Clearview’s Face Surveillance Shows Why We Need a Strong Federal Consumer Privacy Law
The New York Times’ recent story on Clearview AI, maker of a secretive facial recognition app that markets its product to law enforcement, has raised critical questions about what can be done to protect our privacy online. Clearview claims to have amassed a dataset of over three billion face images by scraping websites like Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo.
The solution to the Clearview problem is clear: comprehensive federal privacy legislation that gives consumers real power over their data and real power to fight back.
To ensure that companies like Clearview don’t collect consumers’ personal data without their knowledge or consent, and to provide effective recourse against companies that do, we need comprehensive federal consumer data privacy legislation. We need to require private companies that collect, use, retain, or share information about us—including our face prints or other biometric information—to get informed opt-in consent before doing so. And we need to give consumers the right to bring their own lawsuits against the companies that fail to do so.
