"The Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC)... commenced a joint investigation1 to examine whether Clearview AI, Inc.’s ('Clearview') collection, use and disclosure of the personal information by means of its facial recognition tool complied with federal and provincial privacy laws applicable to the private sector.
...the Offices determined that Clearview collected, used and disclosed the personal information of individuals in Canada for inappropriate purposes, which cannot be rendered appropriate via consent. We found that the mass collection of images and creation of biometric facial recognition arrays by Clearview, for its stated purpose of providing a service to law enforcement personnel, and use by others via trial accounts, represents the mass identification and surveillance of individuals by a private entity in the course of commercial activity. We found Clearview’s purposes to be inappropriate where they: (i) are unrelated to the purposes for which those images were originally posted; (ii) will often be to the detriment of the individual whose images are captured; and (iii) create the risk of significant harm to those individuals, the vast majority of whom have never been and will never be implicated in a crime. Furthermore, it collected images in an unreasonable manner, via indiscriminate scraping of publicly accessible websites."