![]() I am sorry for the misinterpretation by some in France, where we do not do business, of Clearview AI’s technology to the company. “We only collect public data from the internet and adhere to all privacy and legal standards. crimes against children, the elderly and other victims of unscrupulous acts” - not to profit from the illegal exploitation of people’s privacy - not that, in any case, having a “pure” motive would make no difference to its requirement under European law to have a valid legal basis for processing data of individuals in the first place. Ton-That’s statement also repeats a widespread claim in Clearview’s public statements in response to the stream of regulatory penalties her company is attracting, that it created its facial recognition technology “for the purpose of helping to make safer communities and helping law enforcement solve nasty problems. (NB: on paper the GDPR has extraterritorial reach, so his old arguments don’t make sense, while his assertion that he’s not doing anything that would subject him to the GDPR seems absurd given that he’s amassed a base data of over 20 billion images worldwide and that Europe is, uh, part of planet Earth…) said - adding: “ Clearview AI’s publicly available image database is collected legally, just like any other search engine like Google. The statement goes on to reiterate Clearview’s previous assertions that it has no establishment in France or the EU, nor does it engage in any activity that “would otherwise mean that it is subject to the GDPR”, as it puts it. Clearview AI only collects accessible information to the public on the Internet, like any other search engine like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo. “There is no way to determine if a person has French nationality, only from a public photo on the Internet, and therefore it is impossible to delete data from French residents. So GDPR sanctions mostly look like a warning to stay away from Europe.Ĭlearview’s PR agency, LakPR Group, sent us this statement following the CNIL sanction - which it attributed to CEO Hoan Ton-That: ![]() But it’s unclear whether he handed over any money to any of these authorities – and they have limited resources (and legal means) to attempt to sue Clearview for payment outside their own borders. The US-based privacy specialist has faced a series of sanctions from other data protection agencies across Europe in recent months, including fines of 20 million euros in Italy and Greece and a smaller penalty in the UK. The question of whether France will receive a penny of this money from Clearview, however, remains open. But the CNIL’s press release clearly indicates that it imposes the maximum possible amount here. The EU GDPR allows for penalties of up to 4% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover for the most serious breaches, or €20 million, whichever is greater. On the basis of the elements brought to its attention, the select committee decided to impose a maximum financial penalty of 20 million eurosin accordance with Article 83 of the GDPR. “The president of the CNIL therefore decided to seize the select committee, responsible for pronouncing the sanctions. However, he did not provide any response to this formal notice“, writes today the CNIL in a press release announcing the sanction. “Clearview AI had two months to comply with the injunctions formulated in the formal notice and justify them to the CNIL. ![]() Lack of cooperation with the CNIL (article 31 of the GDPR).Rights of individuals not respected (articles 12, 15 and 17 of the GDPR).Unlawful processing of personal data (violation of Art.Here is the CNIL’s summary of Clearview’s shortcomings: This comes after it failed to respond to an order last year from CNIL, France’s privacy watchdog, to stop its illegal handling of French citizens’ information and delete their data.Ĭlearview responded to this order by, well, masking the regulator – thus adding a third GDPR violation (non-cooperation with the regulator) to its previous tally. Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition company that removes selfies and other personal data from the internet without consent to power an AI-powered identity matching service it sells to law enforcement and security forces others, was hit with another fine in Europe.
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