Security News > 2020 > February > Clearview AI loses entire database of faceprint-buying clients to hackers
Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition startup that's gobbled up more than three billion of our photos by scraping social media sites and any other publicly accessible nook and cranny it can find, has lost its entire list of clients to hackers - including details about its many law enforcement clients.
Clearview, which has sold access to its gargantuan faceprint database to hundreds of law enforcement agencies, first came to the public's attention in January when the New York Times ran a front-page article suggesting that the "Secretive company [] might end privacy as we know it."
In its exposé, the Times revealed that Clearview has quietly sold access to faceprints and facial recognition software to more than 600 law enforcement agencies across the US, claiming that it can identify a person based on a single photo, reveal their real name and far more.
Within a few weeks of the Times article, Clearview found itself being sued in a potential class action lawsuit that claims the company amassed the photos out of "Pure greed" to sell to law enforcement, thereby violating the nation's strictest biometrics privacy law - the Biometric Information Privacy Act.
Canada's privacy agencies are also investigating Clearview to determine if its technology violates the country's privacy laws, the agencies said on Friday.