It is worth mentioning that the agency had already announced a possible sanction against the same company last fall, however, the figure indicated for the fine was just over 21 million dollars.
Clearview AI vs UK
Although now the main controversy is around the company refusing to pay the fine, the sanction leaves a precedent so that it does not expand internationally. In addition, the United Kingdom is not the only country that has initiated legal action against the company. Australia also ordered it to stop processing data on its citizens last year, while France, Canada and Italy have also fined it, the latter fining €20m in March.
In the United States, Clearview has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging it violated an Illinois privacy law that prohibits the use of biometric data without consent. The agreement reached by the company was considered a victory for them, because although it cannot sell data to private parties, an exception was included for government contractors.
As recently as February, the company told its investors that with the number of facial images it collects within a year for its database, it will be able to guarantee that “almost everyone in the world is identifiable,” according to financial documents obtained by The Washington Post. .
The same report indicates that the company would not only seek to scan people’s faces, but would also be investigating a series of new technologies to identify someone based on how they walk, detect their location from an image or scan their fingerprints. .