UK-Australian Probe Finds Clearview In Breach

Following the recent decision of Facebook / Meta to delete its facial analysis data, a joint probe by the UK Information Commissioner's Office and its Australian counterpart the OAIC has found facial recognition provider Clearview AI in breach of privacy regulations.

New York-based Clearview has created a database of more than three billion 'faceprints' - unique biometric identifiers akin to a fingerprint or DNA profile - drawn from personal photos on users' social media accounts and elsewhere online, and was sued in June 2020 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who consider it a 'threat to privacy, safety, and security'. In early 2020 Twitter, YouTube and Facebook all wrote to the company requiring it to cease collection and delete its data, which it has declined to do. Clearview has claimed that the software is now sold only to law enforcement agencies and that its identifications are '99.6% accurate', providing unprecedented support for police work. In July this year it raised $30m in a Series B round of funding, which values the company at $130m.

The UK-Australian investigation, conducted in accordance with the Australian Privacy Act of 1988 and the UK Data Protection Act 2018, found that Clearview AI had 'scraped' the biometric information of at least three billion people without permission and could not assume their consent. The office of Australia's Information Commissioner Angelene Falk has ordered the company to destroy the biometric data on Australians and discontinue the practice. Falk states: 'I consider that the act of uploading an image to a social media site does not unambiguously indicate agreement to collection of that image by an unknown third party for commercial purposes'. Describing the covert collection of such data as 'unreasonably intrusive and unfair', she explained: 'It carries significant risk of harm to individuals, including vulnerable groups such as children and victims of crime, whose images can be searched on Clearview AI's database'.

In the UK, the ICO is still 'considering its next steps and any formal regulatory action that may be appropriate under the UK data protection laws'.

As reported on www.artificialintelligence-news.com , a similar investigation by the EU's European Data Protection Board recently ruled that use of the service by law enforcement in Europe would 'likely not be consistent with the EU data protection regime' and that it 'has doubts as to whether any Union or Member State law provides a legal basis for using a service such as the one offered by Clearview AI'.

Web sites: www.clearview.ai , www.ico.org.uk and www.oaic.gov.au .