Australia, Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation
Australian Federal Police
Clearview AI facial recognition (free trial), supplied by Clearview AI
DiscontinuedRegulator findingPAI-FE3F64A7
- Body
- Australian Federal Police
- Country
- Australia
- Area
- Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation
- Technology
- Clearview AI facial recognition (free trial)
- Supplier
- Clearview AI
- Status
- Discontinued
Use has ended, on the evidence of a public source. - Stage
- Withdrawn
- Since
- 2019
- Legal basis
- Privacy Act 1988; Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code
- Oversight
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), joint investigation with UK ICO
- Evidence
- Regulator finding
Data protection authority, inspectorate or oversight body - Source
- Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, Commissioner-initiated investigation determination
- Last checked
- Record code
PAI-FE3F64A7
Notes
This trial was run by the Australian Federal Police's Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), not the AFP generally. The AFP's own account, given in a Senate Estimates brief, states ACCCE personnel ran a limited pilot from November 2019 to January 2020, testing whether Clearview could match side-profile photographs of possible child exploitation victims against frontal reference images; temporary accounts were terminated in March 2020. The Australian Information Commissioner subsequently found the AFP had failed to comply with its privacy obligations, including a requirement to complete a privacy impact assessment before the trial.
Correction, October 2026. This record previously also named Queensland, Victoria and South Australia police. Email addresses from those forces appeared on a leaked Clearview client list in 2020, but none confirmed use: Queensland Police and Victoria Police declined to comment on operational methods and South Australia Police denied using it (Information Age, 3 March 2020). They are not recorded.