Greek regulator fines Clearview €20M and orders biometric data deleted

Greece’s Hellenic Data Protection Authority has fined US biometric company Clearview AI for violating several articles of the European Union’s General Data Protection Rule with its facial recognition service, reported news outlet Biometric Update.

According to the media outlet, the Greek regulator was responding to a complaint filed by Homo Digitalis and the subject of the data, Marina Zacharopoulou.

‘The decision refers to a series of events in 2021, beginning with Zacharopoulou’s March request to know what data of hers was in Clearview’s database of images scraped from public internet pages. The request references Article 15 of the GDPR.

‘The request was acknowledged, though whether the reply was manual or not is not specified in the decision. Clearview responded to a reminder email in April, saying it could not find the original request, and asked for a photo to use in the process, according to the Greek agency. The company notes a formatting issue which may have been behind the difficulty finding the initial email.

‘At that point, Zacharopoulou turned to the government, the complaint alleges.’