#Clearview ai gdpr eulomastechcrunch software

The group alleges that Clearview’s unconventional image-scraping methods violate Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Clearview has two months to delete any user data or face legal consequences.Ĭlearview AI has gained international notoriety in the last few years for its scary-accurate facial recognition technology and for its brash forward momentum in the face of pushback from all sides. Activists have voiced immense concerns over the company’s mission to scrape the internet of every image available without permission. Clearview, meanwhile, maintains that the U.S. Constitution grants it every right to take advantage of publicly available media. More to come - The CNIL is not the first regulatory body to call Clearview AI out for its privacy-shunning practices. The watchdog’s investigations found that Clearview had breached two sections of the GDPR by collecting biometric data for no legal reason and for breaching public privacy in general. The CNIL says its investigation was compounded by multiple reports made about people facing difficulties in accessing the data scraped by Clearview. The CNIL’s reach is limited to French denizens, but that doesn’t necessarily mean other countries in the EU won’t issue similar ultimatums in the future. Any countries that follow the GDPR could potentially bring the same charges against Clearview. And CNIL says it’s already been working with other authorities to share its findings.Ī global response - Clearview is not universally hated. Plenty of government entities, including ICE and local law enforcement offices, have paid the company for its services.

Those who benefit from the unwieldy power of an enormous facial recognition database, in other words.Ĭlearview’s official response to the CNIL’s statement denies any responsibility to EU law. “Clearview AI does not have a place of business in France or the EU, it does not have any customers in France or the EU, and does not undertake any activities that would otherwise mean it is subject to the GDPR,” said the company, in a statement attributed to founder Hoan Ton-That. Ton-That goes on to say that his intentions with Clearview have always been “to help communities and their people to live better, safer lives.” This claim is difficult to swallow, given the company’s deep ties to white supremacists.Īnd so it seems Clearview will not comply, at least for now. Perhaps a hefty fine - the CNIL can issue one as high as 4 percent of a company’s annual revenue - will change its mind. But threats have never worked well against Clearview.PARIS, May 11 (Reuters) - The head of France's data privacy said on Wednesday she was considering triggering the process of fining U.S.-based Clearview AI, a facial recognition company the regulator had ordered to stop amassing data from people based in the country. The start of a formal penalty process would indicate that CNIL suspected Clearview of failing to comply with its order within the two-month deadline it had set. 'I am seriously thinking about it,' Marie-Laure Denis said, after presenting CNIL's annual report.Ī spokesperson for the startup was not immediately available for comment. In a formal demand disclosed last December, the regulator said Clearview's collection of publicly-available facial images on social media and the internet breached European Union rules on data privacy, known as GDPR.

Under EU law, the regulatory framework of the GDPR can apply in some cases where data of EU-based users of internet services are tracked and processed, even if the provider has no physical presence inside the bloc.ĬNIL said in December that the software company, which is used as a search engine for faces to help law enforcement and intelligence agencies in their investigations, failed to ask for the prior consent of those whose images it collected online. The company denied the breaches at the time.ĭenis did not elaborate on the extent of the potential fine that the regulator could issue.Ĭlearview agreed earlier this week to restrictions on how businesses can use its database of billions of facial images, to resolve a U.S.

#Clearview ai gdpr eulomastechcrunch software