Clearview AI Stops Sale of Facial Recognition App

Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition provider, will no longer sell its app to private companies and non-law enforcement entities. This is according to a legal filing first reported on Thursday. 

It will also be terminating all its contracts. This is regardless of whether the contracts are for law enforcement purposes or not, in the state of Illinois. 

They filed this in the Illinois court as part of a lawsuit over potential violations of a state privacy law. This document lays out Clearview’s decision as a voluntary action. The company will now refrain from transacting with non-governmental customers anywhere.

Reports on a leaked client list that indicates Clearview’s technology or app has been used by thousands of organizations. This included companies like Bank of America, Macy’s, and Walmart.

Clearview is canceling the accounts of every customer not in association with law enforcement. This includes some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency.

It is also canceling all accounts belonging to any entity based in Illinois. It argues that it should not face an injunction that would prohibit it from using Illinois residents’ biometric data. This is because it’s taking these steps to comply with the state’s privacy law.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, David Mutnick, sued Clearview in January for violating his and other state residents’ privacy. This was under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, a rare and far-reaching piece of facial recognition-related legislation.

The legislation makes it illegal for companies to collect and store sensitive biometric data without consent. The law is the same one under which Facebook settled a class-action lawsuit earlier this year, for $550 million.

This was over its use of facial recognition technology to identify, without their consent, the people’s faces. These were people’s photos uploaded to their social networks.

Clearview Bans its App from Collecting Data

Clearview has had at least 105 customers using its app in Illinois. They range from the Chicago Police Department to the office of the Illinois Secretary of State.

A majority of those customers are law enforcement. 

Lee Wolosky, the lawyer representing Clearview AI in the case said Clearview AI continues to pursue its core mission. That is to assist law enforcement agencies around the nation in identifying perpetrators and victims of crime. That includes horrific crimes such as trafficking and child abuse.

They are committing to abiding by all laws applicable to it, he added.

Clearview says in addition to ending its contracts, it will also take measures to prevent its technology from collecting data. It will stop collecting data from residents by banning photos containing metadata indicating the photo was taken in the state.

It will ban URLs and Illinois-based IP addresses from its automated systems for collecting new data. The company says it’s also building an opt-out tool. It’s unclear if that would be at the request of an Illinois-based individual and what exactly the process would involve.

It’s also unclear if any of these measures will be successful at preventing future privacy violations. That, or dispelling the controversy around Clearview’s controversial approach to data collection. 

This also includes its sale of potential privacy-violating technology or app to law enforcement and the lack of regulatory oversight. This refers to governing how the company operates.

Past violations

Clearview’s database is provided to customers via an app and a website and already contains more than 3 billion photos. They were collected in part by scraping social media sites against those services’ terms of service.

It has received multiple cease-and-desist orders from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other companies over its practices. But it’s not clear if Clearview has deleted any of the photos it has used to build its database. This was as directed by those cease-and-desist orders.

In addition to the lawsuit in Illinois, Clearview also faces legal action from California, New York, and Vermont.