California Privacy Suit Against Clearview Will Proceed

A California Superior Court ruling by Judge Evelio Grillo paves the way for the biometric data privacy complaint against Clearview AI to proceed. Judge Grillo rejected Clearview’s arguments characterizing the privacy complaint as a SLAPP suit, and that taking a photo or likeness of a person to use for business purposes is protected by the First Amendment. Clearview’s business strategy is to take individual person’s biometric data from sources including social media, building up a biometric profile of individuals, and selling the profiles online, often to law enforcement agencies. The company has announced that it is on track to have 100 billion face prints in 2023, enough to ensure “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable.” The California plaintiffs argue that Clearview violated the terms of service of the online platforms it collected data from. In May 2022 Clearview settled a suit filed by the ACLU alleging violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.