Clearview AI receives first direct contracts with U.S. Border Patrol
The New York-based facial recognition firm signed year-long contracts yesterday with both the Spokane and Yuma sectors of U.S. Border Patrol.
The internationally controversial New York-based facial recognition firm Clearview AI on Monday signed its first two public contracts with the U.S. Border Patrol, both set to begin on Wednesday. Totaling a meager $45,000 relative to three previous U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts summing up to more than $3 million, the company is being paid $30,000 to support surveillance of the Spokane sector’s 308-mile border with Canada, stretching from Washington to western Montana, and $15,000 for operations for the Yuma sector’s 126-mile border with Mexico, which spans California and Arizona.
A sole-source procurement justification for the Spokane border patrol’s contract with Clearview AI was originally published on the official U.S. website SAM.gov on May 27 and was most recently updated on June 11. Listing an office address in Arlington for Clearview AI, the contract was said to be for two “Federal Investigator Tool + Cloud Database Local License – Annual software licenses.” The justification included the claim that, “Through market research, it has been determined that only CLEARVIEW AI, INC.’s technology can meet all of [Spokane Sector’s] requirements to help generate high-quality investigative leads, gain intelligence, disrupt crime, and enhance public safety.”
The attorney general of Vermont, T.J. Donovan, sent a letter of concern to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency of the U.S. Border Patrol, regarding their usage of Clearview in December 2021. In March, a U.S. judge in Chicago approved a novel class-action settlement awarding a 23% equity stake in the company, amounting to as much as an estimated $51.75 million in damages as a result of violations of an Illinois biometric privacy law.
Clearview AI’s new win of Border Patrol contracts come six months after the ouster of the former long-term CEO, the Australian-born entrepreneur Hoan Ton-That, so that the company could seek contracts with the new Trump administration under the joint leadership of Republican operatives Richard Schwartz and Hal Lambert.
On Friday, this publication further reported on Clearview AI’s newly public March contract with the parent organization of the U.S. Army’s primary guerrilla warfare organization, the Green Berets.
The U.S. Defense Logistics Agency also paid $463,158 for 25 Clearview AI licenses over a period of six months beginning in December, albeit through the intermediary W.S. Darley & Co., which is based in the same state — Illinois — whose biometric privacy law violation led to the company being ordered to forfeit its 23% equity stake.