Surveillance & Biometrics · Facial recognition (law enforcement / government) · Regulatory action + Private litigation + Data breach
Clearview AI
Headline
Clearview built its product by collecting images of people's faces from the public internet and selling search access to police and government agencies.
Not independently verified. Verification status: Unverified - heuristic first draft. Publish state: draft unverified.
Clearview built its product by collecting images of people's faces from the public internet and selling search access to police and government agencies. Ordinary people never sign up and never agree, so they cannot use its terms or settings to protect themselves; their only tools are state-law request forms and regulators. Several European and UK regulators have fined it, and the main U.S. biometric privacy class settlement, which paid in company equity instead of cash, had its approval vacated by the Seventh Circuit in July 2026 and is back in district court.
- Severity
- Evidence tierUnassigned
- Claims confirmed
- Last verified2026-10-16
Primary source. www.lawyer-monthly.com/2026/07/clearview-ai-biometric-settlement-approval-vacated-seventh-circuit/ — Unverified - heuristic first draft.
Terms
Arbitration
N/A. People whose faces are in the database have no contract with Clearview. Customer terms not reviewed.
Data sharing
The core business is collecting and resharing face images. The privacy page says Clearview collects 'only publicly available images and data' and markets search access to law enforcement, federal agencies, investigators, public defenders and national-security users. It does not describe the underlying data as 'sold', but per the ACLU settlement, sales to private businesses are barred. Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Utah and Virginia get access, deletion and do-not-sell webforms through OneTrust. Illinois residents get an opt-out form that blocks Illinois data from future search results, but Clearview says it keeps the data as long as legal preservation duties require. CONFIRMED BREACH (Feb 2020): its customer list was exposed (per Wikipedia).
Fees and billing
N/A. No consumer billing relationship (B2G/B2B sales).
Contacts
Privacy contact. privacy-requests@clearview.ai (Illinois requests); OneTrust state webforms; help@clearview.ai
Legal notice. No address on the privacy page; Not verified this pass.
Mailing address. Not recorded.
Evidence
No claims have been itemized for this row yet.
Sources
| Source | Claim | Tier | Status | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| news · 2026-07 www.lawyer-monthly.com/2026/07/clearview-ai-biometric-settlement-approval-vacated-seventh-circuit/ | whole row | Unassigned | confirmed | “the defect was procedural: the nationwide class lacked independent representation when the allocation was agreed.” Quote basis: not recorded. |
| encyclopedia (lead only) · 2026-10-16 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_AI | whole row | Unassigned | confirmed | “Clearview AI was fined €30.5 million by the Dutch Data Protection Authority” Quote basis: not recorded. |
| company policy · 2026-10-16 www.clearview.ai/privacy-and-requests | whole row | Unassigned | confirmed | “Clearview AI will block the Illinois Information from being returned by future searches through the Clearview app.” Quote basis: not recorded. |
Source vault
Link status: Candidate - not yet fetched
| Document | Last fetch | |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy policy https://www.clearview.ai/privacy-and-requests | Not fetched yet | NOT CONFIRMED |
| Terms of service No URL recorded | Not fetched yet | NOT CONFIRMED |
| Website https://www.clearview.ai | Not fetched yet | — |
| Primary source https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2026/07/clearview-ai-biometric-settlement-approval-vacated-seventh-circuit/ Verification: Unverified - heuristic first draft | Not fetched yet | — |
Enforcement
| Action | Amount | Link |
|---|---|---|
| In re Clearview AI, Inc. Consumer Privacy Litigation (BIPA class settlement) Private class plaintiffs (not a regulator), 2024 Settlement announced June 2024 (secondary sources only; court approval not verified this pass). | — | proposed |
| Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens — Clearview AI fine Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (Netherlands), 2024 Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, Decision (announced Sept. 3, 2024). | — | proposed |
Links are proposed matches, not yet reviewed.
State statute
No comprehensive state privacy statute on file for NY