RCMP violated Privacy Act: OPC; RCMP lied: Angus

Four months after the federal privacy watchdog declared that Clearview AI engaged in illegal mass surveillance on behalf of the RCMP, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien Thursday declared that the RCMP itself also broke the law. For NDP MP Charlie Angus, the release of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's (OPC) report also meant "the RCMP lied." "They lied to the Canadian public, they lied to the Privacy Commissioner," Angus said in a Thursday afternoon online press conference, referring to the RCMP's initial denial -- followed by an admission -- that it was using Clearview’s facial recognition technology. Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Therrien said that his office's investigation revealed "serious and systemic gaps in the RCMP's policies and systems to track and identify, assess, and control novel collection of personal information through new technologies." "In fact, there were no such systems," he said. While certain surveillance must be allowed in the interest of law enforcement and investigation, Therrien added, "individuals do not forego their right to privacy merely by living and moving in the world in ways that reveal their face to others, or that may enable their image to be captured on camera." U.S.-based Clearview was accused of scraping some three billion images of faces and corresponding biometric identifiers off of publicly accessible information on the internet such as social media. Users of the technology — in Canada, mostly police — could then upload an image to be matched against the database, and then directed toward the original source of images. In the Thursday report, the OPC said that it was "concerned that the RCMP at first erroneously told our office it was not using Clearview AI." "When it later acknowledged its use, it said publicly it had only used the company’s technology in a limited way, primarily for identifying, locating and rescuing children who have been, or are, victims of online sexual abuse," the report read. However, the OPC found that according to records it had obtained from Clearview AI, approximately six per cent of the 521 RCMP searches of the technology could be linked to the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre, while 85 per cent of the searches "are not accounted for at all by the RCMP." "In this context, the purposes for which the involved RCMP staff conducted these searches remains unknown," the OPC said in its report. Angus said Thursday that the RCMP's conduct was "not acceptable." The RCMP "lied about how they used it. When they were caught, they said they were only using it in child exploitation cases, but we know now that they only used in child exploitation cases in a very small percentage," Angus said. "How they used it and what they used it for in a vast majority of other cases, we have no idea." Asked during his own press conference whether or not he felt the RCMP had lied, Therrien stopped short. "The RCMP headquarters -- let's put it that way -- did not know necessarily that some of its officers were testing this technology, but at the same time the RCMP had a handful of accounts for Clearview, the RCMP as an institution, I'll leave it at that," he told reporters. In a release accompanying the report, Therrien said that the "data involved in speaks to the very core of individual identity and as both commercial and government use of the technology expands, it raises important questions about the kind of society we want to live in." Alongside the release of the report, the OPC also launched a consultation Thursday on draft guidance for policy departments and their use of facial recognition technology, and is seeking feedback before Oct. 15. Clearview AI pulled its technology from the Canadian market following the OPC's announcement of twin investigations into the company and the RCMP last year. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Hannah Daley at hdaley@thewirereport.ca

RCMP violated Privacy Act: OPC; RCMP lied: Angus

News | June 10, 2021

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RCMP violated Privacy Act: OPC; RCMP lied: Angus

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