The Cnil demands a fine of 5.2 million euros from the American facial recognition site Clearview AI for not having paid the 20 million euro fine imposed in October, nor for having changed its practices for collecting photographs, the police officer announced on Wednesday. French for personal data.
This decision, adopted on April 13, comes six months after the one on October 17, 2022, which imposed a fine of 20 million euros on this service that “absorbs photos from a large number of websites, including social networks. social”, recalls the CNIL. .
Clearview markets access to its database through a search engine that allows people to be found by photo, and offers this service to law enforcement agencies in the United States and several other countries.
Clearview doesn’t want to pay
In addition to the fine, the court had ordered the company not to proceed, without legal basis, to the collection and processing of data from individuals in France, and to delete the data of these individuals after having responded to access requests. that have been sent, under penalty of a penalty of 100,000 euros per day after a period of two months.
As early as October, the New York company had made it known that it was not ready to obey these mandates. “There is no way to determine if a person is of French nationality, only from a public photo on the Internet, and therefore it is impossible to delete the data of French residents,” said his boss Hoan Ton-That, in a statement. sent. to the AFP.
Sanctioned in several countries
“Clearview AI only collects information that is publicly available on the internet, just like any other search engine like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo,” he added. He also argued that his company did not have a trademark or clients in France and the EU, and considered that it was not carrying out any activity subject to the European Data Protection Regulation (RGPD).
The American start-up was also sanctioned in 2022 in the United Kingdom and Italy with fines of 8.85 million euros and 20 million euros respectively. It was also asked to delete the personal data of the residents of these two countries.
Clearview AI, funded notably by one of Facebook’s early investors, Peter Thiel, agreed last year to stop selling its biometric databases to companies in the United States, as demanded by citizenship advocacy groups.
Source: BFM TV
