Canada's privacy authority says what Clearview AI does is mass surveillance, calls it illegal and unacceptable, and tells it to delete citizens' facial images
Canadian authorities declared that the company needed citizens' consent to use their biometric information, and told the firm to delete facial images from its database.
New York TimesKashmir Hill
Context & Ripple Effects
Canada’s finding escalates an earlier [[a:955463|move to halt Clearview AI’s Canadian facial-recognition service and suspend its RCMP contract]]: the privacy authority is now defining the underlying image collection as unlawful mass surveillance rather than addressing service availability alone.
The case sits within a widening challenge to Clearview’s web-scraped database. A later joint Australian-UK inquiry similarly found indiscriminate web scraping at population scale, while Clearview subsequently shifted its commercial pitch toward a tool said to use permissioned data.
First-order effects
Clearview AI is ordered to delete Canadians’ facial images and cannot use Canadians’ biometric information without consent, directly constraining its Canadian database and product access.
Canadian law-enforcement users lose a supplier whose Canadian offering had already been slated to stop, reinforcing the break from Clearview’s facial-recognition service.
Second-order effects
The ruling gives privacy authorities a concrete enforcement basis to challenge facial-recognition vendors that treat publicly available images as usable biometric input.
Clearview’s later effort to sell a tool built on data allegedly collected with permission points to a commercial response: vendors must distinguish consent-based offerings from products trained or searched on indiscriminately collected images.
Third-order effects
If comparable regulators apply Canada’s consent standard, cross-border facial-search systems will face fragmented image inventories and higher compliance burdens rather than a single global scraped database.
The policy boundary shifts from whether a face was publicly posted to whether biometric use was authorized, making facial recognition a focal test for regulatory scrutiny of large-scale data scraping.
The trend: Facial-recognition governance is moving toward consent and deletion requirements that challenge business models built on unrestricted public-web image collection.
The federal and three provincial privacy commissioners have found Clearview AI's facial recognition tech to constitute mass surveillance, and say “commercial organizations” used it, but don't clearly name which: https://www.priv.gc.ca/...
@marknca
Mark Nunnikhoven on x
excellent! - great collaboration between offices - follow WILL be required to enforce data removal - excellent stake in the ground for Canadian #privacy rights Clearview AI is only the tip of the iceberg, we need clear, enforced standards for biometric & general data use https://…
@mikebarretton
Michael Barrett on x
Incredible report by @PrivacyPrivee makes it clear that Clearview AI violated federal and provincial privacy law. Clearview AI should appear at Ethics Committee to be held accountable for their actions. https://twitter.com/...
@jessedamiani
Jesse Damiani on x
Clearview AI's Facial-Recognition App Ruled Illegal in Canada. Canadian authorities declared that the company needed citizens' consent to use their biometric information, and ordered the firm to delete facial images from its database. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@nytimesbusiness
@nytimesbusiness on x
Clearview AI makes an app that is putting all of society “continually in a police lineup,” Canada's privacy czar said. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@evan_greer
Evan Greer on x
Even mild-mannered Canada says “fuck Clearview' https://www.nytimes.com/...
@alexboutilier
Alex Boutilier on x
NEW: Canada's federal privacy watchdog says “Clearview AI's unlawful practices represented mass surveillance of Canadians”: https://www.priv.gc.ca/... #cdnpoli
@openmediaorg
@openmediaorg on x
BREAKING NEWS - @PrivacyPrivee and provincial Privacy commissioners rule Clearview AI's scraping of the faces of millions of Canadians from social for police search databases was in violation of Canadian privacy law and must be permanently dropped: https://www.priv.gc.ca/...
@taylor_owen
Taylor Owen on x
For those following the @PrivacyPrivee investigation of ClearviewAI https://www.priv.gc.ca/... these two briefings on how a Federal moratorium on Facial Recognition Technologies could work from our @tip_mcgill project may be helpful: https://www.mediatechdemocracy.com/ ... & http…
@kashhill
Kashmir Hill on x
Clearview AI is illegal in Canada, say privacy commissioners there, who told Clearview to delete Canadian faces from its database... but that's easier said than done. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@twocatsand_docs
@twocatsand_docs on x
Here is @kashhill in the New York Times about. In order to opt out a person has to send their information to Clearview. “You realize the irony of the remedy, requiring individuals to provide further personal information about themselves,” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@hackylawyer
Elizabeth M. on x
To think, we could've outlawed Facebook too. https://twitter.com/...
@kteschneider
Kate Schneider on x
Clearview AI was working with the RCMP to collect billions of images of Canadians from social media websites without their consent. Now that's been deemed to have violated the privacy rights of Canadians. https://twitter.com/...
@veenadubal
Veena Dubal on x
“Clearview AI is not welcome in Canada and the company that developed it should delete Canadians' faces from its database, the country's privacy commissioner said.” The company's retort is that this will give Google a monopoly in face surveillance. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@amatwyshyn
Andrea Matwyshyn on x
“Clearview AI...allowed law enforcement and commercial organizations to match photographs...against...more than 3 billion images...this creates the risk of significant harm to individuals, the vast majority of whom...will never be implicated in a crime” https://www.priv.gc.ca/...…
@megasali
Meghan Sali on x
Joint privacy commissioners' report finds Clearview data collection for facial recognition was a clear violation of Cdns privacy. Despite this: “Clearview disagreed with the findings of the investigation and did not demonstrate a willingness to follow the other recommendations” h…
@zackwhittaker
Zack Whittaker on x
New: Canadian privacy authorities say Clearview AI is “illegal,” and threatens further action if the surveillance startup does not stop collecting facial recognition data on Canadians. https://techcrunch.com/...