Clearview AI broke privacy laws: watchdogs
Technology collects images that can help police identify people
OTTAWA — Privacy watchdogs say U.S. firm Clearview AI’s facial-recognition technology resulted in mass surveillance of Canadians and violated federal and provincial laws governing personal information.
In a report Wednesday with three provincial counterparts, federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien said the New York-based company’s scraping of billions of images of people from across the internet was a clear violation of Canadians’ privacy rights.
Clearview AI’s technology allows for the collection of huge numbers of images from various sources that can help police forces, financial institutions and other clients identify people.
The report by Therrien and privacy-protection authorities for Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec said Clearview AI’s technology allowed law enforcement and commercial organizations to match photographs of unknown people against the company’s databank of more than three billion images for investigation purposes.
The probe concluded that Clearview AI had amassed highly sensitive biometric information without the knowledge or consent of individuals.
The watchdogs said this created a risk of significant harm to people, noting most of them have never been, nor ever will be, implicated in a crime.
Clearview AI told the investigators that Canadian privacy laws do not apply to its activities because the company does not have a “real and substantial connection” to Canada, and that consent was not needed because the information was publicly available.
The commissioners rejected these arguments.
The watchdogs found Clearview AI not only collected the images of Canadians but actively marketed its services to lawenforcement agencies in Canada. The RCMP became a paying customer and a total of 48 accounts were created for law enforcement and other organizations across the country, the commissioners said.
Therrien announced last year that Clearview AI would stop offering its facial-recognition services in Canada in response to the privacy investigation.
The move included the indefinite suspension of Clearview AI’s contract with the RCMP, its last remaining client in Canada.
However, the company rejected the commissioners’ recommendations to stop collecting images of people in Canada and delete previously collected images and biometric details of individuals.
The watchdogs warned Wednesday that if the company continues to resist, they will pursue other actions available to them under the law.