# Kashmir Hill

Kashmir Hill (born March 5, 1981) is an American technology author and journalist employed by The New York Times. Her book, Your Face Belongs to Us, explores facial recognition technologies

## Life and career

Kashmir Hill was born and raised in Florida, and earned degrees from Duke University and New York University where she studied journalism. Prior to joining the New York Times in 2019 Hill wrote for Gizmodo Media Group, Fusion magazine, Forbes, and Above the Law. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Washington Post.
She presented a TED Talk on privacy and mobile devices. Hill appeared as herself in the 2017 documentary The New Radical, and in the TV series American Masters, Real Future, and America Declassified. Hill's reporting on matters of data privacy have been cited by lawmakers and credited with influencing public policy.

### Writing

In January 2020, Hill wrote an article for the New York Times about facial recognition company Clearview AI, exposing the company's technology as flawed, describing its aggregation of facial imagery as privacy-eroding, and reporting on false arrests made based on the application's erroneous results. The article and additional reporting by The Times prompted Senator Ed Markey to press Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That for assurances that the technology would not harm children's privacy or be made available to authoritarian governments.
Encouraged by response to the article, and with more stories of privacy abuses and misidentifications, in September 2023 Hill authored the book Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It, published by Random House (ISBN 978-1-3985-0918-4). The book tells the story of how Clearview AI's facial recognition technology has been used (and misused) by law enforcement and private industry, threatening individuals' safety and privacy. Your Face Belongs to Us was named among the Best Books of 2023: Technology by the Financial Times and featured extensively by such outlets as C-SPAN, PBS, The New Yorker, ABC News, MSNBC, Reason Magazine, and more.
Your Face Belongs to Us was shortlisted for the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.
In a January 6, 2024 Times article, Hill described her personal struggles with smartphone addiction, and positive experience switching to an older flip phone. Then, on February 1, 2024, in an article entitled "A Practical Guide to Quitting Your Smartphone", she inspired the global "Flip Phone February Challenge" to help people suffering from smartphone addiction anxiety.
On March 11, 2024, the New York Times published a story authored by Hill in which she detailed how automakers like General Motors, Honda, Kia, and Hyundai were sharing driver data with data brokers like LexisNexis in violation of privacy policy. On March 22, 2024, as a result of the story and several lawsuits resulting from the disclosures, GM announced it was ending the practice. And according to a follow-up article published on April 30, 2024, senators Ron Wyden and Ed Markey have since urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate data sharing practices, while the Government Accountability Office had gone "car shopping undercover to see whether salespeople were overselling autonomous driving abilities."

## Personal life

Hill is married to Trevor Timm, also a journalist, and co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. They have two daughters.

## Awards and honors

* 2016 Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing Honourable Mention
* 2018 National Press Foundation award for "Impactful Journalism"
* 2020 Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing Innovation Award
* 2020 Cyber Journalism Award
* 2024 Shortlisted for the 2024 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize