Face Search Firm Beats Privacy Watchdog’s £7.5 Million Fine in Court

A cellphone is held with the logo of facial recognition company Clearview AI Inc. on the screen in front of the business webpage. T. Schneider/Shutterstock

A facial recognition firm fined more than £7.5 million by a privacy watchdog for storing the personal data of UK residents has overturned the sanction in court.

Clearview AI—which collected billions of online images of people’s faces and data from across the world—won the appeal on Wednesday, according to the BBC.

Last year, the United States based tech firm was handed the substantial fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for unlawfully storing facial images.

Clearview AI was also ordered to stop obtaining and using the personal data of UK residents that is publicly available on the internet.

The firm succeeded in its appeal against the ICO’s fine and enforcement action because it was used solely by law enforcement bodies outside the UK, according to the broadcaster.

The three-member tribunal at the First-tier Tribunal concluded that although Clearview did carry out data processing related to monitoring the behaviour of people in the UK, the ICO “did not have jurisdiction” to take enforcement action or issue a fine.

In response to the judgement, the watchdog said that it would carefully consider next steps but added, “It is important to note that this judgement does not remove the ICO’s ability to act against companies based internationally who process data of people in the UK, particularly businesses scraping data of people in the UK, and instead covers a specific exemption around foreign law enforcement.”

30 Billion Images

Jack Mulcaire, Clearview AI’s lawyer, told the BBC the firm was “pleased.”

Clearview AI offers its clients a system that works like a search engine for face in that users upload a photo and it finds matches in a database of billions of images it has collected.

It then provides links to where matching images appear online.

In March, Clearview’s founder Hoan Ton-That told the BBC it had run nearly a million searches for U.S. police, helping them to solve a range of crimes, including murders.

He also revealed its database contained 30 billion images scraped from the internet.

Critics argue that law enforcement’s use of Clearview’s technology puts everyone into a “perpetual police line-up.”

And prior to the ICO’s action—now ruled unlawful—France, Italy, and Australia had also taken action against the firm.

The ICO said Clearview had built its database of more than 20 billion images without informing people or gaining their consent for images to be collected or used in this way. In total, the firm had been fined £7,552,800.

In a statement released last year following the sanction, Information Commissioner John Edwards said: “Clearview AI Inc has collected multiple images of people all over the world, including in the UK, from a variety of websites and social media platforms, creating a database with more than 20 billion images.

“The company not only enables identification of those people, but effectively monitors their behaviour and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable.

“That is why we have acted to protect people in the UK by both fining the company and issuing an enforcement notice.”

Mr. Edwards said that the public expected their personal information will be respected, regardless of where in the world their data is being used.

“That is why global companies need international enforcement,” he said.

“Working with colleagues around the world helped us take this action and protect people from such intrusive activity.

“This international co-operation is essential to protect people’s privacy rights in 2022.”