The Hamilton Spectator

Clearview AI agrees to new limits in court settlement

Facial recognitio­n company to restrict use of collection of images

- KATHLEEN FOODY AND MATT O’BRIEN

CHICAGO Facial recognitio­n startup Clearview AI has agreed to restrict the use of its massive collection of face images to settle allegation­s that it collected people’s photos without their consent.

The company in a legal filing Monday agreed to permanentl­y stop selling access to its face database to private businesses or individual­s around the U.S., putting a limit on what it can do with its ever-growing trove of billions of images pulled from social media and elsewhere on the internet.

The settlement — which must be approved by a federal judge in Chicago — will end a two-year-old lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups over alleged violations of an Illinois digital privacy law.

Clearview is also agreeing to stop making its database available to Illinois state government and local police department­s for five years. The New York-based company will continue offering its services to federal agencies, such as U.S. Immigratio­n and Customs Enforcemen­t, and to other law enforcemen­t agencies and government contractor­s outside of Illinois.

“This is a huge win,” said Linda Xóchitl Tortolero, president of Chicago-based Mujeres Latinas en Acción, which works with survivors of gender-based violence and was a plaintiff in the case along with the ACLU and other groups.

Among the concerns raised by Tortolero’s group was that photos posted on social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram — and turned into a “faceprint” by Clearview — could end up being used by stalkers, ex-partners or predatory companies to track a person’s whereabout­s and social activity.

A prominent attorney who was defending Clearview against the lawsuit said the company is “pleased to put this litigation behind it.”

“The settlement does not require any material change in the company’s business model or bar it from any conduct in which it engages at the present time,” said a statement from Floyd Abrams, a lawyer known for taking on high-profile free speech cases.

Abrams noted that the company was already not providing its services to police agencies in Illinois and agreed to the five-year moratorium to “avoid a protracted, costly and distractin­g legal dispute with the ACLU and others.”

Illinois’ Biometric Informatio­n Privacy Act allows consumers to sue companies that don’t get permission before harvesting data such as faces and fingerprin­ts. Another privacy lawsuit over the same Illinois law led Facebook last year to agree to pay $650 million (U.S.) to settle allegation­s it used photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.

“It shows we can fight these companies when they’re taking these kinds of actions,” Tortolero said of the Clearview settlement. “It also highlights the fact that there are many ways that social media — and the technology companies that collect this kind of informatio­n — can be harmful to Americans.”

The settlement document says Clearview continues to deny and dispute the claims brought by the ACLU and other plaintiffs. But even before Monday’s settlement, the case has been curtailing some of the company’s controvers­ial business practices.

Clearview AI co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That told The Associated Press in April that the company was preparing to launch a new “consent-based” business product to compete with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft in verifying people’s identity using facial recognitio­n.

It shows we can fight these companies when they’re taking these kinds of actions.

LINDA XÓCHITL TORTOLERO MUJERES LATINAS EN ACCIÓN PRESIDENT

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