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Clearview AI

30 billion scraped face photos

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Clearview AI — 30 billion face photos

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E05 — Clearview AI: 30 billion scraped face photos

Category: Facial recognition / mass scraping / biometrics / ignoring regulators Company/companies: Clearview AI, Inc. Years: 2017 (founding) – January 2020 (Kashmir Hill exposé) – present (proceedings ongoing) Status: Fines >EUR 100M in the EU (never paid); Dutch criminal complaint 2025; noyb criminal complaint in Austria Card ID: E05

Metadata

FieldValue
Country/regionUSA (headquarters), Europe (victims + fines), Canada, Australia
Year revealedJanuary 18, 2020 (The New York Times, Kashmir Hill)
Years of practice2017 – present (continuous scraping); sales from 2018+
Total fine~EUR 100M across the EU (FR, IT, GR, NL, UK) — mostly unpaid
CurrencyEUR
Legal basisGDPR arts. 5, 6, 9 (biometrics = special category); ECHR art. 8; UK DPA; Illinois BIPA; COPPA
Whistleblower/discovererKashmir Hill (NYT); earlier: anonymous programmer; ACLU; Privacy International
Number of affected~30B per Dutch DPA (09/2024); >40B per Biometric Update (11/2023); >60B per ICE/CBP materials (2025–2026) — billions of people globally
Status (as of today)Clearview ignores EU fines; contracts with ICE, CBP 2025–2026; noyb criminal complaint in Austria 10/2025

TL;DR

Clearview AI — founded in 2017 in New York by Hoan Ton-That (Australian-Vietnamese programmer) and Richard Schwartz (former aide to Rudy Giuliani when he was Mayor of New York City 1994–2001). Business model: scrape public photos from the internet (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, personal blogs) and build the world’s largest facial recognition database. Sell access to law enforcement.

January 18, 2020 — Kashmir Hill in The New York Times published a landmark article: “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It”. Revelations:

  • Clearview had 3B+ photos at that time (today: ~30B per Dutch DPA (09/2024); >40B per Biometric Update (11/2023); >60B per ICE/CBP materials (2025–2026)).
  • Over 600 law enforcement agencies in the US used the app, including FBI, DHS, ICE, state police.
  • 2,200 organizations in 27 countries had accounts (per a 2020 leak).
  • Price: several thousand USD per month for a subscription.
  • Co-founder Charles C. Johnson — controversial right-wing activist.

Why this is a problem:

  1. Scraping without consent — Clearview systematically harvests photos from public profiles without asking either the platforms or the individuals.
  2. Biometrics — a face = biometric data = special category under GDPR art. 9 (requires explicit consent).
  3. Surveillance infrastructure — sales to law enforcement = building a global face recognition surveillance state.
  4. Lack of transparency — users do not know they are in the database.
  5. Incorrect matches — false positives lead to wrongful arrests (documented cases: Robert Williams — arrested January 9, 2020 in Farmington Hills by Detroit Police; technology: DataWorks Plus, not Clearview AI; settlement with DPD: summer 2024).

European response (2021–2024) — a series of GDPR fines:

  • France (CNIL): EUR 20M (2022)
  • Italy (Garante): EUR 20M (2022)
  • Greece (HDPA): EUR 20M (2022)
  • Netherlands (AP): EUR 30.5M (2024) + threat of an additional EUR 5.1M if violations do not cease + personal liability of managers
  • UK ICO: GBP 7.5M (2022) — overturned in 2023, reinstated by the Upper Tribunal in October 2025

Problem: Clearview ignores EU fines. It has no EU establishment. It does not pay. It does not respond. EU DPAs lack enforcement mechanisms for fines against an American company with no local branch.

noyb (Max Schrems) — criminal proceeding (October 2025). Filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in Austria under § 63 of the Austrian Data Protection Act — GDPR art. 84 allows member states to impose criminal sanctions for GDPR breaches. Clearview managers may face court — particularly if they show up in Europe.

US contracts 2025–2026:

  • September 2025: Clearview signed a USD 9.2M contract with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
  • February 2026: USD 225K contract with CBP (Customs and Border Protection).
  • A number of local police forces continue their subscriptions.

Case E05 is a textbook example of “regulatory arbitrage” — a company headquartered in the US, where there is no federal GDPR equivalent, operates globally and ignores European enforcement.

Timeline

  • 2017 — Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz found Clearview AI in New York. Initial investors: Peter Thiel — $200,000 first angel investment in 2017. Total first round of Clearview AI: $8.4M (Kirenaga Partners + Thiel, of which Thiel himself contributed $200k).
  • 2017–2019 — Clearview builds the photo database. Initial scale: ~3B. Sales to US law enforcement.
  • January 18, 2020 — Kashmir Hill in NYT: “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It”
  • February 2020 — data leak at Clearview: it is revealed that 2,200 organizations in 27 countries had accounts.
  • 2020 — Canada’s OPC (Office of the Privacy Commissioner) deems Clearview illegal, recommends cessation.
  • January 2021 — Italy (Garante) opens proceedings.
  • May 2022 — UK ICO fine GBP 7.5M; ban on further processing of UK residents’ data.
  • October 17, 2022 — CNIL (France) fine EUR 20M.
  • February 10, 2022 — Garante (Italy) fine EUR 20M.
  • July 13, 2022 — HDPA (Greece) fine EUR 20M.
  • Austria DSB — 2021: breach acknowledged, no fine.
  • October 2023 — UK First-Tier Tribunal overturns the ICO fine (argument: scraping outside UK GDPR jurisdiction).
  • 2023–2024 — Clearview continues operations despite fines.
  • September 3, 2024 — Dutch DPA (AP) fine EUR 30.5M + threat of EUR 5.1M + personal liability.
  • December 2024 — Hoan Ton-That transitions from CEO to President.
  • February 19, 2025 — Ton-That resigns entirely from the executive; new CEOs: Hal Lambert and Richard Schwartz.
  • October 7, 2025 — UK Upper Tribunal reinstates ICO jurisdiction (GDPR applies).
  • October 2025 — noyb files a criminal complaint in Austria.
  • September 2025 — Clearview USD 9.2M contract with ICE (USA).
  • February 2026 — USD 225K contract with CBP (USA).
  • April 2026 — Clearview still operational; EU fines unpaid.

Mechanism

Scraping — how it works

Stage 1: crawling the internet. Clearview uses web crawlers (bots) to search:

  • Facebook (public profiles)
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter / X
  • YouTube
  • VKontakte
  • TikTok
  • Personal websites, blogs
  • News media (photos in articles)
  • Wedding photos, reunion photos
  • Institutional websites (employee biographies)

Every photo containing a face is downloaded.

Stage 2: face extraction. A detection algorithm locates faces. Each face → face embedding (a numerical vector describing facial features). Typically 128 or 512 dimensions.

Stage 3: the database.

  • ~30B per Dutch DPA (09/2024); >40B per Biometric Update (11/2023); >60B per ICE/CBP materials (2025–2026)
  • Each embedding linked to:
    • Source URL
    • Page name
    • Scraping date
    • Optional metadata (name, location from EXIF)

Stage 4: sale. A client (police, government agency) receives an application. Upload a photo → search → list of matches (photos with URLs).

Why it breaks GDPR

GDPR art. 9 — biometrics = special category of data. Requires:

  • Explicit consent, or
  • Substantial public interest (strictly limited), or
  • other exceptions (rarely applicable)

Clearview: none of these grounds. Facebook/Instagram users did not consent to biometric processing by a third-party company.

GDPR art. 5:

  • Fairness principle — covert scraping = unfair
  • Transparency — individuals were never informed
  • Minimization — tens of billions of photos ≠ minimal
  • Storage limitation — indefinite

GDPR art. 6 — no valid legal basis.

GDPR arts. 13/14 — no information obligation to data subjects.

Why it is dangerous

1. False positives → wrongful arrests.

  • Robert Williams — arrested January 9, 2020 in Farmington Hills by Detroit Police; an African American man, 30 hours in custody for a theft he did not commit. Technology: DataWorks Plus (not Clearview AI), but the same class of technology. Settlement with DPD: summer 2024.
  • Randal Reid (Louisiana, 2022) — similar case.
  • Nijeer Parks (New Jersey, 2019) — similar.
  • All victims: Black men. Face recognition algorithms are systematically worse for people other than white men.

2. Surveillance state infrastructure. If police have access to Clearview, every person photographed on the street (CCTV, smartphone, body camera) can be immediately identified. Even if they are not committing a crime.

3. Chilling effect on protest. Black Lives Matter demonstrators 2020 — Clearview offered its services to police. Activists cannot protest anonymously.

4. Stalkers. If Clearview is ever hacked or its data leaks — a perfect tool for stalkers. The 2020 leak showed 2,200 institutions had accounts — some without authorization.

5. Use by autocrats. There have been reports of sales to authoritarian countries. Clearview publicly denies this, but there have been no audits.

Discovery

Who is Kashmir Hill

Kashmir Hill — tech journalist, at the New York Times since 2019. Previously at Forbes, Gizmodo. Specializes in tech accountability, privacy. Her book “Your Face Belongs to Us” (2023) — a comprehensive account of Clearview, recognized as one of the most important works on tech surveillance.

Hill received an anonymous tip in 2019: a company exists that sells face recognition to law enforcement. A year of investigation. Publication on January 18, 2020. A watershed moment in awareness of AI surveillance.

First publications

  • January 18, 2020 — Kashmir Hill, “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It”, The New York Times
  • February 2020 — Hill: follow-up on client base
  • March 2020 — BuzzFeed News: client list leak
  • February 2022 — Kashmir Hill, “Clearview AI Aims to Grow Its Use Abroad”, NYT
  • 2023 — “Your Face Belongs to Us”, Random House

Regulator activity

CNIL (France), Garante (Italy), HDPA (Greece) — coordinated proceedings 2021–2022. Complaints from Privacy International, noyb, local civil rights organizations.

Key people

Clearview

  • Hoan Ton-That — founder, CEO until December 2024 (then transitioned to President); on February 19, 2025 resigned entirely from the executive. Australian-Vietnamese programmer. Previously built iOS apps (popular in Australia). Controversial ties to Charles C. Johnson, a right-wing activist.
  • Richard Schwartz — co-founder. Former aide to Rudy Giuliani when he was Mayor of New York City (1994–2001). Political connections.
  • Charles C. Johnson — co-founder of SmartCheckr (2017); SmartCheckr assets transferred to Clearview AI; Johnson’s share (1/3 in SmartCheckr) converted to 10% in Clearview AI. Later withdrew. Controversial right-wing activist.
  • Hal Lambert, Richard Schwartz — CEOs from February 2025.

Investors

  • Peter Thiel — $200,000 first angel investment in 2017. Total first round of Clearview AI: $8.4M (Kirenaga Partners + Thiel, of which Thiel himself contributed $200k). Thiel is also at Palantir, has right-wing connections.
  • Kirenaga Partners — venture capital.
  • Board Advisory: Raymond Kelly (former NYPD Commissioner), Richard A. Clarke (former White House counterterrorism), Rudy Washington, Floyd Abrams (constitutional lawyer), Lee S. Wolosky, Owen West.

Journalists / activists

  • Kashmir Hill (NYT) — key journalist.
  • Max Schrems / noyb — leading the criminal complaint 2025.
  • Privacy International — Gus Hosein, Eliot Bendinelli.
  • ACLU — various state affiliates.

Regulators

  • Marie-Laure Denis — CNIL (France) until 2024.
  • Pasquale Stanzione — Garante (Italy).
  • John Edwards — UK ICO from 2022.
  • Aleid Wolfsen — Dutch AP until 2024.
  • Helen Dixon, Dale Sunderland, Des Hogan — DPC Ireland.

False positive victims

  • Robert Williams — arrested January 9, 2020 in Farmington Hills by Detroit Police. Technology: DataWorks Plus (not Clearview AI). Settlement with DPD: summer 2024.
  • Randal Reid (Louisiana).
  • Nijeer Parks (New Jersey).
  • (Non-Clearview, but the same technology.)

Company response

Clearview

Phase 1: defense (2020). After the NYT publication, Ton-That on CBS This Morning: “We just want to help police catch bad guys.” Argument: public photos = fair use.

Phase 2: EU fines (2022–2024). Clearview does not appeal in most cases (except the UK). Legal argument: Clearview has no EU establishment, is not subject to GDPR. DPAs: GDPR art. 3(2) — monitoring the behavior of EU subjects is sufficient.

Phase 3: continuation (2023+). Clearview ignores fines, continues scraping, still sells to US law enforcement.

Phase 4: US government contracts (2025–2026). USD 9.2M ICE (September 2025), USD 225K CBP (February 2026). Shows that the US accepts the business model despite European fines.

Public position

Ton-That: “We don’t have a place of business in the Netherlands or the EU. We are therefore not subject to the EU GDPR.” (in response to Dutch AP).

Jurisdictions

  • US federal — no federal privacy law, no FTC action
  • US state — Illinois BIPA (classic challenge), ACLU settlement 2022
  • EU — CNIL, Garante, HDPA, AP — GDPR fines
  • UK — ICO + Upper Tribunal
  • Canada — OPC
  • Australia — OAIC
  • Austria — noyb criminal complaint 2025
  • GDPR art. 3(2) — monitoring the behavior of EU data subjects = GDPR applies
  • GDPR arts. 5, 6, 9, 13/14, 17 — all fundamental principles
  • GDPR art. 83 — administrative fines
  • GDPR art. 84 — criminal sanctions (Austria implementation § 63 DSG)
  • UK GDPR
  • Illinois BIPA

Key stages

DateStage
January 18, 2020NYT exposé
May 2022ICO UK GBP 7.5M (later overturned, reinstated 2025)
October 17, 2022CNIL EUR 20M
February 10, 2022Garante EUR 20M
July 13, 2022HDPA EUR 20M
September 3, 2024AP EUR 30.5M
October 7, 2025UK Upper Tribunal reinstates jurisdiction
October 2025noyb criminal complaint Austria
September 2025ICE USD 9.2M
February 2026CBP USD 225K
  • ACLU v. Clearview AI — Illinois BIPA — settlement 2022 (restrictions on sales to private companies).
  • Canada OPC Report (2020) — unprecedented: the authority has no power to fine, but publicly condemned.
  • CJEU possibly — if the noyb criminal case reaches the CJEU via an Austrian referral.

Penalties and settlements

DateAuthorityAmountJurisdictionStatus
February 10, 2022Garante (IT)EUR 20,000,000ItalyUnpaid
July 13, 2022HDPA (GR)EUR 20,000,000GreeceUnpaid
October 17, 2022CNIL (FR)EUR 20,000,000FranceUnpaid
May 2022ICO (UK)GBP 7,500,000UKOverturned 2023, reinstated 2025
September 3, 2024AP (NL)EUR 30,500,000NetherlandsUnpaid; threat of +EUR 5.1M

Total: ~EUR 100M in fines, mostly unpaid.

ACLU US settlement (2022): restrictions on sales to private companies. Federal government use continues.

Precedents and implications

For EU law

  • Enforcement problem against companies without EU establishment — a fundamental GDPR gap.
  • noyb criminal complaint — if successful, a landmark precedent. Managers may face court.
  • Dutch AP personal liability (September 2024) — first precedent that a DPA can pursue the personal liability of managers.

For US law

  • Federal preemption — no federal privacy law = no protection. Clearview is legal in the US.
  • State differences — Illinois BIPA effective (ACLU settlement). Other states? Varied.

For Big Tech practice

  • Platforms vs Clearview — Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube sent cease & desist letters to Clearview in 2020. Clearview: ignores. Platforms: do not sue (legally complicated).
  • “Publicly available” ≠ “publicly usable” — precedent that public data is not free to scrape (especially biometrics).

For AI training

  • Precedent for LLM training data — LinkedIn (C05), Meta AI, OpenAI. Everyone scrapes. Difference: Clearview deliberately focuses on biometrics, which triggers GDPR art. 9. LLMs argue “general public consent defense.”

Class actions

  • ACLU v. Clearview AI (Illinois) — 2020–2022, BIPA, settlement with restrictions.
  • Individual lawsuits — mostly Illinois residents.

Conclusions for citizens

What does this mean for me?

If you have ever publicly posted a photo of your face (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, blog, newspaper) — you are probably in the Clearview database. If you have ever ended up in the background of someone else’s photo in a public place (concerts, demonstrations, weddings) — you too. Tens of billions of photos (~30B per Dutch DPA 09/2024; >60B per ICE/CBP materials 2025–2026) = everyone who has a photo online.

American police forces use Clearview in everyday cases. If you ever travel to the US, CBP may recognize your face from Instagram and know who you are before you open your mouth.

How can you protect yourself?

  1. Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) to Clearview — under GDPR (or CCPA):
    • Email: privacy@clearview.ai
    • Attach a selfie for identification
    • Clearview has 30 days to respond (GDPR)
    • You can request: what they know about you + deletion
  2. Result: often “we have no data” (even though they do). Retry or file a complaint with a DPA.
  3. Minimize public photos — private social media accounts.
  4. Fawkes (University of Chicago) — a tool that adds adversarial perturbations to photos, defeating face recognition. Free.
  5. LowKey — a similar tool.
  6. “Reflectacles” glasses — block IR cameras (nighttime CCTV).
  7. Mask in public spaces — but this is getting harder (post-COVID many places ban masks in stores).

For activists / dissidents

  1. Demonstrations — wear a mask, glasses, hat to protect your face.
  2. Face paint, eye patch — may disrupt face recognition.
  3. Watch out for police photos (CCTV, body cams) — they are being scanned.

What rights do I have?

In the EU (GDPR):

  • Art. 15 — right of access. Clearview must respond (in theory).
  • Art. 17 — right to erasure. Clearview must delete.
  • Art. 21 — objection.
  • Art. 22 — not to be subject to automated decision-making (e.g., police arrest on the basis of a Clearview match).
  • Art. 82 — compensation.

In the US:

  • Illinois BIPA — residents can sue individually.
  • California CCPA — right to opt out.
  • TX, NY, VA, IL, CO — state privacy acts.

Where to report?

  • Poland: UODO
  • EU: national DPA, noyb
  • US: ACLU (for Illinois: BIPA assistance)
  • UK: ICO
  • Against false positive arrests: lawyers specializing in civil rights

Note for mediators, lawyers, journalists

False positive arrest victims:

  • A growing problem in the US. African Americans are particularly at risk (algorithms are worse for darker skin).
  • For Polish lawyers: if a client is arrested in the US on the basis of face recognition, an algorithm error may be grounds for defense.

For immigration lawyers:

  • ICE + Clearview = deportations on the basis of a match. If a client in the US is identified by ICE — check whether there was a Clearview match and how confident it was.

For journalists / activists:

  • Your publicly available photos are identifiable. Consider using professional pseudonyms.
  • Tor, Signal for communication.

For family law:

  • A former partner may use Clearview-like services (Pimeyes, publicly available) to track an ex-partner. Cyberstalking.

Context

  • Hoan Ton-That — Clearview’s founder — before Clearview built a “Trump Dating” app (2017) and other controversial projects. Critics: a CEO with a problematic history building global AI surveillance.
  • Peter Thiel — first angel investment of $200,000 in 2017. The total first round of Clearview AI was $8.4M (Kirenaga Partners + Thiel, of which Thiel himself contributed $200k). Thiel is also a co-founder of Palantir (software for the CIA, ICE). A pattern: Thiel invests in companies that serve as interfaces between tech and the surveillance state.
  • Kashmir Hill’s “Your Face Belongs to Us” (2023) — a book regarded as one of the most important works of tech journalism of the last decade. A showcase of how a single anonymous message led to a global debate.
  • Tens of billions of photos — estimates vary by source: ~30B per Dutch DPA (09/2024); >40B per Biometric Update (11/2023); >60B per ICE/CBP materials (2025–2026). For scale: several times more than all people on Earth. Clearview has many times more photos than there are people in the world — most individuals have many photos in the database.
  • “2,200 organizations in 27 countries” — the 2020 leak showed that Clearview was used not only by US police, but by:
    • Macy’s, Walmart, Kohl’s (retail — to identify “shoplifters”)
    • Las Vegas Sands (casinos)
    • NBA, NHL teams (stadium security)
    • Banks (fraud detection)
    • Some foreign intelligence services (undisclosed)
  • ACLU settlement (2022) — the main US victory. Clearview cannot sell to private companies in Illinois, cannot sell to most state/local agencies. But the federal government (FBI, ICE, DHS, CBP, DOD) — still can.
  • ICE contracts USD 9.2M (2025) — shocking in the context of European fines. Shows the regulatory gap between the US and the EU.
  • Clearview’s legal team — many well-known lawyers: Floyd Abrams (constitutional lawyer who defended The New York Times in Pentagon Papers), Paul Clement (former Solicitor General), Jack Mulcaire, Tor Ekeland. Strategy: First Amendment defense — scraping public photos is free speech.
  • noyb criminal complaint (October 2025) — a landmark. Austria has § 63 DSG, which implements GDPR art. 84 (criminal sanctions). If Austrian prosecutors open proceedings, European arrest warrants may apply to Clearview executives traveling to Europe.
  • Max Schrems: “We even run cross-border criminal procedures for stolen bikes, so we hope that the public prosecutor also takes action when the personal data of billions of people was stolen.”
  • UK rollercoaster — ICO fine GBP 7.5M (2022) → overturned (2023, no jurisdiction) → reinstated by the Upper Tribunal (October 2025). Legal ping-pong.
  • Canadian OPC (2020) — the Canadian equivalent of UODO has no power to fine. It could only recommend — Clearview ignored it.
  • Pimeyes, FaceCheck.ID — publicly available face recognition (for EUR 30/month). Used by stalkers. Clearview clones — smaller databases, but sufficient for individual stalking.
  • Fawkes / LowKey — defensive technologies from universities (Chicago, MIT). They add adversarial noise to a photo before publication. Invisible to humans, they disrupt face recognition.
  • Polish context — UODO has never opened proceedings against Clearview (the case is within the competence of multiple DPAs). Polish citizens are in the Clearview database — all public Facebook/Instagram photos.
  • “Face is identifier of last resort” — a slogan of critics. You can change a password, you can change a phone number, you cannot change your face. Once leaked = permanently leaked.
  • Gender / race bias — face recognition algorithms are worse for women, non-white people, and the elderly. False positive rate is 10x higher for Black women than for white men (NIST study 2019). A classic case of algorithmic bias.
  • Paper “Gender Shades” (Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, MIT, 2018) — a landmark study on bias in face recognition. Influenced IBM’s decision to withdraw face recognition (2020). Clearview did not withdraw.
  • Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube cease & desist (2020) — they sent cease-and-desist demands to Clearview. Clearview ignores. The platforms do not sue — complex legal questions (who has the right to sue for scraping publicly available data?).

Sources

  1. Kashmir Hill, “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It”, The New York Times, January 18, 2020. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

  2. Kashmir Hill, Your Face Belongs to Us, Random House, 2023.

  3. Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), decision against Clearview, October 2022.

  4. Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali (Italy), decision February 2022.

  5. Hellenic Data Protection Authority (HDPA, Greece), decision July 2022.

  6. Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (Dutch DPA), decision September 2024.

  7. UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), decision May 2022; Upper Tribunal October 2025.

  8. noyb, “Criminal complaint against facial recognition company Clearview AI”, October 2025.

  9. Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, report on Clearview, 2020.

  10. ACLU v. Clearview AI, Illinois BIPA settlement, 2022.

  11. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “Face Recognition Vendor Test Part 3: Demographic Effects”, 2019.

  12. Buolamwini, Gebru, “Gender Shades”, MIT Media Lab, 2018.

  13. Privacy International, numerous reports 2020–2025.

  14. Clearview AI corporate statements, 2020–2026.

  15. US government contracts — ICE, CBP agreements, 2025–2026.

Last updated: 2026-04-18 Card in database: E05_clearview_ai.md

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