Photo credit: Pourya Gohari/Unsplash 

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (Dutch DPA) imposed a fine of $33.25 million on Clearview AI, an American company that offers facial recognition services, for building an illegal database with “billions of photos of faces, including of Dutch people.” 

According to the press release published on Sept. 3, Clearview AI has an illegal database of more than 30 billion photos of people, without their knowledge or their consent. When Clearview claimed they provide intelligence and investigative services outside the European Union, Dutch DPA’s chairman Aleid Wolfsen said, “That is bad enough as it is.”

Wolfsen warned the community not to use Clearview since the American company violated the privacy law General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on several points. Moreover, Wolfsen warned Dutch organizations that using Clearview may receive hefty fines from the Dutch DPA.

The Dutch regulator noticed that the American company continued to violate privacy law after the investigation. For this reason, the Dutch DPA has ordered Clearview “to stop these violations” and failure to comply with the order will result in a total maximum amount of 5.1 million euros on top of the fine. 

The government authority claimed that Clearview has already been fined “at various earlier occasions,” and continues to violate the law. Dutch DPA will continue with its investigation to decide whether “the directors of the company can be held personally responsible for the violations.”

Concluding his statements regarding ClearView’s violation, Wolfsen said, “Such company cannot continue to violate the rights of Europeans and get away with it. Certainly not in this serious manner and on this massive scale.” “We are now going to investigate if we can hold the management of the company personally liable and fine them for directing those violations. ”

‍