Clearview AI, which specializes in facial recognition, is accused of mass surveillance in Canada, according to a report cited by privacy advocates Radio CanadaThese findings emerge from an investigation into Clearview AI’s activities conducted jointly by the federal agency and its provincial counterparts in Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia in February 2020.

The American company is said to have violated laws protecting personal data and privacy.”Clearview’s practices constitute mass surveillance, which is illegal“, concludes Daniel Therrien, Canada’s privacy commissioner. In fact, the American company collects and stores very sensitive data about many Canadians without their consent.”for unacceptable purposes“, say the authors of the report.

Identify perpetrators
The New York-based company has developed a search tool based on recognition technology aimed at finding and identifying criminals. It works like this: simply take a photo of a person, upload the image and view all the associated images. The system is based on a database that aggregates several billion photos, mainly from Facebook, YouTube and Venmo.

Clearview’s technology has attracted 48 organizations, entities or police forces thanks to a proven strategy based on a freemium model. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which is both the federal police force and acts as the territorial police force for the provinces, was one of Clearview AI’s customers before its account was suspended in the summer of 2020.

Information is freely accessible
Clearview AI defends itself by saying that it does not need to obtain consent from individuals because the information is already available to the public on the internet.”Clearview AI searches the publicly accessible web and cannot search for private or protected information, including private social media accounts“, explains the young shooter’s lawyer, Doug Mitchell.

But this argument does not convince the commissioners. They say they are concerned that “the company fails to recognise that collecting biometric information from billions of people without their explicit consent violates their legitimate expectations of privacy.”

Better monitoring of facial recognition
More generally, this case shows: “the need to better regulate the use of this technology and give authorities control over additional deterrent tools“, said the president of the Quebec Information Access Commission, Diane Poitras. A bill to regulate this technology is currently being discussed in the Canadian Parliament.