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The British Columbia Court of Appeal has rejected a bid by U.S. facial recognition company Clearview AI to overturn a finding that found the company was subject to Canadian privacy laws, even though it does not operate in the country.
The ruling released this week says Clearview AI was investigated by information and privacy commissioners in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec and Canada after it began selling facial recognition services to Canadian customers in 2020.
After an investigation found that the company had violated state and federal privacy laws, Clearview announced it was withdrawing from the Canadian market during the investigation.
B.C.’s Privacy Commissioner has ordered the company to stop providing facial recognition services and delete the information in 2021 for using images collected from residents without their consent.
The company applied for a judicial review in the British Columbia Supreme Court, but the judge rejected the company’s argument that provincial law did not apply to Clearview, finding that the facial data collected online from British Columbians “constitutes a substantial and material connection between Clearview and the province.”
Clearview’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the court’s findings.
In its ruling, the company argued that the law should not cross state lines, but the appeals court accepted the company’s argument that the law’s “constitutional inapplicability means that it and other companies that use global search engines to obtain personal information on the Internet are not subject to domestic privacy laws.”
“This would seriously undermine the ability of jurisdictions such as B.C. to protect personal information on the internet,” the ruling said.
