The oversight body of NASA bought access to the powerful facial recognition tool, according to U.S. government procurement data.

Clearview AI is a facial recognition company that can take a photo of the face of the target, and run it against the company’s database of around 30 billion faces. Clearview AI obtained many of these images by scraping the web, including sites and services like Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo. When the New York Times first reported on Clearview in January 2020, a researcher who provided documents to the Times said Clearview “appears to be crossing the Rubicon on facial recognition technology.” Often the tool is used in the form of an app installed on customers’ phones.