"A company which enables its clients to search a database of billions of images scraped from the internet for matches to a particular face has won an appeal against the UK’s privacy watchdog.
Last year, Clearview AI was fined more than £7.5m by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for unlawfully storing facial images.
Privacy International (who helped bring the original case I believe) responded to this on Mastodon:
"The first 33 pages of the judgment explain with great detail and clarity why Clearview falls squarely within the bounds of GDPR. Clearview’s activities are entirely “related to the monitoring of behaviour” of UK data subjects.
In essence, what Clearview does is large-scale processing of a highly intrusive nature. That, the Tribunal agreed.
BUT in the last 2 pages the Tribunal tells us that because Clearview only sells to foreign governments, it doesn’t fall under UK GDPR jurisdiction.
So Clearview would have been subject to GDPR if it sold its services to UK police or government authorities or commercial entities, but because it doesn’t, it can do whatever the hell it wants with UK people’s data - this is at best puzzling, at worst nonsensical."
Let’s not forget one teeny tiny fact here: the people whose data Clearview can do whatever the hell it wants put it up online ALL BY THEMSELVES! Clearview scrapes the internet to find its material.
I’ve refused to have my picture taken since 2000 under any circumstances - be it at work, in group photos in clubs, etc. The reason being, those photos invariably get uploaded somewhere, usually with a caption that says “From left to right: …”
I’ve been called paranoid and batshit crazy since 2000. But guess what: Clearview doesn’t have my photo. Who’s having the last laught now eh?
Clearview is a hateful turd of an outfit. It should be shut down for obscene immorality and its CEO can burn in hell. But let’s not forget that it exploits people’s carelessness. People’s data fuels the corporate surveillance economy and this has been public knowledge for more than a couple of decades. It should come as no surprise that somebody some day would attempt to match people’s faces with people’s names using the data people themselves provided.
Whilst I agree it’s wise to take precautions, it seems weird to me that we think its OK to expect the onus to be on us to curtail a normal activity like sharing a pic of you and your mates messing about rather than the onus on these companies not harvesting those pics to create a sellable database of us to allow governments to circumnavigate the need for warrants.
Edit: and with the amount of self-styled internet pranksters and influencers randomly shooting images and video of whatever they want, unless you leave the house wearing a balaclava you don’t really have any choice of your face being part of their dataset.
I totally agree with you. In a sane and functional society, corporate surveillance would be illegal. But we don’t live in a sane society do we? The powers that be don’t do much of anything to curb the gross privacy violations, and they don’t because most of them are on big tech’s payroll and do big tech’s bidding.
With that in mind, how does a concerned individual live in such a society? Carefully. If you value your privacy and you want to limit the amount of data you share with Big Data, everything you do is basically hamstrung by the thought of what harm it will bring to your privacy.
Do you really think I like living my life denying everybody the right to take a photo with me in it? Of course I would like to be on the company’s outings’ photos. Of course I would like to show my face on that Teams meeting call. But I just don’t want to show my face to Big Data, so I don’t. I wish those awful companies couldn’t legally misuse my data, but nobody is reining them in.
Mate, I’m 100% with you. It’s just saddening and maddening that those of us who are fed up of having our faces and lives sold in order to enhance some cunts bottom line have to be the ones who put the effort in just to protect what is our right not to be a sellable data point.
I dunno. It’s not like I didn’t already think this, but sometimes it feels overwhelming. We have to buy products and services just to preserve what privacy we have in a never ending arms race of all these huge companies trying to own us all. All I want to do is sometimes share photos of my family and friends without worrying about my face or my kids faces ending up being sold to the highest bidder. I know that’s just the way things are these days but it’s still incredibly frustrating and annoying.
I’ll tell you what’s even more frustrating and annoying: when you discuss those topics on a privacy-oriented forum and a bunch of buttmunches downvote you. It happens to me here and it happens on all the other forums I patronize where I discuss these things. And I’m pretty sure the downvoters are members of the newer generations who have grown up with zero privacy and never experienced it, don’t know what it should be and what they’re missing, for whom corporate surveillance is normal and we old farts are raving lunatics.
I don’t care about the silly forum points, but seeing people dismiss what you say without even attempting to argue because it doesn’t fit their warped normality, that’s fucking frustrating and really depressing for the future.
Nope. You can upload images of other ppl too. And even tag them with names etc. Just as a example: old school photos of the entire class.