A court bars Clearview from selling its face database to companies
On 11 May 2022 the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, signed a consent order in ACLU v. Clearview AI: the company is permanently barred across the United States from giving private companies and individuals access to its face database scraped from the web, and for five years from giving it to any government body or company in Illinois, police included.
Why it matters
A biometric consent law narrowed the business of a face database scraped from the web to government clients. It was done by a private suit brought by civil society groups, not by a regulator.
The ACLU, its Illinois affiliate and four organisations sued on 28 May 2020 under Illinois's Biometric Information Privacy Act; the court denied Clearview's motion to dismiss on 27 August 2021. Under the settlement Clearview also deletes the facial vectors created before it stopped selling access to private clients, runs an opt-out form for Illinois residents, pays 50,000 dollars to advertise it and 250,000 dollars to the plaintiffs' lawyers. Work with federal agencies and other states' agencies is expressly permitted. The ban on private clients lapses if the law is materially changed to allow it. Clearview admits no fault. The case page belongs to the ACLU, a party; the date and terms were taken from the signed court documents.