> The Dutch agency said that building the database and insufficiently informing people whose images appear in the database amounted to serious breaches of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
Well, you can vote for politicians that align with your values. The American replies: you can vote with your wallet.
I'd like to see a company like Clearview get boycotted away. It has few customers that pays well and the citizens that they subject to violations are not their customers and have no say.
Also, Re: vote with your wallet. The fact that the richest gets the most ballot papers is not so democratic.
The AI Act (note that this fine was under prior legislation, not the rather new AI Act) bans this except for specified national security purposes, but I'd certainly have preferred to see it ban it entirely.
what limits do we place on countries randomly being able to make supranational claims like this? do you want every online business checking the passport of their customer? because sure this case is fine but its a pretty dangerous precedent to accept without limits. for all its good intentions, GDPR has also resulted in cookie banner spam on the rest of us.
as with all government power - u may be fine when its used against things you dont like, but try to imagine when its used to against things you do...
Is the business selling to a EU citizen? If so they have to deal with the rights that citizen has.
If a company in some fictitious jurisdiction where fraud is not a crime defrauds an American citizen, should they not face American justice for it? It might be they don't have legal representation in the USA but that shouldn't stop an American citizen on bringing the issue to authorities to deal with.
It's not random, if you make business with someone in the EU or deal with the information of someone in the EU then you need to follow EU's regulations. Can't do that? Don't deal with EU's citizens data or business, it's pretty simple.
I really don't think this is a hard concept to grasp.
How would you know if they have no customers here, do you think their intelligence services would tell you ? In the past the head of Dutch intelligence lied to the government about mass surveillance. Even if it was true, guaranteed they would simple send their photos to American counterparts to run.
This is just democracy theatre in reality.
Randomly? EU or other nations act because their citizens have their rights violated. I assume Clearview has collected Dutch faces en masse and thereby violated laws.
Obey by GDPR or don't deal with the data of EU citizens.
Off the top of my head it telling that someone is a criminal when they aren't and ruining their lives
>[Clearview Chief Legal Officer] Mulcaire said in his statement that Clearview doesn't fall under EU data protection regulations.
>"Clearview AI does not have a place of business in the Netherlands or the EU, it does not have any customers in the Netherlands or the EU, and does not undertake any activities that would otherwise mean it is subject to the GDPR," he said.
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>The Dutch agency said that building the database and insufficiently informing people whose images appear in the database amounted to serious breaches of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
> "Facial recognition is a highly intrusive technology, that you cannot simply unleash on anyone in the world," DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen said in a statement.
> "If there is a photo of you on the Internet — and doesn't that apply to all of us? — then you can end up in the database of Clearview and be tracked. This is not a doom scenario from a scary film. Nor is it something that could only be done in China," he said.
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If you're pulling data from European Citizens from all over the internet, I'd imagine that the EU does get a say (since it's literally data processing of EU citizen data). I'd also expect that the EU could just make one of the other upstream suppliers of Clearview data responsible for enforcement.
To seek any sort of judgement or criminal charge against them the EU would need to find an applicable law in the US that covers the activity.
While some people might be upset because GDPR isn't a stick they can use to beat Clearview with, this legal framework is the same that allows you to post material critical of the Chinese government without facing financial penalties or extradition.
Even the fine itself is a bit problematic because it looks like unenforceable as they don't operate in the EU thus not subject to EU law.
However if it were to be discovered that the user images where not only retrieved by scrapping publicly available information, but involved data brokerage or other forms of personal information selling all those involved throughout that chain could be fined.
You can break your home country's laws when you go abroad and it's usually OK. You can smoke cannabis when you visit the Netherlands* from Ireland, for instance, and go back home to Ireland without worry.
Violating GDPR is illegal. It's acceptable to arrest people who do things that are against the law. And if, say, I write a lambda that runs hourly and violates the GDPR from my home in California, and then take a holiday to the Netherlands while the lambda is still running, should I be immune from arrest? The offense is still ongoing in that instance.
If we truly take privacy seriously then this should be treated like a crime. If I had something that scammed people in Europe and then holidayed in Europe I'd expect to risk arrest. Or is that somehow less important than violating people's privacy?
* (It's actually technically still illegal but that's a different story). Gedoofd is weird.
The word infinite here is probably a little out of place. But it's a statement of your feelings so it can well be an accurate reflection of them.
“Go eu go. Bankrupt those bastards and jail them all. Go eu go. Give it to them hard”
The only negative that really jumps out to me are cookie consent banners, but those are more malicious compliance than the fault of the EU.
That’s cute. I wonder where all the faces are coming from.
The full PDF with the investigation results e.a. as sent to clearview: https://www.autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/system/files?fi...
One day all of these things will be taken for granted because we will capture more and more video of public spaces, and AI facial recognition will be more accurate than human facial recognition.
