The European privacy campaign group NOYB (None of Your Business) has filed a criminal complaint in Austria against the facial recognition company Clearview AI. The complaint, submitted to Austrian state prosecutors, accuses the company of multiple violations of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The legal action represents the first criminal complaint of its kind lodged against Clearview AI. The company, known for its extensive facial recognition database, has faced significant scrutiny from privacy advocates and regulators across Europe.
Details of the Criminal Complaint
The complaint filed by NOYB alleges that Clearview AI is engaged in unlawful surveillance of individuals. NOYB’s lawyer, Felix Mikolasch, stated, “Clearview AI’s business model is not only highly problematic in terms of data protection law, but also constitutes a system of mass surveillance.” The group asserts that the company’s operations are fundamentally incompatible with GDPR principles.
Furthermore, the complaint accuses Clearview AI of violating a direct order from France’s data protection authority, CNIL. The French regulator had previously ordered Clearview to delete the data of French residents and imposed a €20 million fine, which the complaint alleges the company has not complied with. The complaint also targets an unnamed Austrian customer of Clearview AI.
Clearview AI’s Operations and Regulatory History
Clearview AI’s business model involves scraping billions of images from the public internet to build a vast facial recognition database. Access to this database is then sold as a service, primarily to law enforcement agencies for identifying individuals.
This practice has led to previous regulatory actions. In addition to the fine from France, privacy watchdogs in Britain and Italy have also fined the company. These regulators had ordered Clearview AI to delete data belonging to their respective citizens. When approached for a statement regarding the Austrian complaint, Clearview AI was not immediately available for comment.
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