Australian Facial recognition company Clearview AI is facing a £17 million fine for its mishandling on user data in the UK.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced its “provisional intent” to impose the potential fine on the company, which describes itself as the ‘World’s Largest Facial Network’.

Additionally, the ICO has issued a provisional notice for Clearview AI to halt further UK data processing and to delete it following alleged serious breaches of the UK’s data protection laws.

The announcement follows a joint investigation by the ICO and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) focusing on the use of images by Clearview, data scraped from the internet and the use of facial recognition biometrics.

According to the ICO’s investigation, Clearview AI “appears to have failed to comply with UK data protection laws in several ways”.

Commenting on the provisional decision, UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said: “I have significant concerns that personal data was processed in a way that nobody in the UK will have expected. It is therefore only right that the ICO alerts people to the scale of this potential breach and the proposed action we’re taking.

“UK data protection legislation does not stop the effective use of technology to fight crime, but to enjoy public trust and confidence in their products, technology providers must ensure people’s legal protections are respected and complied with.”

Clearview’s facial recognition app allows users to upload an image of an individual’s face and match it to photos of that person’s face collected from the internet. It then links to where the photos appeared.

The firm’s system is reported to include a database of more than 10 billion images that Clearview AI claims to have taken or ‘scraped’ from various websites.

Images found in the firm’s database include a “substantial number of people” from the UK, according to the ICO, and may have been gathered without people’s knowledge from publicly available information online.

The ICO has said that Clearview AI will now have an opportunity to “make representations in respect of these alleged breaches” set out in the Notice of Intent and Preliminary Enforcement Notice.

Announcement follows the conclusion of the OAIC’s investigation earlier this month that found Clearview AI also breached Australian Privacy laws.

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Denham continued: “Clearview AI Inc’s services are no longer being offered in the UK. However, the evidence we’ve gathered and analysed suggests Clearview AI were and may be continuing to process significant volumes of UK people’s information without their knowledge.

“We therefore want to assure the UK public that we are considering these alleged breaches and taking them very seriously.”

Clearview AI has already been in trouble for its use of facial recognition data after Twitter provided a cease-and-desist letter in January 2020 accusing the company of violating its policies.

The social media giant demanded that it delete any previously collected data after the New York Times found that Clearview mined more than three billion images from social media networks including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo.

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