The Clearview Database That's Still Scraping: DOJ Can't Stop It #Shorts

Our Take

Credit to Tech Exposed for packing a real point into a short: enforcement orders against facial recognition companies look good in a press release and do almost nothing in practice. Clearview AI has been fined by European regulators, sued by state AGs, and banned outright in some jurisdictions — and the video's core claim is that the scraping and sales to law enforcement just keep rolling. Whether or not every technical workaround plays out exactly as described, the broader pattern is undeniable: companies that build their business on nonconsensual biometric collection treat legal losses as a cost of doing business, not a reason to stop.

This matters because Clearview isn't an isolated bad actor — it's a preview of what happens when surveillance infrastructure gets deeply embedded into policing before the public or lawmakers fully understand it. Flock Safety's ALPR network followed the same playbook: deploy fast, get hundreds of police departments dependent on the data, then treat any pushback as an inconvenience to be managed with PR rather than genuine accountability. Faces today, plates and driving patterns already, and whatever biometric or behavioral data point comes next tomorrow — the business model is the same regardless of the sensor.

If regulators can't make a shutdown order stick against a company this notorious, the fight has to happen locally too — at city councils, police commissions, and public records requests that force transparency Clearview-style companies and Flock alike would rather avoid. Check our camera map to see what's already watching in your area, and head to take-action for concrete steps to push back before this stuff becomes even more normalized.