Hoan Ton-That, CEO of Clearview AI, demonstrates the company’s facial recognition software using a photo of himself in New York on Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022.
Seth Wenig/AP
Clearview AI, the Manhattan-based developer of a highly controversial facial recognition tool, agreed Monday to stop providing its technology to most private clients and to halt doing business in Illinois for five years as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed in Cook County.
The suit was brought by the ACLU and its Illinois chapter in May 2020, just four months after the New York Times reported that Clearview had culled billions of photographs from popular websites to create an unprecedented facial recognition app that counted both law enforcement agencies and businesses as subscribers.
The ACLU alleged the technology violated Illinois’ stringent Biometric Information Privacy Act, which protects current and former residents’ facial and fingerprint identifiers from being used without consent.
“Companies like Clearview will end privacy as we know it, and must be stopped,” Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said at the time.
Under the settlement, Clearview will be permanently barred from making its massive database available to most businesses and private entities across the county, except for those who adhere to provisions in the state law surrounding the retention, collection, disclosure and destruction of biometric data. In addition, it prohibits the company from selling access to any entity in Illinois for five years, including to law enforcement and other government agencies.
A review by Buzzfeed News found that many of the company’s 105 clients in Illinois were local law enforcement agencies, though the report noted that the Illinois secretary of state’s office and the Chicago Cubs have also used the software. The Chicago Police Department previously entered into a nearly $50,000 contract to use the software that was cut short roughly a month before the lawsuit in Cook County was filed.
“By requiring Clearview to comply with Illinois’ pathbreaking biometric privacy law not just in the state, but across the country, this settlement demonstrates that strong privacy laws can provide real protections against abuse,” Freed Wessler said in a statement Monday. “Clearview can no longer treat people’s unique biometric identifiers as an unrestricted source of profit.”
Hoan Ton-That, Clearview’s chief executive, didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from the Sun-Times.
The Chicago law firm Edelson PC filed the suit on behalf of a list of plaintiffs specifically seeking to protect survivors of domestic violence, undocumented immigrants and other vulnerable communities “uniquely harmed by face recognition surveillance,” the ACLU said.
Edelson previously secured a $650 million settlement with Facebook last February after a federal, class-action suit in California alleged its use of facial recognition for photo-tagging violated Illinois’ biometric protection law, marking a major victory for digital privacy advocates. The social media giant later announced it was shutting down its facial recognition system.
Yet Clearview’s deal will almost certainly have more serious implications on the shadowy startup’s business …read more
Source:: Chicago Sun Times
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