France Has Ordered Clearview AI To Delete Its Facial Recognition Data:
Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been hit with another order by a country's watchdog agency to delete the personal data of its citizens, the latest in a global rebuke by privacy regulators around the world.
On Thursday, France's Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés (CNIL) said Clearview had breached Europe's overarching data protection law, known as GDPR. It gave the company two months to delete the personal information it had collected and stop "unlawful processing" of the data.
The order comes after similar decisions from the UK and Australia in recent weeks. Clearview has built its business by scraping people's photos from the web and social media and indexing them in a vast facial recognition database.
The crackdown follows a series of BuzzFeed News investigations revealing widespread and sometimes unsanctioned use of the company's facial recognition software around the world. In August, BuzzFeed News reported that France's Ministry of the Interior is listed as having run more than 400 searches on Clearview, according to the facial recognition company's internal data. Despite the records, a spokesperson for the agency at the time said it had no information on Clearview.
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Clearview AI's co-founder Hoan Ton-That recently defended his startup's use of controversial facial recognition software:
If you're skeptical about whether your company will ever use facial recognition technology as a business tool, you're not alone. Perhaps the most prominent facial recognition technology provider in the world, Clearview AI, has attracted significant criticism and raised ethical concerns even as it has been used by law enforcement.
In a live interview with the Washington Post last week, New York-based Clearview AI's co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That addressed questions about the ethical and legal implications of his software, which became first known to many Americans when a billionaire used it to identify his daughter's dinner date, and for the involvement of far-right individuals in the creation of the company. Pressed on questions about the legal and ethical choices his firm has made while creating a searchable database of 20 billion facial images, Ton-That repeatedly brought up examples where the use cases of Clearview AI's technology would look better in the public eye, mentioning its use in helping catch criminals in child pornography and child abuse cases. Ton-That also pointed to the use of Clearview AI's technology by the Ukrainian government to identify dead Russian soldiers, for notifying their families of their passing.
While Clearview AI has some 20 billion facial images to feed its current product, the dataset is being used only by governments so far. "There's no non-governmental use of this dataset at this time," Ton-That said, adding that "we've developed as prototypes different versions of our technology for retail and banking."
Ton-That went on to say he welcomes regulation and his company will not do business with governments he described as "authoritarian."
Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
Previously:
Ukraine Reportedly Adopts Clearview AI to Track Russian Invaders
Italy Slaps Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI With €20 Million Fine
Facial Recognition Firm Clearview AI Tells Investors: It's Seeking Massive Expansion
France Has Ordered Clearview AI to Delete its Facial Recognition Data
US Government Agencies Plan to Increase Their Use of Facial Recognition Technology
And many more
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday January 04 2022, @02:50AM (9 children)
I'm sure Clearview will happily comply with this and delete all Facial recognition data they have stored, in France.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04 2022, @03:02AM
Shame the 200TB worth of training data they amassed for the Bogdanoff twins isn't going to be of any further use.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 04 2022, @03:09AM (7 children)
Maybe we'll get lucky. Clearview defies the French, the French raid Clearview's offices, a bunch of Clearview people get shot, a lot of shit gets busted up, the authorities salvage enough evidence to convict all the survivors of the raid, and then the offices burn to the ground. Rinse and repeat in all the rest of the EU countries, plus the UK. I don't expect the US to follow the program though. Authoritarians love what Clearview is doing.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04 2022, @05:46AM
Hoping your late night diaper parties under the bridge will get purged, know what I mean mate?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 04 2022, @10:36AM (1 child)
> I don't expect the US to follow the program though.
I believe US is negotiating a GDPR treaty in order to continue doing (IT) business with Europe. So maybe US will be bound by this sort of decision.
On the other hand, this sort of court order is doomed to fail when it is trivial to copy data around the place. Even 200 TB of data is not much, especially if it has significant value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04 2022, @02:16PM
>> So maybe US will be bound by this sort of decision.
LOL... the US can't be bound by any decision that the President doesn't like that week, whether or not they've signed a treaty.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04 2022, @12:50PM
I don't think we'll get lucky. Multinational corporations cut across governments, and that's one way they insulate themselves from effective control within the vertical of a nation.
(m. u. l. t. i. n. a. t. i. o. n. a. l! last time I made this point, some gumby decided to whine, "but corporations are hierarchical!". No shit, Sherlock, but I'm also not talking about all corporations. I am explicitly talking about only multinationals.)
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04 2022, @01:34PM
>>Clearview defies the French, the French raid Clearview's offices, a bunch of Clearview people get shot,
Easier way to accomplish this would be to let the Muslims know that Clearview's got pictures of Mohammed in its database.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 04 2022, @08:25PM (1 child)
You only say this because you want the US to have a monopoly on authoritarians and deny this wonderful privilege to other countries.
Some numbers... [papltd.co.uk]
So the US has more than five times the number of cameras (per 100 individuals) than France.
Now after Snowden's revelations in 2013, do you suppose that the US already does what Clerview does and probably much more worser.
Other fun numbers from that link:
Back when TMB was here (just to date it approximately) I posted once posted about (with source links including video) how Walmart banned a guy from all Walmarts for life for daring to open carry. (and I don't mean carrying children) Walmart got the guy's pictures as part of 'trespassing' him. (to verb a noun) Do you suppose Walmart wanted pictures for their security system cameras at all their locations? So they could automatically recognize such a dangerous individual upon setting foot in the entry way?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05 2022, @01:48PM
A year before I'd actually started boycotting them after getting accosted to show id because a cousin was buying liquor. The following year I ended up at one of the older Walmarts in an area that had trended African-American, and holy shit. The slightly more subtle LP cameras of the bigger/new/whiter stores was out. They had cameras on endcaps staring *DOWN* the aisles and multiple PTZ cameras hanging off the shelves. The whole place felt like a dystopian nightmare (I was thankfully only in there with someone else who had decided they needed to buy electronics, unfortunately after the first Fry's in the region had closed.
This is also one of the reasons I've been rather peeved with the conservatives gleefully flaunting mask laws and getting in people's faces (and yes I've seen that happen in my area, although thankfully not to me.) This is literally the one and only time we will have the benefit of wearing masks in public. Combined with sunglasses and over the ear headwear, we can eliminate positive facial recognition 98 percent of the time during our travels, barring cell phones, or tracking by clothing+license plate recognition. And yet somehow that key benefit to this pandemic is ignored because the politics of it are taking away my right to be facially recorded in public! Who do these people think they are, the Kardashians? Or maybe little honey boo boo?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 04 2022, @06:16AM (3 children)
Rejected aristarchus submissions laid all this out, but for some reason, were censored. Show me the Face of Janrinok, Clearview!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04 2022, @07:58AM
you whining suckwad
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04 2022, @04:18PM (1 child)
Please provide links for said rejected aristarchus submissions if you can or STFU.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 04 2022, @07:32PM
There's these:
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=40520 [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=40358 [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=40359 [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=38976 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Tuesday January 04 2022, @03:45PM (1 child)
The power and control this type of technology gives the ruling class is just far too useful and attractive. It will happen. It will be ubiquitous. Struggle and fight it a little bit, I guess. They seem to enjoy it when you do that.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 04 2022, @08:29PM
I wonder if this could occur if the US had not first created a global computer network.
The social media web sites had to be a godsend.
Nevermind smart phones. Tracking devices people willingly carry on their person. Equipped with mics and cameras, which people use willingly and frequently.
See above where I replied to Runaway with a message that includes a link to how many cameras several different countries have per 100 individuals.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.