Reports from the Heart of the Machine
Editor: Chen Ping
In addition to no longer selling its applications to private companies and non-law enforcement entities, Clearview AI will terminate all contracts with Illinois.
Speaking of biometrics, we have to mention clearview AI in the United States, which claims to have the most comprehensive face recognition system, and its controversial face recognition tool has crawled more than 10 billion photos on social networks such as Meta and Twitter!
However, due to privacy and security considerations, Google, LinkedIn, etc. have issued warnings to Clearview AI, urging the company to stop downloading selfies of background users. At the time, Clearview AI rejected these warnings. Earlier this year, BuzzFeed also reported on a leaked list of clients indicating that Clearview's technology has been used by thousands of institutions, including companies such as Bank of America, Macy's and Walmart.
But now they say they will no longer sell their apps to private companies and non-enforcement entities, and it will also terminate all contracts with Illinois, whether or not they are for enforcement purposes.
Filed in Illinois court, the document, as part of a lawsuit by the company for possible violations of state privacy laws, listed Clearview's decision as voluntary action, and the company will now avoid transactions with non-government customers anywhere.
"Clearview is canceling every customer account that is not related to law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency," Clearview's filing reads. Clearview will also cancel all accounts belonging to any entity in Illinois. Clearview argues that it should not face a ban on its use of biometric data from current or past Illinois residents because it is taking steps to comply with the state's privacy laws.
Hoan Ton-That, CEO of Clearview.
Plaintiff in the lawsuit, David Mutnick, sued Clearview in January for violating resident privacy under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), a rare and far-reaching piece of facial recognition-related legislation that makes it illegal for companies to collect and store sensitive biometric data without consent. Earlier this year, for example, Meta closed a $550 million class-action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology without consent, after the company used facial recognition technology to identify the faces of people uploaded to photos uploaded to its social network without consent.
According to BuzzFeed, Clearview has at least 105 customers in Illinois, and from the Chicago Police Department to the Illinois Secretary of State's Office, it can be seen that most of these customers are law enforcement officers. It is also reported that the FBI's Chicago office and the Illinois Tobacco and Alcohol Administration have used Clearview's database, but it is unclear whether the two agencies will be banned from using the platform because of Illinois' blanket ban.
Clearview said that in addition to terminating its contract, it will take steps to prevent their technology from collecting data from Illinois residents by banning photos that contain metadata that indicate the photo was taken in the state, and prohibiting its automated URLs and Illinois-based IP addresses. The company said they are also building an opt-out tool, but it's unclear whether that's at the request of an Illinois individual and what exactly the process involves.
Are Clearview's measures really useful? Legal people look down
Clearview's database is available to customers through apps and websites, one of which contains more than 3 billion images, some of which are crawled from social media in accordance with the relevant terms of service.
It is unclear whether these measures taken by Clearview will eliminate privacy violations in the future, as well as whether they can eliminate its own controversial data collection methods, sell potential privacy violation techniques to law enforcement and lack of regulatory gaps that govern how companies operate.
Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney for the ACLU Speech Privacy Technology Project, said in a statement provided to The Verge that "these commitments do not help address concerns about Clearview's reckless and dangerous business model, and there is no guarantee that these initiatives will protect Illinois residents." Even if it could, a commitment to a single state wouldn't end Clearview's nationwide misuse of people's face data."
He also noted that Clearview is not taking real steps to address the dangers of facial recognition surveillance, but is stepping up its efforts to sell its face-monitoring systems to law enforcement, continuing to fuel widespread violations of the privacy and due process rights of U.S. citizens. The only benefit that Clearview brings to people is the importance of strong biometric privacy laws, such as those in Illinois, and the importance of passing laws in cities across the country that prohibit police from using facial recognition systems.
As of now, Meta, YouTube, Twitter and other companies have objected to Clearview's approach to crawling photos with facial recognition technology, but it is unclear whether it has deleted any photos used to build the database under the relevant "end and stop commands".
In addition to the Illinois lawsuit, Clearview faces lawsuits from California, New York and Vermont.
Reference Links:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/7/21251387/clearview-ai-law-enforcement-police-facial-recognition-illinois-privacy-law
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/9/23063952/clearview-ai-aclu-settlement-illinois-bipa-injunction-private-companies