U.S. Customs and Border Protection signed a one-year, $225,000 contract with Clearview AI granting federal agents access to its facial recognition system and database of over 60 billion publicly available images scraped from the internet without consent. The contract provides 15 software licenses for CBP's intelligence division at the National Targeting Center for "tactical targeting" and "counter-network analysis."
Clearview AI received early funding from Peter Thiel's network (Thiel was an early investor). This contract adds to Clearview's expanding federal footprint: ICE awarded a $9.2M contract in September 2025, the Army's 1st Special Forces Command renewed for facial recognition targeting through 2030, and the FBI holds active licenses.
The CBP contract came weeks after Senators Warner and Kaine demanded an investigation into DHS's expanding use of surveillance technology. Combined with Palantir's $1B DHS blanket purchase agreement (signed 8 days later on Feb 19), the Thiel-network companies are building complementary surveillance layers: Palantir integrates databases and identifies targets, Clearview matches faces, and ICE/CBP enforce. The 60 billion image database — built by scraping photos from social media, news sites, and public records without consent — has been found illegal in the EU (€20M GDPR fine from France), Canada (declared "mass surveillance"), and multiple other jurisdictions.