British watchdog fines Clearview 9 million euros for collecting photos

The British privacy regulator ICO has fined the company Clearview £ 7.5 million, currently about EUR 8.9 million, for collecting photos of Britons. 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 let people know that they are in the database and therefore does not use the information transparently. The ICO also believes 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 are in the database and that would deter people from asking if they are 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 British people. 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, among others, can make use of this. The company is under attack in more countries. For example, it already has to delete data in more countries, such as Australia and Italy.