Canadian privacy authorities calls Clearview AI's facial recognition app illegal

Source: Clearview AI

Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner wants controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI to delete Canadian faces from its database, saying it violates Canadian privacy laws by collecting its citizens' photos without their knowledge or consent. 

Clearview drew heavy criticism and lawsuits after the New York-based company claimed it collected over three billion photos of people's faces on the internet and boasted its connection to law enforcement. It also scraped images from sources like social media sites without their permission, which resulted in the company getting cease and desist letters from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

"What Clearview does is mass surveillance, and it is illegal," Commissioner Daniel Therrien said at a news conference.

The country's privacy laws require getting people's consent to use their data, which gave the government grounds to pursue its investigation after the New York Times article about the company came out last year. But the Canadian government doesn't have the legal authority to enforce the photo removal because Clearview doesn't operate there anymore as a response to the ongoing investigation.

Police forces across Canada used Clearview's services, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Toronto Police Service, which serve the country's most populous city.

Clearview rebuffed the Canadian authorities' allegations saying Canada's privacy laws don't apply because the company doesn't have a "real and substantial connection" to the country. It reiterated that it scraped images from publicly available sources, which is exempted in the privacy law. But the commission disagreed with Clearview's comments.

"Information collected from public websites, such as social media or professional profiles, and then used for an unrelated purpose, does not fall under the 'publicly available' exception," according to the report. 

According to the commissioners, the company uses the posters' photos in a way they didn't intend to be used, which could "create the risk of significant harm to those individuals." The privacy watchdog is determined to "pursue other actions" if Clearview doesn't follow its recommendations. 

But it doesn't look like the company plans to change its mind. According to comments from Clearview's attorney Doug Mitchell:

"Clearview AI's technology is not available in Canada and it does not operate in Canada. In any event, Clearview AI only collects public information from the internet which is explicitly permitted under PIPEDA. The Federal Court of Appeal has previously ruled in the privacy context that publicly available information means exactly what it says: 'available or accessible by the citizenry at large.' There is no reason to apply a different standard here. Clearview AI is a search engine that collects public data just as much larger companies do, including Google, which is permitted to operate in Canada."

Clearview's chief executive Hoan Ton-That also said it had no plans to remove Canadians from its database. It is a challenging task as there is no way to tell someone's nationality from their face alone. But Ton-That says Canadians can opt-out of the database by requesting a removal, which would require them to upload photos of themselves via an opt-out form.

But Therrien wasn't satisfied with this response. He said, "You realize the irony of the remedy, requiring individuals to provide further personal information about themselves."

Sources: The New York Times + Tech Crunch + Reuters