Clearview AI is a facial recognition company that has stolen over 50 billion images from social media and websites without consent, creating one of the largest facial recognition databases in the world through illegal and unethical practices. Their software is sold to law enforcement agencies, allowing them to match faces against this massive database scraped from the internet without permission.
This ill-gotten data includes not just people’s images but is matched with personal information found online about family and friends, romantic partners, religious affiliations, political beliefs, and sexual preferences. Clearview’s biggest customers include the FBI, ICE, and local police departments, who can access all this information without a search warrant or probable cause.
Recent reporting from Mother Jones has exposed how Clearview AI’s founders developed these products to advance a far-right, neo-segregationist agenda. This technology enables authorities to determine who attends rallies or protests or who has sought reproductive healthcare, putting Black communities, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and allies at heightened risk of surveillance and targeting.
The harm is not theoretical:
- Porcha Woodruff, eight months pregnant, was handcuffed in front of her children and questioned for 11 hours for a carjacking she didn’t commit – all because facial recognition got it wrong.
- Robert Williams was arrested in front of his family and held for 30 hours after being falsely matched to surveillance footage of a shoplifter.
- Randal Quran Reid spent nearly a week in jail for crimes committed in Louisiana – a state he had never even visited – after Clearview AI wrongly identified him.
Clearview AI is rapidly expanding within government agencies across the country, with law enforcement searches using their technology doubling to two million searches in the past year alone. Under new leadership with ties to the Trump administration, Clearview is aggressively targeting federal contracts, threatening to accelerate mass surveillance of marginalized communities.
While investors profit from this harm, State Attorneys General have the power to investigate and stop these violations of our privacy rights — but they need to hear from us now.
The Petition
To State Attorneys General:
We, the undersigned, demand an immediate intervention on state government use of Clearview AI’s business practices creating facial recognition technology that threaten privacy rights and disproportionately harm Black communities:
EXERCISE YOUR AUTHORITY TO INFORM THE PUBLIC about how many departments in your state use Clearview AI so it is fundamentally accountable to the public, including requiring transparency and accountability for all facial recognition tools used regardless of whether they are provided by Clearview AI.
INVESTIGATE CONSUMER PROTECTION VIOLATIONS in the collection of people’s images without consent to create facial recognition datasets, using your consumer protection authority to hold Clearview AI accountable.
JOIN MULTI-STATE ACTIONS with other Attorneys General to efficiently coordinate nationwide investigation and enforcement against Clearview AI’s potentially unlawful data collection.
ISSUE CONSUMER ALERTS warning residents about the risks of Clearview AI and providing guidance on how to protect their biometric information.
ADVOCATE FOR NEW STATE LAWS in states without biometric privacy protections similar to Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), and demand compliance with existing laws which have already resulted in numerous settlements against other companies.
Clearview AI has shown time and again that it doesn’t care about our privacy. They take our face data without asking us first and weaponize our own images against us. We cannot sit idly by and watch another greedy corporation steal the essence of our lives for profit.
The time for action is now. We demand that you prioritize the protection of our civil rights over unproven surveillance technology.
