Apple has disabled the developer account of facial recognition startup Clearview AI for violating the rules of its enterprise program, providing the company with 14 days to respond.
BuzzFeed News reports the company had been violating the iPhone maker’s rules to distribute its apps to law enforcement agencies and other customers.
Apple issues enterprise certificates to large organizations to deploy apps to their employees for internal use only. However, the report says Clearview AI was misusing their certificate to distribute its facial recognition app to over 2,200 public and private clients, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, Macy’s, Walmart, and the NBA. That allowed customers to download the app outside of Apple’s App Store.
Apple took similar action against Facebook and Google last year after both companies were found to be using enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers. The certificates were later restored after both companies agreed to use them strictly for internal apps.
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