Walmart is facing a class action suit for allegedly violating an Illinois privacy law by using surveillance cameras and Clearview AI's facial recognition database (2024)

• A lawsuit filed Thursday in Illinois alleges that Walmart violated Illinois' Biometric Privacy Act.
• Facebook, now Meta, was hit with a $550 million fine in 2020 per settlement agreement after being sued under the same law.
• The lawsuit alleges that Walmart has recently used ClearView AI's "facial recognition database," which if true, would mean that Clearview violated its own recent settlement agreement under the law.

A lawsuit seeking class action status filed Thursday alleges that Walmart violated Illinois' Biometric Privacy Act by improperly using "cameras and advanced video surveillance systems," as well as the software and database provided by the facial recognition company Clearview AI.

The plaintiff — James Luthe, a citizen of Illinois — alleges that Walmart's Illinois stores have unlawfully collected, stored, and used biometric data without getting the informed written consent of him and other customers, or getting the proper data retention and destruction policies.

"Walmart's stores in Illinois are outfitted with cameras and advanced video surveillance systems that – unbeknownst to customers – surreptitiously collect, possess, or otherwise obtain Biometric Data," the filing reads. "In addition, Walmart uses software provided by Clearview AI, Inc. to match facial scans taken in its Illinois stores with billions of facial scans maintained within Clearview's massive facial recognition database."

The Illinois's Biometric Information Privacy Act, which protects Illinois residents from having pictures of faces sold without their consent, was cited in a suit against Facebook, now Meta. In 2020, the company was hit with a $550 million fine in a settlement agreement.

Walmart is also named in a consumer class action suit against multiple companies for allegedly using Clearview AI's facial recognition illegally under the Illinois privacy law. Other companies in the suit include Home Depot, Best Buy, Kohl's, and AT&T.

The initial filing in the suit implies that Clearview AI may have violated the terms of a settlement reached in May, coming from a suit that the American Civil Liberties Union and several other organizations filed against the company in February 2020.

Per the terms of the settlement, Clearview is not allowed to sell its database of faces — which it claims contains 20 billion faces scraped from the internet — to US-based businesses and private entities. Though, the agreement does not forbid the company from selling its software, minus the database.

The lawsuit claims that Walmart uses "Clearview's Biometric Database," and that Walmart "obtains, accesses, and uses the Biometrics in the database, including the Biometrics of Plaintiff and class members." If Walmart has used or accessed this database after Clearview's settlement, this would be a violation of the terms of the settlement.

The suit filing says that Luthe has gone to Illinois-based Walmart stores on "numerous occasions" in the past three years, including on August 14, 2022 — four months after the company reached its settlement.

"On information and belief, each Illinois Walmart location entered into by Plaintiff is equipped with a facial recognition-enabled video surveillance system," the filing says.

Clearview AI did not immediately respond for comment. A Walmart spokesperson told Insider that the company is "not a Clearview client."

"It is our understanding we briefly evaluated a demo version of their product and did not move forward with it," the spokesperson said. "We will respond with the Court as appropriate."

As reported by BuzzFeed News, Clearview AI has given its software to more than 200 private entities in the past, including Walmart, Bank of America, Equinox, and many other companies. Employees from these companies collectively ran many thousands of searches.

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