EPIC: “A legal settlement filed in ACLU v. Clearview AI will prohibit Clearview from selling access to its facial recognition database to companies and private individuals. The case was brought under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which allows private right of actions. EPIC previously filed an amicus brief before the 9th Circuit defending an individual’s right to sue companies who violate BIPA and other privacy laws. An EPIC Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has obtained thousands of pages of documents related to ICE’s use of Clearview and other facial recognition services, including documents that suggest ICE at least considered using facial recognition to track people who it thought threatened their agents.

ZDNET: “In a landmark settlement, facial recognition company Clearview AI, known for downloading billions of user photos from social media and other websites to build a face-search database for use by law enforcement, has agreed to cease sales to private companies and individuals in the United States. Filed in Illinois’ federal court on Monday, the settlement marks the most significant action against the New York-based company to date, and reigns in a technology that has reportedly been used by Ukraine to track “people of interest” during the ongoing Russian invasion.  The lawsuit was brought by the non-profit American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Mujeres Latinas en Acción, among others, in 2020 over alleged violations of an Illinois digital privacy law, with the settlement pending approval by a federal judge. Adopted in 2008, the Illinois law, known as the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), has so far led to several key tech-privacy settlements, including a $550 million settlement from Facebook related to its facial recognition use. Although Clearview AI has agreed to stop selling its services to the Illinois government and local police services for five years, the company will continue to offer its services to other law enforcement and federal agencies, and government contractors outside of Illinois. Despite this, Linda Xóchitl Tortolero, president and CEO of Mujeres Latinas en Acción, a Chicago-based non-profit, claimed in a statement that the settlement was a “big win for the most vulnerable people in Illinois”…”