The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined Clearview AI more than £7.5m for the use and maintenance of the personal information of UK citizens and ordered the company to delete all resident data of the country.

BBC reported that the Office considered that taking pictures from the Internet to feed the company’s facial recognition database was a violation of UK data protection laws, thus ordering it to stop its collection and use. The ICO considers that Clearview AI globally has stored more than 20 billion facial images, obtained from platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, without the knowledge of the social network or the user’s permission.

“The company not only permits the identification of these individuals, but effectively monitors their behavior and offers them as a commercial service. That is unacceptable,” said UK Information Commissioner John Edwards.

By November 2021, the ICO had announced that it was preparing a fine of £17 million; however, the current number is much less. In its analysis, the Office considered that the company violated UK data protection laws, by “failing to fairly process UK citizen information”; “failed to have processes in place to prevent data storage indefinitely”; “failed to have a legal reason to collect information” and “failed to let people in the UK know this was happening to their data”.

Elizabeth Denham, former UK Information Commissioner, later assured that UK data protection laws do not prevent the use of technology to fight crime, but that legal protection must be guaranteed for its use.

Although Clearview no longer operates directly in the UK, using data from UK residents, the ICO considers that it is subject to UK law. It is the fourth country to take legal action against the company, after France, Italy and Australia.

In March 2021, organizations defending migrant rights in California, USA, filed a lawsuit against the company to prevent this software from continuing to be used by federal and state agencies.

Image (CC BY) Gibran Aquino