Following the suite of other governments, the UK’s privacy watchdog has now fined Clearview AI a sum of £7.5 million – a controversial US firm that aids entities with facial recognition data.
Since Clearview AI collects data by illegal means and fails to protect and inform the users about their personal data collection, the UK ordered the company to stop collecting their citizens’ data and even delete the data in their database.
UK Blames Clearview AI For its Tech
For over three years, controversies regarding the Clearview AI have been popping up, as the global governments are seriously investigating and fining the company for its illegal technology.
Clearview AI scoops the internet to scrape billions of images from millions of sites and harvests the data in its hold to make them usable for its clients. Most of the clients include police and investigation agencies, who buy Clearview AI’s tech to aid in their regular activities.
And with a restrictive order last month, the company is barred from supplying its tech to private firms. And now, it’s fined by the UK’s privacy watchdog – the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) sum of £7.5 million ($9.4 million) for breaching its local data protection laws.
The ICO has further ordered the company to stop scraping its citizens’ data and even delete the collected data from its systems. This comes after the office’s joint investigation with the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), which began in 2020.
Australia and Italy have already fined and ordered the Clearview AI to stop collecting data and delete what’s been collected – just like the UK now. The UK’s ICO also noted in its investigation that the company has even asked users for more data to make its database better.
The office clearly stated that Clearview AI has failed to inform the UK people about its data collection practices and has no sufficient measures taken to protect the collected data. As if it failed in every GDPR standard, the UK proceeded to fine and issue cease operations order.
