Since Marx filed his complaint, other people and privacy groups across Europe have done the same. The region might boast the world's strictest privacy laws, but European regulators, including in Hamburg, are struggling to enforce them. “That is too slow, even if you take into account that it’s the first case of its kind.”Īcross Europe, millions of people’s faces are appearing in search engines operated by companies like Clearview. “It’s almost been two and a half years since I complained about ClearView AI, and the case is still open,” says Marx, who works as a security researcher at the IT security company Security Research Labs. A spokesperson for the regulator told WIRED that the case had been closed, but Marx says he has not been notified of the outcome. That complaint was the first filed against Clearview in Europe, but it’s still unclear whether the case has been resolved. So in February 2020 he filed a complaint with his local privacy regulator in Hamburg.
To him, it was obvious that Clearview was violating Europe’s privacy law, the GDPR, by using his face, or biometric data, without his knowledge or permission. “I’m no longer in control of what people do with my data,” he says. Unlike Clearview and PimEyes, Public Mirror is based in an EU country, Poland.Marx says Clearview’s revelation was a wake-up call. Wired reports that Public Mirror is “like a directory to the media articles that have been written” about a person or about events that involve someone who was searched for. Kawalczyk and Tatina, meanwhile, have a new face biometrics search engine called Public Mirror. People with questions about the rules are told to write to Carribex LTD, in Belize City, Belize. In PimEyes’ terms and conditions, “the Operator” is used in place the owner’s name. The company behind PimEyes has told the BBC it is working with police in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany to combat human trafficking, crimes against children and terrorism.Ĭontroversy over PimEyes policies forced its founders Łukasz Kowalczyk and Denis Tatina to sell out to a shadowy organization in 2020. The advocacy group has filed a complaint with the UK’s data privacy authority. Skeptics of face-scraping services, including Big Brother Watch, say this search engine can be used to harass others.
Its faces are not from social media but from other sources, including blogs and news reporting.īeing open to the public, PimEyes subscribers with a photo in hand can search for any image. The PimEyes search engine also uses scraped faces online, and its owners also sell its stand in solidarity with Ukraine. It arguably has seen less success than one of its competitors – with its own anti-privacy baggage. company with no presence in the EU, regulators in the region have no recourse beyond engaging in a hypothetical argument about jurisdiction.Ĭlearview tried to burnish its young, pugilistic brand by promoting how the government in Ukraine is using one its algorithm to reunite families, identify the dead and spot Russians in the nation illegally. Yet, no faces collected by Clearview’s AI algorithms from social media and other online pages have been deleted from the company’s servers, according to an article in the tech news and culture publication Wired.
The European Union itself has levied fines on Clearview for how it collects and sells biometric images. The firm has been fined for breaking digital privacy laws in France, Italy and Greece. But some Europeans, at least, do not want their faces on any Clearview server anywhere.
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