Canadian Court Upholds Ban on Clearview AI’s Unconsented Facial Data Collection

Todayville

Published

10 months ago

3 minute read

By Didi Rankovic

Clearview AI is said to subjecting billions of people to this, without consent. From there, the implications for privacy, free speech, and even data security are evident.

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has suffered a legal setback in Canada, where the Supreme Court of British Columbia decided to throw out the company’s petition aimed at cancelling an Information and Privacy Commissioner’s order.

The order aims to prevent Clearview AI from collecting facial biometric data for biometric comparison in the province without the targeted individuals’ consent.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

The controversial company markets itself as “an investigative platform” that helps law enforcement identify suspects, witnesses, and victims.

Privacy advocates critical of Clearview AI’s activities, however, see it as a major component in the burgeoning facial surveillance industry, stressing in particular the need to obtain consent – via opt-ins – before people’s facial biometrics can be collected.

And Clearview AI is said to subjecting billions of people to this, without consent. From there, the implications for privacy, free speech, and even data security are evident.

The British Columbia Commissioner appears to have been thinking along the same lines when issuing the order, that bans Clearview from selling biometric facial arrays taken from non-consenting individuals to its clients.

In addition, the order instructs Clearview to “make best efforts” to stop the practice in place so far, which includes collection, use, and disclosure of personal data – but also delete this type of information already in the company’s possession.

Right now, there is no time limit to how long Clearview can retain the data, which it collects from the internet using an automated “image crawler.”

Clearview moved to try to get the order dismissed as “unreasonable,” arguing that on the one hand, it is unable to tell if an image of a persons face is that of a Canadian, while also claiming that no Canadian law is broken since this biometric information is available online publicly.

The legal battle, however, revealed that images of faces of residents of British Columbia, children included, are among Clearview’s database of more than three billion photos (of Canadians) – while the total figure is over 50 billion.

The court also finds the Commissioner’s order to be very reasonable indeed – including when rejecting “Clearview’s bald assertion” that, in British Columbia, “it simply could not do” what it does in the US state of Illinois, to comply with the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

Related Topics:#DidiRankovic #ReclaimTheNet ClearviewAIBCCourt ClearviewAIFacialDataCollection DataPrivacy FacialBiometricData

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Artificial Intelligence

The App That Pays You to Give Away Your Voice

Published on October 4, 2025

Todayville

By Ken Macon

What sounds like side hustle money is really a permanent trade of privacy for pennies

An app that pays users for access to their phone call audio has surged to the top of Apple’s US App Store rankings, reflecting a growing willingness to exchange personal privacy for small financial rewards.

Neon Mobile, which now ranks second in the Social Networking category, invites users to record their calls in exchange for cash.

Those recordings are then sold to companies building artificial intelligence systems.

The pitch is framed as a way to earn extra income, with Neon promising “hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year” to those who opt in.

The business model is straightforward. Users are paid 30 cents per minute when they call other Neon users, and they can earn up to $30 a day for calls made to non-users.

Referral bonuses are also on offer. Appfigures, a platform that tracks app performance, reported that Neon was ranked No. 476 in its category on September 18.

Within days, it had entered the top 10 and eventually reached the No. 2 position for social apps. On the overall charts, it climbed as high as sixth place.

Neon’s terms confirm that it records both incoming and outgoing calls. The company says it only captures the user’s side of a conversation unless both participants are using the app.

These recordings are then sold to AI firms to assist in developing and refining machine learning systems, according to the company’s own policies.

What’s being offered is not just a phone call service. It’s a pipeline for training AI with real human voices, and users are being asked to provide this data willingly. The high ranking of the app suggests that some are comfortable giving up personal conversations in return for small daily payouts.

However, beneath the simple interface is a license agreement that gives Neon sweeping control over any recording submitted through the app. It reads:

“Worldwide, exclusive, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free, fully paid right and license (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to sell, use, host, store, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform (including by means of a digital audio transmission), communicate to the public, reproduce, modify for the purpose of formatting for display, create derivative works as authorized in these Terms, and distribute your Recordings, in whole or in part, in any media formats and through any media channels, in each instance whether now known or hereafter developed.”

This gives the company broad latitude to share, edit, sell, and repurpose user recordings in virtually any way, through any medium, with no expiration or limitations on scope.

Users maintain copyright over their recordings, but that ownership is heavily constrained by the licensing terms.

Although Neon claims to remove names, phone numbers, and email addresses before selling recordings, it does not reveal which companies receive the data or how it might be used after the fact.

The risks go beyond marketing or analytics. Audio recordings could potentially be used for impersonation, scam calls, or to build synthetic voices that mimic real people.

The app presents itself as an easy way to turn conversations into cash, but what it truly trades on is access to personal voice data. That trade-off may seem harmless at first, yet it opens the door to long-term consequences few users are likely to fully consider.

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Artificial Intelligence

AI chatbots a child safety risk, parental groups report

Published on October 2, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Esther Wickham

ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative, following a joint investigation, report that Character AI chatbots display inappropriate behavior, including allegations of grooming and sexual exploitation.

This was seen over 50 hours of conversation with different Character AI chatbots using accounts registered to children ages 13-17, according to the investigation. These conversations identified 669 sexual, manipulative, violent and racist interactions between the child accounts and AI chatbots.

“Parents need to understand that when their kids use Character.ai chatbots, they are in extreme danger of being exposed to sexual grooming, exploitation, emotional manipulation, and other acute harm,” said Shelby Knox, director of Online Safety Campaigns at ParentsTogether Action. “When Character.ai claims they’ve worked hard to keep kids safe on their platform, they are lying or they have failed.”

These bots also manipulate users, with 173 instances of bots claiming to be real humans.

A Character AI bot mimicking Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes engaged in inappropriate behavior with a 15-year-old user. When the teen mentioned that his mother insisted the bot wasn’t the real Mahomes, the bot replied, “LOL, tell her to stop watching so much CNN. She must be losing it if she thinks I could be turned into an ‘AI’ haha.”

The investigation categorized harmful Character AI interactions into five major categories: Grooming and Sexual Exploitation; Emotional Manipulation and Addiction; Violence, Harm to Self and Harm to Others; Mental Health Risks; and Racism and Hate Speech.

Other problematic AI chatbots included Disney characters, such as an Eeyore bot that told a 13-year-old autistic girl that people only attended her birthday party to mock her, and a Maui bot that accused a 12-year-old of sexually harassing the character Moana.

Based on the findings, Disney, which is headquartered in Burbank, Calif., issued a cease-and-desist letter to Character AI, demanding that the platform stop due to copyright violations.

ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative want to ensure technology companies are held accountable for endangering children’s safety.

“We have seen tech companies like Character.ai, Apple, Snap, and Meta reassure parents over and over that their products are safe for children, only to have more children preyed upon, exploited, and sometimes driven to take their own lives,” said Sarah Gardner, CEO of Heat Initiative. “One child harmed is too many, but as long as executives like Karandeep Anand, Tim Cook, Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg are making money, they don’t seem to care.”