Legal basis

Varies by state; several states and 20+ cities have banned or restricted police facial recognition

Oversight

Fragmented. State and city-level restrictions in some jurisdictions, but no single federal framework.

Clearview markets its database of images scraped from the web as an investigative lead generation tool, and states that results are indicative rather than definitive matches requiring further verification. The roughly 3,100 US agency figure originates from the company itself and should be read as a historical vendor estimate, not a verified current count. A caution on attribution that matters for accuracy: not every US facial recognition wrongful arrest is a Clearview case, and this entry should not absorb them. The documented Clearview-attributed cases are Randal Quran Reid (Georgia, arrested for a Louisiana offence he had no connection to) and a Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office case that led to a $200,000 settlement. By contrast, the June 2026 Florida suit filed by the ACLU on behalf of Robert Dillon concerns Pinellas County's FACES system, not Clearview, and the ACLU's April 2026 update identifying a fourteenth publicly known US wrongful arrest does not attribute a vendor in most cases. Legal position: the Seventh Circuit overturned the class settlement in the Illinois BIPA consumer privacy litigation on 13 July 2026. Federal contracting continues. ICE Homeland Security Investigations signed a $9.2m contract in September 2025; US Customs and Border Protection signed a one-year $225,000 contract on 11 February 2026 for tactical targeting operations; and the US Army's 1st Special Forces Command has a contract with a base period running March 2026 to March 2027, with options to 2030 and a total potential value of $339,415.

Source: Company statements; ACLU documentation of wrongful arrest cases; contract reporting · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

Privacy Act (federal public sector); found in breach

Oversight

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Special Report to Parliament

The RCMP's use of Clearview AI ended after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner found in 2021 that it violated the federal Privacy Act, since Clearview's underlying image collection was itself unlawful. Clearview ceased Canadian operations shortly afterward. In response, the RCMP established the National Technology Onboarding Program (NTOP) in 2021 to centralise assessment of new operational technologies. The RCMP's own 2026 transparency publication states it currently uses only 'face matching' (grouping and sorting lawfully obtained images and video, not searching to identify an unknown individual) rather than full facial identification, and that it does not use facial recognition on footage captured by its drone fleet. Separately, other Canadian police services have moved into live and image-search facial recognition; see the Edmonton, York/Peel and Toronto entries.

Source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Special Report to Parliament · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

Privacy Act 1988; Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code

Oversight

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), joint investigation with UK ICO

This trial was run specifically 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. Separately, and consistent with the free-trial period documented for other Australian police services in this entry, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia police also had access during the same general window.

Source: Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, Commissioner-initiated investigation determination · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

None in place at the time; this absence is what the regulatory reprimand below addresses

Oversight

Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman, who reprimanded the National Police Board

Finland's National Bureau of Investigation ran approximately 120 Clearview AI searches in early 2020 while trying to identify possible victims in child sexual abuse material, producing one hit, and separately tested Arachnid for the same purpose; police concluded Clearview was unsuitable for the task. The Finnish Data Protection Ombudsman subsequently reprimanded the National Police Board because the trial had taken place without appropriate controller approval or supervision.

Source: Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman (Finland), statutory reprimand · last checked 2026-08-25