Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan has filed a lawsuit against Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition company, alleging violations of consumer protection laws and data broker regulations. Donovan is seeking a court order to stop the company from collecting Vermonters’ photos and facial recognition data, including that of children. He emphasized the importance of protecting the privacy of vulnerable individuals and stated that no state or local law enforcement agencies in Vermont have used Clearview AI’s app.
Clearview AI has faced widespread opposition and criticism for building its app by scraping billions of publicly available images from the internet without consent. The company’s clients, which reportedly include the Department of Justice and Best Buy, can use the app’s database to search for individuals of interest using any available photo.
Donovan argues that this database violates both the Vermont Consumer Protection Act and the Data Broker Law.
Clearview AI has defended its practices, claiming that it operates similarly to search engines like Google and Bing and collects less data than them.
Various officials, companies, and platforms have expressed concerns about Clearview AI’s facial recognition database. New Jersey’s attorney general has already banned the state’s police forces from using the app, and Senator Ed Markey has written to the company’s CEO expressing concerns. Additionally, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have all demanded that Clearview AI stop scraping their sites’ images, citing violations of their terms of service.
This is not the first legal action the company has faced, as it has previously been sued in Illinois and New York.
Copies of the State’s complaint and motion for preliminary injunction can be found here and here. A copy of the State’s cease-and-desist letter, sent on Thursday, March 5, 2020, can be found here.
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