Clearview AI
Issued by Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali on 2022-03-09
What happened
Italy's Garante fined Clearview AI €20 million for scraping billions of facial images from social media and the internet without any legal basis or consent. Clearview AI had no EU representative, failed to inform data subjects about processing, and did not comply with data subject access requests. The biometric data was processed without meeting the conditions for special category data under Art. 9.
Articles violated
Lessons learned
Scraping publicly available images does not create a legal basis for biometric processing. Companies processing EU citizens' data must appoint an EU representative. Biometric data is special category data requiring explicit consent or another Art. 9 exemption. Mass surveillance technologies face heightened scrutiny under GDPR.
Source
View original decisionDisclaimer: This summary is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Refer to the original decision for complete details.
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