British watchdog fines Clearview €9 million for collecting photos

British privacy regulator ICO fined Clearview company £7.5 million, currently about 8.9 million euros, for collecting photos of British people. Clearview must delete the data, says the ICO.

The ICO blames Clearview for five things when collecting publicly available photos to store them in a database and apply facial recognition to them. First, Clearview has not notified people that they are in the database and therefore does not use the information transparently. The ICO also finds that Clearview has no legal reason to collect the data.

In addition, Clearview has no process to prevent data from being stored indefinitely. In addition, the company does not meet the higher standards for storing biometric data. Finally, the company asks people for additional data if they want to know if they’re in the database, and that would stop people from asking if they’re in it.

The fine is much lower than the fine the ICO wanted to impose last year for the same violations. It is unknown why the fine is lower. The company must also remove data from all Britons. It is unclear how the ICO will monitor this. Clearview collects photos from the Internet and makes them searchable with facial recognition software. Police services can also make use of this. The company is under fire in several countries. For example, it already has to delete data in more countries, such as in Australia and Italy.