Clearview goes to B.C. Supreme Court to fight privacy order

A controversial artificial intelligence and facial recognition software provider is challenging British Columbia’s privacy watchdog in court after the agency prohibited the company from offering its services in the province, collecting images and biometric facial arrays, and ordered it to delete its data. Earlier this month, U.S.-based company Clearview AI asked the B.C. Supreme Court to throw out the Dec. 14 order from B.C.'s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC). The company also asked the court, in the Jan. 14 filing, to declare that sections 11, 14, and 17 of B.C.'s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) which restrict the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information "unjustifiably infringe" on freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (section 2). According to Clearview, several aspects of the the OIPC's order are "unreasonable": the decision to apply PIPA to the company; the finding that the data harvested by Clearview is not "public information"; and the finding that Clearview "did not have a reasonable purpose for collecting, using, and disclosing" the data it collected. Clearview further argued in its petition to the court that the OIPC's orders are "impossible for Clearview to comply with and both unreasonable and unenforceable at law." British Columbia's private sector privacy law cannot apply to Clearview, the company's argument goes, because it "is physically located in the United States and has no offices or employees" in the province. Clearview added that while it once offered trials for its services in B.C., it ceased to do so as of July 2020 when the company ended its relationship with the RCMP. It is "unreasonable for the commission to have issued orders against Clearview based on the bare fact that Clearview may, in the course of its business, collect some publicly available information about British Columbia residents," Clearview wrote. "This is not sufficient to establish a 'real and substantial' connection, and the commission had no jurisdiction to issue the orders." Even if PIPA applied to it, which Clearview denies, the data collected by the company falls under that which is "considered publicly available" under the act's regulations, it argued. The company points to PIPA regulations which hold that publicly available information includes "personal information that appears in a printed or electronic publication that is available to the public, including a magazine, book or newspaper in printed or electronic form." Clearview's argument maintains that anything it finds through an internet search qualifies under the regulation, therefore, it can be collected without consent. Clearview further argues that sections of PIPA – 11, 14, and 17 – that restrict the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information to "purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate" violate Clearview's rights under the Charter. Those restrictions "impede the free flow of information" afforded to Clearview under section 2 of the Charter, the company argued. In February of 2021, the OIPC – in conjunction with the federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner – found that Clearview engaged in "illegal mass surveillance" when it scraped some three billion images of faces and corresponding biometric identifiers off of publicly accessible information on the internet such as social media. B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner, Michael McEvoy, said at a press conference that Clearview AI’s “blatant disregard for Canadian privacy law” was indicative of the need for stronger privacy legislation. The OPC launched a pair of investigations into the technology and the RCMP a year previously, after media reports of the technology’s use by police departments. In June of 2021, federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien declared that the RCMP itself also broke the law. “They lied to the Canadian public, they lied to the Privacy Commissioner,” Angus said at the time, referring to the RCMP’s initial denial — followed by an admission — that it was using Clearview’s facial recognition technology. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Clearview goes to B.C. Supreme Court to fight privacy order

Broadcast | January 25, 2022

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Clearview goes to B.C. Supreme Court to fight privacy order

Broadcast | January 25, 2022

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