TL;DR: On February 24, 2026, Tennessee Highway Patrol officers sat down for a demo of Clearview AI’s facial recognition system. The pitch: “just under” $1 million. The catch: Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti signed an amicus brief with 23 other state AGs last year calling Clearview’s practices a privacy violation. The company scraped billions of photos without consent. Tennessee residents have no legal right to opt out or delete their images from the database. As of March 25, the Highway Patrol hasn’t signed anything, but the Nashville airport police already run over 1,600 searches a year through the same system.
February 24: The Sales Pitch
Records obtained by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom show a Tennessee Highway Patrol intelligence analyst met with Clearview AI on February 24, 2026.[1]
Several officers were invited. Clearview quoted them “just under” $1 million for their services.
Before the demo started, participants had to sign a waiver. That waiver required them to consent to “collection and storage of biometric information derived” from any images they provided. Officers also had to agree to let Clearview capture and indefinitely store their webcam photos.[1]
As of March 25, the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security says no action has been taken on the quote.[1]
Jason Pack, a spokesperson for the Highway Patrol, called it “an initial capability interest to see what this technology is about. The Department is constantly looking for improvements in lawful technology to assist with lawful investigations.”[1]
Meanwhile, the State’s Top Lawyer Says It Violates Your Privacy
Last year, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti put his name on an amicus brief challenging Clearview AI’s entire business model.
Twenty-three other state attorneys general and the District of Columbia signed it too. The brief was filed in an Illinois lawsuit where a federal judge was considering how to handle Clearview.[2]
The AGs’ position: Clearview “collected billions of images without their consent for use in a searchable facial recognition database.”
The brief argued the proposed settlement didn’t do enough to protect people’s privacy rights.
So Tennessee’s top law enforcement officer signed a document saying Clearview violates privacy. Then Tennessee’s state police sat for a million-dollar sales pitch from the same company.
Tennessee Residents Can’t Opt Out
If you live in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah, or Virginia, you can request that Clearview delete your biometric data.[3]
If you live in Tennessee, you can’t.
There’s no state law requiring Clearview to let Tennessee residents access, correct, or delete their facial data. Your face is in their database (scraped from social media, news sites, anywhere it appeared online) and you have no legal recourse to remove it.
Clearview’s database contains somewhere between 30 and 50 billion images, depending on which estimate you believe. Dutch regulators put it at 30 billion when they fined the company $33.7 million in 2024. The U.S. Army’s contract documents cited 50 billion.[4][5]
Either way: your face is probably in there.
Tennessee Is Already Using It
The Highway Patrol demo wasn’t Tennessee’s first encounter with Clearview AI.
The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority’s police department has been using the system since at least 2021. Since the beginning of 2025, they’ve run over 1,600 searches.[1]
That’s 1,600 times someone uploaded a face to a database of billions of scraped photos. At an airport. In a state where the AG says the whole system violates privacy.
The Algorithm Gets It Wrong
Angela Lipps knows what happens when facial recognition fails.
The 50-year-old Tennessee grandmother spent five months in jail after Fargo, North Dakota police used facial recognition to identify her as a bank fraud suspect. She was babysitting her grandchildren when U.S. Marshals showed up with guns drawn.[6]
Lipps had never been to North Dakota. Her bank records proved she was 1,200 miles away during the crimes. The charges were dismissed on Christmas Eve 2025, but by then she’d lost her home, her car, and her dog.
At least eight Americans have been wrongfully arrested due to facial recognition misidentification in 2026 alone.[7]
No Phone Call
Fargo police never contacted Lipps before filing charges. The algorithm said 100%. That was enough.
108 Days
Lipps sat in a Tennessee jail for over three months before anyone from Fargo talked to her.
No Accountability
Fargo issued a new policy after the case. No one was disciplined.
State vs. State: The Policy Contradiction
Tennessee has a problem.
The state’s Attorney General publicly opposed Clearview AI’s practices. He joined 23 other states to say the company violates privacy rights by scraping photos without consent.
The state’s Highway Patrol invited Clearview for a $1 million sales pitch anyway.
The state’s airport police already run thousands of searches through the system every year.
And Tennessee residents have no legal protection. No opt-out. No right to delete. No right to even know if they’re in the database.
AG Skrmetti’s amicus brief carries no force of law within Tennessee. It was a statement of position in another state’s lawsuit. The Highway Patrol is free to sign that million-dollar contract whenever they want.
What Tennessee Residents Can Do
Check Your Status
Visit Clearview’s privacy page at clearview.ai/privacy-and-requests. They’ll tell you if you’re in the database, even if you can’t delete your data.
Contact Your Representatives
Tennessee has no biometric privacy law. Bills have been introduced. None have passed. Let your state legislators know you care.
Scrub Your Online Photos
Clearview scrapes public photos. Remove identifiable images from public social media profiles. It won’t delete what they already have, but it stops future collection.
Know Your Rights If Arrested
Demand to know if facial recognition was used. Request all comparison documents. Get your bank records and location data ready to prove your whereabouts.
The Bottom Line
Tennessee’s Highway Patrol sat for a Clearview AI demo while the state’s top lawyer was on record calling the company a privacy violator.
The price tag: nearly $1 million. The database: billions of scraped photos. The legal protection for Tennessee residents: none.
Angela Lipps lost everything when facial recognition got it wrong. She’s from Tennessee too.
As of March 25, no contract has been signed. But Nashville airport police are already running 1,600 searches a year. The infrastructure is in place. The decision may already be made.
References
- Louisville Public Media: Tennessee state police tested AI tech the state AG asserts violates your privacy (March 2026)
- WKMS: Tennessee state police tested AI tech the state AG asserts violates your privacy (March 2026)
- Clearview AI: Privacy & Requests page
- Dutch officials fine Clearview AI $33.7M for illegal database of billions of faces
- State of Surveillance: Green Berets Are Using Clearview AI to Identify Targets (March 2026)
- CNN: Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she's never visited (March 2026)
- Jezebel: I Hope You're Ready to Spend Months in Jail After AI Facial Recognition Tools Frame You for a Crime (March 2026)