The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) celebrated May 9 “ a big win against facial recognition in the United States. The industry association spent a deal with industry champion Clearview AI to ban the sale of its 10 billion photo database of images to private companies. Clearview’s client agencies, such as the FBI, immigration or customs, will still be able to use it.
Clearview, a world-class bad reputation
Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, commended that ” Clearview can no longer treat people’s unique biometric identifiers as an unlimited source of profit “.
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Clearview is one of the best-known and most controversial facial recognition software developers in the industry. The company has recovered an incredible number of face images by siphoning free access photos from Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
A practice that angered the platforms, but not only. Clearview’s technology has been deemed illegal in Canada and Australia. In November, the UK imposed a fine of 21.3 million euros for recovering the images without consent. The European Commission has been investigating the company for more than a year and in December 2021 the CNIL gave Clearview two months to stop using the images accessible on the Internet.
In the United States, Clearview has enlisted the services of Floyd Abrams, a 1st Amendment expert, reports the New York Times. The company argues that it is its right to use images freely available on the Internet.
To override this defense, the ACLU filed these lawsuits in May 2020 in the state of Illinois. This choice owes nothing to chance. In 2008 Illinois passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act, one of the strongest biometric privacy laws in the United States.
Floyd Abrams said the company has agreed to make a “pTo avoid lengthy, costly and distracting litigation “. He added that the company was “ happy to put this dispute behind her “.
Thank you Illinois!
Under the terms of the agreement, Clearview agrees to limit access to its database not only to private companies in Illinois, but also throughout the United States. It also pledges to end one of its most aggressive business practices, free trials all the way. They will now have to be better supervised.
In Illinois, Clearview will no longer be able to sell its product to utilities for 5 years. Any citizen of the state who requests it will be able to have their photograph removed from the company’s databases. The latter will have to promote this approach by spending $50,000 on advertisements.
“Other companies would do well to take note, and other states should follow Illinois’ lead by enacting strong biometric privacy laws,” Freed said.
Hoan Ton-That, CEO of Clearview AI, said his company has no plans to sell its database. to entities other than government agencies at this time “.