) – Ukraine uses facial recognition software for identification of Russian soldiers who have been killed in action and trace the families of those affected to notify them about their death, Ukraine’s vice prime Minister told Reuters.

Reuters reported exclusively that Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense began using Clearview AI technology this month. Clearview AI is a New York-based facial identification provider which finds images that match upload photos and matches them to their faces. The exact use of the technology was unknown at the time.

Mykhailo Fedorov (Ukraine’s vice-prime minister) told Reuters that Ukraine was using Clearview AI software for finding the accounts on social media of Russian soldiers who have died.

The authorities will then contact the relatives in order to arrange to pick up the body.

Fedorov spoke via translator.

Fedorov refused to give details about the body of individuals identified by facial recognition, but said that the family has claimed a high percentage of people who have been recognized as their relatives. Reuters couldn’t confirm the information independently.

Clearview was adopted by Ukraine in protest of the use of facial recognition. Civil rights groups have also decried Clearview because of possible misidentification.

Clearview is fighting a suit in U.S. Federal Court in Chicago brought by Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act consumers. This case is about whether Clearview’s collection of images via the internet was in violation of privacy laws.

Clearview claims its actions were legal. Clearview says that face matches shouldn’t be used as a point of departure in an investigation.

Fedorov claimed that Ukraine is not using technology to identify the bodies of its troops who were killed in action. He didn’t specify the reason.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine did not reply to our requests. It oversees Ukraine’s Look For Your Own Telegram Channel, where images are posted by unidentified Russian soldiers who have been captured or killed. The channel invites family members to claim the photos.

The Ukrainian government has an online form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNcHV6cob4f8QHc90QnpAihMsioOOroSQWNAVHCmwDelHL8w/viewform where Russian relatives can submit a claim to collect a body. Fedorov was not able to provide specific details on how bodies would be returned to relatives and Reuters cannot independently confirm this.

According to the Ukrainian military, 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine since Russia invaded it on February 24th. Russia claims that its casualties were much less during its “special military operations” to demilitarize Ukraine.

Clearview was used by Ukraine in a manner that is not typical of the Kremlin.

Clearview offered its free service to Ukraine following the Russian invasion. It said that its search engine included over 2,000,000 images from VKontakte. This popular Russian social media site.

VKontakte has not responded to our request for comment.

Fedorov stated that facial recognition is only one tool, which includes cloud services offered by Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ):), that Ukraine was able to use for free, as long as Western companies come to Ukraine’s aid.

Amazon didn’t respond to my requests for comment.

Richard Bassed is the head of Monash University’s Forensic Medicine department in Australia. He said that DNA, fingerprints and dental records remain the most reliable ways of verifying someone’s identity.

Although it is not easy to get pre-death information from enemy fighters this opens up the possibility of innovative techniques, such as facial recognition.

Bassed said that the ability to recognize facial expressions on the dead could become unreliable due to cloudy eyes or injured faces.

The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System in the United States stated that it had not yet adopted automatic facial recognition technology because this technology isn’t widely accepted by the forensic community.