London (AP) — Privacy Campaign Group filed a legal complaint with European regulators against Clearview AI on Thursday, and facial recognition technology provided to law enforcement agencies and businesses violates the European Union’s strict privacy rules. Insisted that
Four privacy campaign groups have complained to data protection authorities in France, Austria, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom about Clearview practices. They say the company unknowingly stores more than 3 billion biometric data without permission by “scraping” images from its website.
Complaints Clearview states that there was no legal basis for collecting and processing this data under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation for facial image data. The UK adopted its own version of the EU Privacy Regulations after leaving the block.
New York-based Clearview did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Clearview stockpile news, first reported by the New York Times, raised concerns that the type of surveillance seen in China could occur in western democracy.
Privacy International said European data protection legislation clearly outlines the purpose for which businesses can use their personal data.
Ioannis Kouvakas, Head of Legal Affairs at Privacy International, based in London, said:
The Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights in Italy, Homo digitalis in Greece and Neub in Austria were also part of the challenge.
Clearview is already facing global surveillance.
American civil free activist I filed a similar legal objection In March, Clearview banned the collection of biometric information in California and attempted to forcefully delete Californian data collected from sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Venmo.
On the other hand, the privacy watchdog UK, Australia And Canada have begun investigating the company.
Hoan Ton-That, CEO of Clearview, said the company’s database has been edited with photos published from the public web and cannot be used for surveillance.