There's a lot of important background to this Clearview AI in the EU story. Sit tightly. euractiv.com/section/data-p…
The European Commission’s lack of substantial response to concerns over the use of Clearview AI technology by EU law enforcement authorities has drawn the ire of MEPs on the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties committee, today...
DG Home's Zsuzsanna Felkai Janssen repeated to MEPs that the EC " is not aware of the use of the Clearview AI application by law enforcement
authorities in the EU." the EC had earlier said this in July: europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document…
authorities in the EU." the EC had earlier said this in July: europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document…
However, the Swedish DPA is currently investigating after the Swedish police force admitted to having used Clearview AI tech. This news transpired in March.
This provoked a series of written questions being submitted to the Commission, from both a contingent of Renew MEPs and a separate question from GUE/NGL MEP Stelios Kouloglou. The EU executive responded to both questions on 17 July but those replies were deemed to be inadequate
Thursday's 'repeat' response by the EC was met with exasperation from MEPs. @SophieintVeld: "The European Commission is doing bugger all about it.” @JFLopezAguilar: EC's response is “absolutely unacceptable in political terms”. Watch the drama here:
After the Parliament’s well-publicized concerns on Clearview AI, the European Data Protection Board wrote to MEPs, noting how the use of Clearview AI technology by police agencies in the EU may violate EU data protection law.
In a June communication, the EDPB said that it is “of the opinion that the use of a service such as Clearview AI by law enforcement authorities in the European Union would, as it stands, likely not be consistent with the EU data protection regime.” edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2020….
Earlier this year, it transpired that Clearview AI had scraped more than three billion facial images from social media sites including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, without obtaining the permission of users.
The company had not, at the time, disclosed whether any of the images had been harvested from EU citizens....
Despite the lack of clarity here, an investigation by Buzzfeed News found that the company wants to expand its service to the European market, with nine European countries including Italy, Greece, and the Netherlands being touted as potential partners: buzzfeednews.com/article/caroli…
As a result of emerging concerns in Europe related to the scandal, the Commission had informed EURACTIV that they were “following the dossier and remain in close contact with national data protection authorities and the European Data Protection Board": euractiv.com/section/digita…
