The B. C. Court of Appeal has dismissed an attempt by Clearview AI to overturn findings that the company is subject to Canadian privacy laws. The ruling, released this week, affirms that the province's privacy legislation applies to foreign tech companies, even if they don't have a physical presence in the province.
Clearview AI, a U. S.-based company, faced investigation by privacy commissioners from B. C., Alberta, Quebec, and Canada after it began marketing its facial recognition services to Canadian clients in 2020. The investigation concluded that the company violated Canadian privacy laws. Clearview AI subsequently withdrew from the Canadian market during the probe. B. C.'s privacy commissioner ordered the company in 2021 to stop offering its services and delete information collected from residents without their consent.
The company argued that B. C. law should not extend beyond provincial boundaries, but the Appeal Court rejected this claim. The court found that if Clearview AI's argument held, any company using a global search engine to acquire personal information would be immune to domestic privacy laws. The court stated that such a scenario would significantly compromise the ability of jurisdictions like B. C. to protect personal information online.
Clearview AI's technology involves scraping facial images and associated metadata from publicly available online sources, including social media platforms. The company then analyzes these images to create biometric identifiers, building a vast database. Until 2020, Clearview AI provided facial recognition services to the RCMP.
