Following a £7.5 million fine from ICO last year for unlawfully storing facial images, Clearview AI has successfully won an appeal to have the fine overturned.

The company’s services — which allows its clients to search its database of billions of faces to find matches — has previously been used by US police in up to a million searches. The company also offered it services to Ukraine in a bid to help find missing persons.

In March, 2o22, the company offered the use of its technology for free, detailed in a letter sent to Ukraine’s Government. The letter purported that Clearview AI has over two billion images from Russian social networking site, Vkontakte (VK) – often dubbed the “Facebook of Russia”.

The latest, UK-issued fine was successfully overturned as it was ruled that Clearview AI used solely by law enforcement bodies outside of the UK, with the three-member tribunal who handled the appeal stating that the company did not carry out data processing related to the monitoring of people’s behaviour in the UK. Therefore, the ICO does not have the right “to take enforcement action or issue a fine.”

Resonding to the ruling, Jack Mulcaire, Clearview AI’s lawyer, said the firm was “pleased”.

Conversely, ICO was quick to state that “it is important to note that this judgement does not remove the ICO’s ability to act against companies based internationally who process data of people in the UK, particularly businesses scraping data of people in the UK, and instead covers a specific exemption around foreign law enforcement.”

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In the past, Clearview AI did take on commercial clients but this changed in 2020 following a settlement in a case brought forward by US civil liberties campaigners. Since then, the New York-headquartered firm only accepts clients involved in law enforcement or national security.

The ICO added that it would “take stock” of the ruling.