![]() The company first came under the spotlight in 2020 when its database containing billions of faces was breached. Among the uses were identifying dead Russian soldiers through face scans.Clearview AI - the facial recognition company whose massive database has been used recently to identify Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, as well as rioters who stormed the US Capitol building in 2021 - will no longer sell its technology to private companies in the US as part of an historic data privacy settlement. The company was in the news in early April for donating its services to government agencies in Ukraine as that country defended itself against Russia's military invasion. ![]() Groups representing those populations in Illinois were part of the lawsuit. ![]() The lawsuit argued that the technology presents big security risks to vulnerable communities of people, including "survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, undocumented immigrants, current and former sex workers" and others "uniquely harmed by face recognition surveillance," the ACLU said. "Other companies would be wise to take note, and other states should follow Illinois’ lead in enacting strong biometric privacy laws.” BIPA was enacted in 2008, but only a few other states have written similar laws since.įloyd Abrams, a renowned First Amendment lawyer hired by Clearview AI to defend against the suit, told The New York Times that the company was “pleased to put this litigation behind it.”īREAKING: Today we reached a settlement with Clearview AI - a secretive face surveillance company claiming to have captured more than ten billion faceprints from people’s online photos across the globe. “Clearview can no longer treat people’s unique biometric identifiers as an unrestricted source of profit," said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. The facial recognition database has more than 10 billion faceprints, the ACLU said. Governments in Canada, Australia and elsewhere have taken actions to curtail its use. There are also concerns about racial biases within the algorithms. Earlier this year, CEO Hoan Ton-That said the company was going to focus on marketing services to federal agencies in 2022.Ĭlearview AI's products have alarmed privacy and security advocates for years, given that the company scrapes publicly-available web pages - like social media profiles and photo-sharing accounts - for data it can feed to its algorithms. ![]() The settlement in Illinois state court also blocks sales to government agencies - including law enforcement - within the state for five years, but Clearview AI can still sell to all levels of government elsewhere. ![]() The advocacy group and several other plaintiffs had sued Clearview AI in May 2020, accusing it of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), a privacy law that limits the use of individuals' face scans and other identifying data. The ACLU announced the settlement with the company Monday. Clearview AI agrees to block US commercial access to its facial recognition databaseĬlearview AI has agreed to a court settlement that will ban the biometrics company from selling its huge database of faceprints to private business or individuals anywhere in the U.S., a move that the American Civil Liberties Union is calling a big victory for privacy advocates. ![]()
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