Clearview AI Fined $34M by Dutch Watchdog for 'Illegal Database'
US facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined approximately $33.7M by the Netherland's data protection authority for breaching the European Union's General Protection Regulation (GDPR)....
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Facts
- US facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined approximately $33.7M by the Netherland's data protection authority for breaching the European Union's General Protection Regulation (GDPR).[1]
- Releasing a statement on Tuesday, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) claimed that Clearview holds 'an illegal database with billions of photos of faces,' including Dutch citizens, which have been scraped from the internet without consent.[2]
- The Dutch DPA continued by stating that Clearview had 'seriously violated' the EU's GDPR 'on several points,' claiming that the company 'should never have built the database' and has failed to stop regulatory violations or cooperate with requests for access.[2]
- The DPA also announced a further penalty of up to approximately $5.6M if the company failed to comply with EU regulations. Clearview's chief legal officer has claimed the company does not have business or customers in the Netherlands or the EU.[3]
- Clearview was previously fined $22.1M each by French, Italian, and Greek regulatory authorities respectively in 2022 for illegally storing data via their facial recognition system.[4][5][6]
Sources: [1]TechCrunch, [2]Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, [3]Associated Press, [4]Europa (a), [5]Europa (b) and [6]Europa (c).
Narratives
- Narrative A, as provided by TNW and Time. Now totaling nearly $100M in European fines alone, Clearview AI continues to engage in highly illegal and unethical activity by refusing to remove EU data from their systems. Facial recognition is a surveillance tool that continues to gather mounting opposition — threatening individual privacy. Without better international agreements, there is little Europe can do to force the US company to either pay up or wipe its illegal data.
- Narrative B, as provided by New York Times. While controversial, Clearview AI has been highly useful in the law enforcement space and has even extended to the realm of public defenders. There are documented cases where people have been found innocent of crimes thanks to the firm's technology. Because of the potential benefits to law enforcement and the public, assessing Clearview's record must be viewed with context even when the current discourse focuses almost entirely on privacy issues alone.
