Last August, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation signed a year-long, $8,994 contract with New York-based Clearview AI to allow designated officials to conduct facial-recognition searches using the company’s database, which includes billions of photos obtained from publicly available sources such as news media, mugshots, and public social media accounts.
Clearview AI has been repeatedly accused in court of getting those photos without the consent of the people portrayed in them. Last May, the company settled a lawsuit in Illinois by agreeing to stop providing its database to law-enforcement and government agencies in that state for five years, though the agreement doesn’t prevent Clearview AI from doing business with other states. Similar lawsuits have been filed in California and Vermont.
Last year, Clearview AI was fined 20 million euros by France’s privacy regulator for “unlawful processing of personal data,” not respecting individuals’ rights and ignoring an order to stop collecting French citizens’ data. A British government agency fined Clearview AI $9.4 million a few months prior and ordered it to delete and stop collecting data on U.K. residents after finding it broke several data-protection laws in the country.
So far, 21 Ohio BCI officials have used Clearview AI software in 17 BCI and organized-crime investigations, according to Steve Irwin, a spokesman for Attorney General Dave Yost. Those cases involved unidentified human remains, homicides, drug trafficking, and Internet crimes against children, he said. Unlike the previous facial-recognition program, the state’s contract with Clearview AI is assisting only BCI investigations, not those of federal or local law enforcement.
Irwin said BCI agents have had “mixed results” with Clearview AI results, adding he would not comment on active investigations or describe law enforcement techniques.
“Clearview AI cannot itself identify any person,” Irwin said in a statement. “Rather, it provides an investigator a possible identity of an individual from the image searched. The results are merely an investigative lead that must then be followed up on by the investigator.”
As for Clearview AI’s past, Irwin said, “We are aware of past issues in other states and were assured by the company that changes were made. We have policies in place to prevent misuse and abuse and are constantly monitoring the effective use of the technology during the one-year trial period.” Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer has reached out to Irwin for more details about the assurances given by Clearview AI.
In a statement, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That said the company’s database of publicly available images “is lawfully collected, just like any other search engine like Google.” Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer has reached out to a Clearview AI spokeswoman for comment specifically about the lawsuits and fine.
State officials’ use of facial recognition software dates back a decade, when the state created a program that included access to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database of driver’s licenses and state ID photos taken through 2011.
In 2019, after the Washington Post reported that Ohio and other states offered access to driver’s license photos to the FBI and other federal agencies, Yost restricted its use and briefly suspended the program until officials could get training in how to properly use it. He also created a facial-recognition task force that, while still in existence, hasn’t met since they issued a list of recommendations in January 2020 that have since been mostly adopted.
At that time, Yost said BCI would launch an improved facial-recognition system in 2020 with updated driver’s license photos and mugshots. But that replacement – part of the $25 million Ohio Biometric Identification System, or OBIS – isn’t yet capable of conducting facial-recognition searches, and it’s still unclear when it will, Irwin said.
No decision has yet been made about whether to continue using Clearview AI’s system once OBIS’ facial-recognition program is activated, he said.
In 2019 and 2020, Irwin said, BCI only conducted “limited searches” using the state’s old facial-recognition program. After state officials stopped using the old program altogether in late 2020, BCI didn’t conduct any facial-recognition searches until Clearview AI was hired in August 2022, according to Irwin.
Neither BCI nor Clearview AI currently have access to the Ohio BMV’s photo database, he said.
When asked why BCI signed a contract with Clearview AI instead of waiting for the OBIS facial-recognition system to come online, Irwin said BCI wanted “to evaluate its usefulness and to regain facial recognition capabilities for its own investigations.”
“Facial recognition is an important investigatory tool for law enforcement and this is a time when it makes sense to test the proficiencies of another product,” Irwin added. “Although Clearview AI is not a replacement (since it uses public images and access is not extended to local law enforcement), it has the potential to provide investigative leads while the new system is being developed and made operational.”
Gary Daniels of the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that his group believes that government use of facial-recognition technology should be banned altogether.
“Any improvement to laws or policies short of a ban is unsatisfactory given this technology’s unprecedented threats to fundamental personal freedoms,” Daniels said. “We believe that is how to protect Ohioans and their rights.”
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