US facial recognition company Clearview AI was fined €30.5 million euros ($33.7m) for building an ‘illegal’ database by the Dutch Data Protection agency (DPA). It was also issued a €5 million penalty ($5.5 million) for non-compliance.
Clearview is an American company that deals in facial recognition services – selling to investigative and intelligence services, including to police departments and government agencies. It claims to have collected over 50 billion images – primarily by ‘scraping’ from the internet.
The ‘scraping’ process involves automatically collecting photos from public sites all across the web, meaning that some images stored without the consent or knowledge of the people in the photos could be collected.
Highly Intrusive
Whilst Clearview is a US organization, it uses the biometric data of people from all across the world. Chairman of the Dutch DPA Aleid Wolfsen called the technology ‘highly intrusive’, commenting, “If there is a photo of you on the Internet – and doesn’t that apply to all of us? – then you can end up in the database of Clearview and be tracked. This is not a doom scenario from a scary film.”
Wolfsen advised the public against using Clearview services, warning that any Dutch organizations using the service should expect hefty fines from the Dutch DPA. Since Clearview broke the law, he affirms that the use of Clearview services would be illegal.
Clearview has been fined before for similar breaches of data protection laws in the UK, as the Information Commissioner’s Office announced an order for Clearview to delete any information stored on UK residents.
Similar sanctions have been placed on the organization in Canada, France, Italy, and Australia. Clearview also admits to having been the victim of a data breach after its database was hacked back in 2020, demonstrating the risks of private companies storing personal information.
Via Rueters
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