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A scorching potato: Clearview AI is once more beneath hearth for scraping private data and photos from the web. This time, a French regulator is demanding that it delete all knowledge on French nationals saved within the firm’s database. The fee threatens hefty fines if Clearview doesn’t comply.
On Thursday, France’s privateness watchdog, the Fee nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), demanded that Clearview AI delete all knowledge it has on French residents. The regulator alleges that the corporate’s knowledge scraping practices violate the GDPR and different knowledge accessing legal guidelines. If Clearview doesn’t comply, the CNIL threatens the very best fines European legislation permits.
Clearview will seemingly fight the mandate because it has all the time maintained that it’s inside its rights to gather publicly accessible knowledge from the web. Certainly, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That holds to his strongly held perception that his strategies are authorized and helpful.
“We solely gather public knowledge from the open web and adjust to all requirements of privateness and legislation,” Ton-That instructed TechCrunch in a written assertion concerning France’s demand. “My intentions and people of my firm have all the time been to assist communities and their individuals to dwell higher, safer lives.”
The facial recognition firm stirred up controversy final 12 months when the New York Occasions exposed that Clearview scraped person knowledge from social media web sites. All the most important social media platforms dogpiled on the startup, demanding it stop stealing customers’ photos and different private data. On the time, firm proprietor and CEO Hoan Ton-That mentioned that he solely collects publicly accessible dat, which resides in a secured database shared solely with legislation enforcement companies that use the corporate’s face recognition platform.
Privateness advocates argue that whereas Ton-That is knowledge assortment may not be unlawful, it’s unethical. They’re additionally involved that the photographs and private data might find yourself within the fallacious palms. Certainly, shortly after Ton-That defended his firm on CBS This Morning in February 2020 (above), somebody gained “unauthorized entry” to Clearview’s database.
France is simply the newest nation to mandate Clearview purge its techniques of its residents’ knowledge. In Could, 5 nations, together with the UK, France, Austria, Italy, and Greece, filed formal authorized complaints towards the startup with a number of EU privateness regulators. Simply final month, Australia joined the combat, mandating the corporate delete any knowledge collected from its individuals.
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