Clearview AI sued in Europe over alleged privacy violations

A prominent European digital privacy advocacy group on Tuesday filed a criminal complaint against Clearview AI and its executives, asserting that the facial recognition company is illegally scraping photos of individuals off of the internet and selling them.

The complaint follows several enforcement actions and bans from European data protection authorities which the advocacy group, noyb, alleges Clearview AI has ignored.

Clearview AI scrapes billions of photos from the internet and sells its facial recognition technology to law enforcement.

Calling the company’s practices “clearly illegal and intrusive,” noyb said it filed its criminal complaint in Austria under an article of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which allows EU member states to issue criminal sanctions for GDPR violations.

If noyb succeeds, Clearview AI executives could face jail time, according to a noyb press release.

“Clearview AI seems to simply ignore EU fundamental rights and just spits in the face of EU authorities,” noyb founder Max Schrems said in a prepared statement. “Clearview AI amassed a global database of photos and biometric data, which makes it possible to identify people within seconds.”

A spokesperson for Clearview AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In March, Clearview AI settled a class action privacy lawsuit with estimated damages of more than $50 million by giving plaintiffs and their lawyers a stake in the company’s future value.

Clearview also has been fined by European data protection regulators, including in France, Italy and the Netherlands.

In 2022, Austrian authorities held that Clearview AI’s practices violated the GDPR, but did not fine the company or direct the firm to no longer process the data.