Three provincial privacy watchdogs have ordered facial recognition company Clearview AI to stop collecting, using and disclosing images of people without consent.
The privacy authorities of British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec are also requiring the U.S. firm to delete images and biometric data collected without permission from individuals.
The binding orders made public Tuesday follow a joint investigation by the three provincial authorities with the office of federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien.
The watchdogs found in February that Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology resulted in mass surveillance of Canadians and violated federal and provincial laws governing personal information.
They said the New York-based company’s gathering of billions of images of people from across the internet — to help police forces, financial institutions and other clients identify people — was a clear breach of Canadians’ privacy rights.
The orders from the provincial authorities Tuesday also require Clearview AI to stop offering its facial recognition services in the three provinces. Clearview has not been providing services to clients in Canada since the summer of 2020, but has hinted it could return.
Canada’s privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien launched a joint probe into Clearview AI earlier this year with his provincial counterparts from Alberta, Quebec and B.C. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Therrien’s office lacks order-making powers similar to these provincial ones, prompting calls over the years to update outdated federal privacy legislation.
“We welcome these important actions taken by our provincial counterparts,” Therrien said in a statement. “While Clearview stopped offering its services in Canada during the investigation, it had refused to cease the collection and use of Canadians’ data or delete images already collected.”
‘Simply not possible’
The company told B.C. privacy commissioner Michael McEvoy in May it was “simply not possible” to identify whether individuals in photos were in Canada at the time the image was taken or whether they were Canadian citizens or residents.
In reply, McEvoy pointed to Clearview’s intention, stated in a U.S. judicial proceeding, to limit the collection and use of personal information in the state of Illinois.
In his order Tuesday, McEvoy rejected the company’s “bare assertion that it cannot comply” and concluded it does have the means and ability to severely limit, if not eliminate, the collection, use and disclosure of personal information of British Columbians.
“Put another way, this is not a question of cannot but rather will not.”
Clearview says decision contrary to freedom of expression
Doug Mitchell, a lawyer for the company, said Clearview AI is a search engine that only collects public data just as much larger companies do, including Google, which is permitted to operate in Canada.
Given that Clearview is not operating in Canada now, the company believes the orders are beyond the powers of the provincial privacy commissioners, as well as unnecessary, Mitchell said Tuesday.
“To restrict the free flow of publicly available information in the sense proposed by the privacy commissioners would be contrary to the Canadian constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.”
Clearview AI left the Canadian market, but the problem created by their business model remains, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association said in applauding the provincial crackdown.
The company still holds, and uses, potentially millions of photos of people from Canada, which they continue to sell to policing bodies around the world, the civil liberties association said.
“This leaves potentially all Canadian residents who have ever posted photos online on a wide range of popular online platforms in a perpetual police lineup,” the association added.
“We are profoundly concerned that the inconsistencies in privacy laws mean that millions of other people in other Canadian jurisdictions remain unprotected by this order.”
The association says not only does facial recognition amount to a dangerous form of mass surveillance, it is fundamentally flawed given the technology’s inaccuracies that can effectively discriminate against people who are not white.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
