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June 10, 2025

Over 2,200 police departments use Clearview AI facial recognition

Regulatory Oversight
Brennan Center for Justice
Biometric Update
www.buzzfeednews.com
Wikipedia
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2,200+ police agencies use Clearview AI for instant facial recognition searches.

Over 2,200 U.S. law enforcement agencies use Clearview AI’s smartphone app for instant facial recognition.

Clearview AI conducted over 2 million facial recognition searches in 2024 without formal departmental oversight or warrant requirements.

Officers have used the technology to identify people from protest photos, traffic cameras, or social media images without court approval.

Independent testing and civil-liberties analyses show higher error rates for Black Americans, leading to disproportionate misidentifications.

Many police departments adopted Clearview AI without public hearings, city council votes, or community input.

Clearview AI offered free trials directly to individual officers, enabling use outside of formal departmental policy frameworks.

FOIA-obtained documents revealed multi-year vendor contracts between Clearview AI and the NYPD, despite earlier denials of an institutional relationship.

📜Constitutional Law✊Civil Rights🏙️Local Issues⚖️Justice

Test Your Knowledge

10
Q1

What federal legislation would halt facial recognition use by law enforcement until new oversight commissions report?

Q2

Clearview AI claims their technology helps police identify what types of people?

Q3

What Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinances aim to achieve?

Q4

Clearview AI encourages police adoption by offering what to individual officers rather than departments?

Q5

The NYPD initially denied having an institutional relationship with Clearview but documents revealed what?

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People, bills, and sources

Hoan Ton-That

Founder and former chief executive

Clare Garvie

Researcher, Center on Privacy & Technology

What you can do

1

Contact your federal and state representatives to ask about policies governing law enforcement use of facial recognition.

2

Track the status of related bills—such as the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act—on congress.gov by searching its title (no official bill number yet).

3

Monitor local city council agendas and submit public comments when police technology procurement is on the docket.

4

Consult aclu.org and eff.org for guides on digital privacy rights and model surveillance-oversight ordinances (e.g., CCOPS).

5

Use official sites like congress.gov and whitehouse.gov to review proposed federal rules and executive orders on biometric surveillance.

6

Stay informed through local watchdog groups and municipal websites about community control over police surveillance initiatives.