UK's ICO Fines Clearview AI for Misuse of Citizen Data

In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined facial recognition firm Clearview AI more than £7.5m for using images of people in the UK, and elsewhere, collected from the web and social media to create a global online database.

Clearview AI helps clients including the police to identify individuals by uploading an image of a person to the company's app, which is then checked for a match against all the images in the database. The app then provides a list of images that have similar characteristics with the photo provided by the customer, with a link to the web sites from where those images came. Clearview has collected more than twenty billion images of people's faces and data from publicly available information on the Internet and social media platforms to create this database.

In 2020, the ICO opened a joint investigation into the company with the Australian Information Commissioner, and issued a preliminary fine of £17m against it late last year. During the investigation the Office found Clearview breached UK data protection laws by failing to use citizen data in a way that was 'fair and transparent', and that individuals had not been made aware their personal data would be used in this way. In addition, the ICO said the company had failed to have a lawful reason for collecting this information, or to have a process in place to stop it being retained indefinitely. It also failed to meet the data protection standards required for biometric data.

The enforcement notice now issued orders the company to stop obtaining and using the personal data of UK residents that is publicly available on the Internet, and to delete that data from its systems. John Edwards (pictured), UK Information Commissioner, said: 'Clearview AI not only enables identification of people, but effectively monitors their behaviour and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable. That is why we have acted to protect people in the UK by both fining the company and issuing an enforcement notice'.

Web sites: www.ico.org and www.clearview.ai .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.