Denton County Sheriff | Clearview AI facial recognition

Clearview AI sells a face search. A user uploads a photo of a face, and Clearview returns images of similar faces with links to the web pages where they appeared. The images come from the public internet, which is what separates it from a search of booking photos. Its 2023 sole source statement, attached to the first Denton County order form, describes the company as “a search engine of publicly available images”.^[3]

Four approvals at three meetings

On 9 May 2023 the Commissioners Court approved “the 2023 Agency Agreement between Clearview AI, Inc. and the Denton County Sheriff’s Office for the use of their facial recognition program”, 5-0.^[1] It was a separate item under the Sheriff’s heading, moved and voted on its own. The memo attached to it, from the Assistant District Attorney who serves as counsel to the Sheriff, says the service provides “a facial recognition program for legitimate law enforcement and investigative purposes” and that it is administered by a crime analyst in the Sheriff’s Office.^[2]

The order form was for “Clearview Search with Database” for 5 authorized users. The list price was $9895, and the county paid $3,053 for the four and a half months to 30 September 2023. Clearview waived $39,500 in implementation and help desk fees.^[3]

On 12 September 2023 the Court approved two more items, both 5-0.^[4] The first was an amendment that the county’s Chief Information Officer recommended. Its memo says it “includes revisions to reduce Denton County’s risk and includes a Cybersecurity and Data Access Addendum”.^[7] The addendum requires Clearview to keep county data in the United States, to report breaches, and, “Upon written request by Customer”, to “delete all Customer Data under Customer’s review and approval”.^[5] The second was a three-year agreement from October 2023 at $7876 a year for the same 5 users.^[6]

On 25 August 2026 the Court approved a 2026-2029 agreement, 4-0 with one commissioner absent.^[10] The memo gives the term as 1 October 2026 through 30 September 2029.^[8] The order form names the product “Clearview AI SaaS - SL (Tool + Cloud Database Access) - Enterprise 6”. The price is $14000.00 in the first year and $20000.00 in the second, both marked discounted, and $28500.00 in the third, which is the annual list price.^[9]

What Clearview says it searches

The 2026 order form carries Clearview’s own sole source statement. It says “Clearview AI maintains a proprietary database of 50+ billion facial images sourced from the public internet”, and that the product offers “integrated access to public internet imagery, shared agency selected galleries, and agency-specific custom databases within a single platform”.^[9] Those are the vendor’s descriptions of its own product. Nothing attached to the four items says which of those the Sheriff’s Office uses.

What the record does not say

None of the four items carries a policy for how the office uses the searches, how many searches it runs, or what a match is allowed to support. We could not find a facial recognition use policy presented to the Commissioners Court in its minutes from January 2015 to September 2026. The terms of service attached to the 2023 amendment are a scan, and we have not quoted them.