French privacy watchdog fines Clearview AI for violating privacy

France's privacy watchdog, the CNIL, fined controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI EUR 20 million for breaching privacy rules. The CNIL fined Clearview AI for unlawfully collecting and processing the personal data of French residents without consent, violating the EU's General Data Protection Act (GDPR). The regulator also ordered the company to stop collecting data from people residing in France and delete the data it had already collected. The watchdog said there were "very serious risks to the fundamental rights of the data subjects". The CNIL had ruled in 2021 that Clearview had been processing personal data unlawfully and ordered it to stop, but said that the firm had not responded. Clearview AI faced similar penalties in other countries, including the UK, Italy, and Greece. Despite these fines, Clearview AI refused to pay, asserting that it is not subject to EU privacy laws as it claims to have no clients or operations in the EU. "There is no way to determine if a person has French citizenship purely from a public photo from the internet, and therefore it is impossible to delete data from French residents," Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That said. The ruling was seen to highlight the growing pressure on Clearview AI, and the difficulties of regulating AI effectively across diffreent jurisdictions. ➕ May 2023. The CNIL fined Clearview AI an additional EUR 5.2 million for failing to comply with its October 2022 ruling. ➖ December 2021 . T he French data protection authority (CNIL) found Clearview's data processing of French residents illegal and ordered it to cease processing and to delete the data within two months. System 🤖 Clearview AI Operator: Developer: Clearview AI Country: France Sector: Mult iple Purpose: Strengthen law enforcement Technology: Machine learning Issue: Privacy; Tr ansparency Regulation ⚖️ EU General Data Protection Regulation Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️ CNIL (2022). Facial recognition: 20 million euros penalty against CLEARVIEW AI CNIL (2022). Reconnaissance faciale : sanction de 20 millions d’euros à l’encontre de CLEARVIEW AI

Date it happened

2022-10-01

Product, system or model

Clearview AI

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