Oakland Privacy’s 2022 Privacy Rights Fellow and current legislative advocate Yadi Younse traveled halfway across the country to object to a proposed class action settlement against Clearview AI, the notorious facial recognition company that scraped the Internet to produce what they claim is a database of 30 billion faceprints (almost 4x the population of the entire world) and sell it for profit.
Younse got 3 minutes in front of a judge to object to the settlement and called out the lack of meaningful relief for class members.
Clearview AI is not ordered to cease and desist from further scraping the images of class members from the Internet nor do they have to pay any immediate compensation. Instead, class members are forced to become hostile shareholders in the company, owning a non-majority stake, and can only be compensated in the event of an initial public offering or a company sale.
Privacy activists, who were coordinated with assistance from Just Futures Law, were joined by the attorney generals of 23 states who submitted a friend of the court brief objecting to the settlement. Illinois federal judge Sharon Coleman has taken the final approval of the settlement under advisement.
Read Oakland Privacy’s press release here.
