From nyob:
Today, noyb has filed a criminal complaint against Clearview AI and its managers. The facial recognition company is known for scraping billions of photos of Europeans and people around the world on the internet – and selling its facial recognition system to law enforcement and state actors. Several EU data protection authorities have already imposed fines and bans on Clearview AI. But the US company simply ignores these actions – given the lack of enforcement.
- Original Complaints against Clearview filed in 2021
- Decision of Austrian DPA deeming Clearview illegal
- Several Clearview fines:
Background. Clearview AI is a US company that scrapes the internet and adds all of the faces it can find in photos and videos to its database. It claims to have collected more than 60 billion photos. This allows customers of Clearview AI to identify people by uploading a photo and obtaining other pictures of the same person, including links, the name of a subpage of a website and other meta data. The company originally tried to operate largely under the radar but the New York Times revealed its practices in 2020. While Clearview AI primarily promotes its facial recognition software as a tool for law enforcement, it was also used by companies such as Walmart or Bank of America.
Max Schrems: “Facial recognition technology is extremely invasive. It allows for mass surveillance and immediate identification of millions of people. Clearview AI amassed a global database of photos and biometric data, which makes it possible to identify people within seconds. Such power is extremely concerning and undermines the idea of a free society, where surveillance is the exception instead of the rule.”
Read more at NYOB.
h/t, Joe Cadillic