It is not the first time that the American facial recognition company has been fined in Europe.
The Dutch authorities fined the American company of facial recognition Clearview AI con 30.5 million euros for creating an illegal databaseas reported on Tuesday by the control body. The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) also fined the company up to 5 million euros for non-compliance.
‘Euronews Next‘ reached out to Clearview AI, but did not receive a response at the time of publication. The DPA stated in a statement that “Clearview should never have built the database with the photos, unique biometric codes and other information linked to them.”
The facial recognition technology It is used to find a person based on their photograph through a search engine.
“Facial recognition It is a very intrusive technologywhich cannot simply be unleashed on anyone in the world,” said DPA President Aleid Wolfsen. warning the public against using Clearview.
“Clearview breaks the law, and this makes using Clearview services illegal. Therefore, the Dutch organizations who use Clearview can expect heavy fines from the DPA“he added.
Clearview does not have an office in Europe. The company has already been fined by other European regulators, such as France’s CNIL, the body responsible for issuing sanctions. In October 2022, He imposed a fine of 20 million euros and ordered Clearview not to collect or process data from people located in France without any legal basis and to delete the data of those people.
He European Data Protection Committee said in 2023 that Clearview had not sent any proof of compliance requested within a period of two months.
