Clearview AI faces criminal complaint in Austria over GDPR violations
Privacy watchdog noyb has filed a criminal complaint in Austria against Clearview AI, accusing it of repeatedly violating the GDPR by scraping biometric data and evading fines.
On 28 October 2025, European privacy NGO noyb (None of Your Business) submitted a criminal complaint against Clearview AI and its management to Austrian prosecutors.
The complaint targets Clearview’s long-criticised practice of scraping billions of photos and videos from the public web to build a facial recognition database, including biometric data of EU residents, in ways noyb claims flagrantly violate the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Clearview markets its technology to law enforcement and governmental agencies, offering clients the ability to upload a face image and retrieve matches from its vast index, reportedly over 60 billion images.
Multiple EU data protection authorities have already found Clearview in breach of GDPR rules and imposed fines and bans in countries such as France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Despite those rulings, Clearview has largely ignored enforcement actions, refusing to comply or pay fines except in limited cases, citing its lack of a European base as a shield. Noyb argues that the company exploits this regulatory gap to skirt accountability.
Under Austrian law, certain GDPR violations are criminal offences (via § 63 of Austria’s data protection statute), allowing prosecutors to hold both corporations and their executives personally liable, including potential imprisonment. Noyb’s complaint thus seeks to escalate enforcement beyond administrative fines to criminal sanctions.
Max Schrems, noyb’s founder, condemned Clearview’s conduct as a systematic affront to European legal frameworks: ‘Clearview AI amassed a global database of photos and biometric data … Such power is extremely concerning and undermines the idea of a free society.’
The outcome could set a landmark precedent: if prosecutors accept and pursue the case, Clearview’s executives might face arrest if they travel to Europe, and EU-wide legal cooperation (e.g. extradition requests) could follow.
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