CHICAGO — On January 30, Oakland Privacy traveled halfway across the country to tell a Chicago federal court that a proposed class action settlement to resolve privacy complaints against Clearview AI for scraping facial images off the Internet without consent and selling them to law enforcement agencies was inadequate. On behalf of Oakland Privacy, 2022 Privacy Rights fellow Yadi Younse addressed the judge and pointed out that the proposed settlement provided no injunctive relief to class members by preventing the scraping of new images from the Internet. Class members also received no immediate financial compensation from the class action which makes them hostile shareholders in Clearview AI with no compensation payable unless and until the company goes public in an IPO or gets bought out by a competitor. Ms. Younse commented when asked why she was willing to make such a long trip to address the court for three minutes: Clearview AI should be held accountable for misusing the public’s biometrics. The proposed settlement will not provide consumers with meaningful injunctive relief or dissuade Clearview AI from further scraping our images from the internet for profit. Unlike a password, our faceprint and other biometrics cannot be reset, so we should have control over who has our biometrics and how they are used. This is an opportunity to send a message to the tech sector that real innovation is responsible innovation in which their business model should not be reliant on profiting off the exploitation of people or their sensitive personal data. Oakland Privacy's complete statement to the court can be read here. Class objectors were coordinated with the assistance of Just Futures Law. The court hearing was delayed for three weeks following the submission of a friend of the court brief from the attorney generals of 23 states. The bipartisan amicus objected to the proposed settlement on similar grounds to that of the privacy activists and included the following states: Vermont, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, District of Columbia. The text of the amicus brief can be read here. Clearview AI, whose existence was revealed to the public by NY Times reporter Kashmir Hill in January of 2020 (Hill later wrote a book on the company called Your Face Belongs To Us), is reported to have sold access to their database to over 2,200 entities including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and a former Trump campaign staffer as well as local law enforcement agencies across the country. The court is holding final approval of the proposed settlement under advisement. ###
About Oakland Privacy Oakland Privacy is a citizens coalition that works statewide to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight over the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. To learn more, visit https://oaklandprivacy.org | 