A federal senator has called on the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to explain why officials secretly met with controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI just months after Australia’s privacy watchdog slammed the agency for using its technology.
Clearview AI is an American tech company founded by Australian Hoan Ton-That that became globally notorious for its facial recognition technology which lets users search for matches among its database of billions of illegally obtained images scraped from public internet sites such as social media platforms.
The company, which sold its technology to thousands of customers including law enforcement agencies, has been the subject of numerous lawsuits and privacy penalties around the world, including by the office of the Australian information commissioner.
In December 2021, information and privacy commissioner Angelene Falk lambasted the AFP for interfering in Australians’ privacy by using Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology without first conducting a privacy impact statement, breaching government-wide privacy rules.
But emails obtained via a freedom of information request show AFP and Clearview AI staff organising a meeting in May 2022. On May 16, an operations manager for the AFP’s Australian centre to counter child exploitation emailed a Clearview AI staff member with the subject line: “FRT [Facial Recognition Technology] Study In Australia”.
“Meeting went well and the representatives would love to have the presentation from [redacted],” they wrote, with some information about a meeting scheduled for early July 2022. A day later, a Clearview AI staff member whose email address identified them as a “government affairs/executive assistant” replied saying they would set aside time. They also asked to set up a phone call later in the week.
Neither organisation answered questions from Crikey about why their staff met, only to deny that the AFP is a customer of Clearview AI.
“The AFP does not use Clearview AI or utilise any other agency to do so on our behalf,” an AFP spokesperson replied. “Clearview AI does not have any customers in Australia. It only collects data from the public internet to be used by law enforcement for solving crimes, such as money laundering, drug trafficking and child abuse,” Hoan Ton-That responded in an email to Crikey.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge questioned what legitimate reasons the AFP could have for meeting with Clearview AI.
“This is a high-risk privacy environment with artificial intelligence being used to link extremely personal data with facial recognition technology and it’s an area where the AFP has already committed serious privacy breaches,” Shoebridge told Crikey.
While he intended to use the powers of the Senate and FOI to continue to find out more information about the use of facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence — such as the Auror crime intelligence platform used by police in the ACT — Shoebridge called on the AFP to come clean about the meeting with the infamous tech company.
“Right now the public deserves a full explanation that identifies what their meeting with Clearview AI was about,” he said.
