After media reports and SVT News asked questions, the Swedish Data Inspectorate initiated an audit to find out whether Swedish authorities may have used the questioned and criticized app for face recognition.

At the same time, after an internal quick investigation, the police have banned employees from using Cleatview AI as it would "violate a number of provisions in data protection legislation, which could lead to, among other things, penalty fees".

But by then some employees had already tested it.

Facial pictures of suspects and victims

Patrick Cordner, head of the police's national IT crime center, told SVT News in March that Swedish police used the app at an operative meeting with Europol in The Hague in autumn 2019. In one case, the searches should have led to the identification of a child in a Swedish sexual crime investigation. .

In total, the app must have been used by six employees at the National Operational Unit (Noa), five at the National IT Crime Center and one at the Investigation Section, in the work against serious organized crime.

In an opinion submitted to the Data Inspectorate, the Police write:

“In the work on internet-related sexual abuse of children, facial images of suspects and in some cases victims / prosecutors have been used in the application. At the scouting unit, images of unknowns under scouting have been added to the application in order to identify the person. "

More police departments

Two police officers in the Southern Police Region have also registered to use the service during a free two-week trial, one of them at the Investigation Unit, which became aware of Clearview AI via Noa. The use should not have led to anything.

- When the police data protection officer learned that the routines that were developed were not followed, the use was terminated. We look forward to seeing what the Data Inspectorate comes to, says Sara Markstedt, lawyer in the legal department.

Another employee of the fraud department in Stockholm has used a service of this kind in the investigation of a murder. The result should then have been used as evidence in a trial. But the employee doesn't remember if the tool was named Clearview and the event should have taken place five years ago - before that particular app existed at all.

The inspection of the data inspection is still ongoing.