Vermont sues Clearview, alleging “oppressive, unscrupulous” practices

Enlarge / The everything is watching, and Clearview's collecting the images. (credit: KENGKAT | Getty Images)

Clearview AI's bread and butter is a tool providing facial recognition on a massive scale to law enforcement, federal agencies, private companies, and-apparently-nosy billionaires. The company has achieved this reportedly by scraping more or less the entire public Internet to assemble a database of more than 3 billion images. Now that there are spotlights on the secretive firm, however, Clearview is facing a barrage of lawsuits trying to stop it in its tracks.

The latest comes from Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan, who filed suit against Clearview this week claiming violations of multiple state laws.

The complaint (PDF) alleges that Clearview, which is registered as a data broker under Vermont's Data Broker Law, "unlawfully acquires data from consumers and business concerns" in Vermont.

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