A group of European privacy and digital rights organisations filed legal complaints against Clearview AI. They approached regulators in France, Austria, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom, Bloomberg.
Activists argue that the company’s method of collecting and processing information, including facial images it automatically extracts from publicly available websites, breaches European data privacy laws.
They say that Clearview’s data collection goes beyond what an average user might expect from using services such as Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube.
“Extracting our unique facial features or even sharing them with the police and other companies is far more than we could have expected as online users,” said Ioannis Kouvakas, Privacy International’s legal affairs officer.
Clearview AI said that the company had never contracted with EU clients and that its services are currently not available in Europe.
However, in February 2021 the Swedish authorities fined the national police €250,000 for using facial recognition technology. The regulator said that law enforcement officers unlawfully processed biometric data for facial recognition using Clearview AI and did not conduct a data protection impact assessment.
In late April 2021 in the United States proposed to ban Clearview AI at the legislative level.
In March activists filed a lawsuit in a California court to halt the company’s activities in the state.
In February, Canadian authorities asked Clearview AI not to collect photos of their citizens.
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