UK fines US facial recognition firm over $9.4m

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UK fines US facial recognition firm over $9.4m

Britain announced on Monday it had fined US facial recognition company Clearview AI Inc over 7.5 million $9.4 million, 8.8 million euros for amassing online images of people without their knowledge.

The data watchdog of the UK has ordered the company to stop obtaining personal data from UK residents on the internet, and to delete the data of UK residents from its systems.

The Information Commissioner's Office ICO has taken action following a joint investigation with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Clearview AI Inc has a database of more than 20 billion images of people's faces that have been culled from the internet and social media platforms without telling people how their information was collected.

The police and other customers of the company can upload an image of a person to an app that checks its database for matches.

Clearview AI Inc has collected more than 20 billion images from people from a variety of websites and social media platforms, including in the UK, to create a database with more than 20 billion images, said John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner.

The company does not only allow identification of those people, but it also allows them to monitor their behaviour and offer it as a commercial service. The ICO found that Clearview AI Inc breached UK data protection laws by failing to use the information of people in Britain in a fair and transparent way and failing to prevent the data being retained indefinitely.

A lawsuit filed by privacy advocates was filed last month by Clearview AI, which agreed to limit access to its controversial facial recognition database in the United States.