Greece slaps US firm with fine for privacy breach

In a landmark decision, Greece’s Data Protection Authority imposed a 20-million-euro fine on US company Clearview AI, the developer of facial recognition software that has amassed a database of more than 3 billion images of people from Facebook, Instagram and other websites.

The authority reasoned that although the company does not operate in Greece, nor has a representative in the EU, it has breached general data protection regulations.

The decision follows an action in May 2021 brought by a coalition of NGOs, including Greece’s Homo Digitalis, against Clearview AI to data authorities in Greece, Austria, France, Italy and the UK to determine its compliance with cyber privacy rules. 

The Greek authority ruled that no criteria for excluding specific images are applied when the company collects photos and that scanning is done “indiscriminately, with no geographical selection criterion applied.”