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Clearview AI challenges B.C. privacy watchdog order

163 points by arkadiyt 5y ago

parasense 5y ago
I feel like this is a very common delusion, the expectation of privacy when going into public. It's like public photography. Some folks get really upset if their photo is taken out in public without consent, but those folks were out in public so zero expectation of privacy. Same exact thing for the Internet.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- vkou 5y ago
  You're looking at the world through black and white, to the exclusion of all the shades of gray. Someone snapping a photograph of a busy street is one thing. Someone snapping a photograph of a busy street, with a focus on you, because you are doing something that looks inappropriate, out of context, is another. Someone following you around, taking video, from the moment you step out of your front door, to the moment that you step back through it is a third. That someone can be a stranger who doesn't know or care that you exist, a private individual with a deranged vendetta against you, who has threatened you with harm[1], a company that does this on a massive scale and aggregates data, a company that does this on a targeted, personal scale, a government agency that is lawfully investigating a crime, a government agency that is unlawfully acting out of vindictiveness, a government agency that is lawfully acting out of vindictiveness... None of these things are the same, nor do they warrant the same "Oh, well, it's a public space, nobody owns it, everyone can do whatever they want." It's a public space. We all own it. We all get to determine what kind of behaviour is acceptable, and unacceptable in it. The solution to predators and bad actors in a public space is not expecting that everyone who can afford it move more of their life into a private one. That's how we lose our public spaces. [1] Depending on your jurisdiction, you may not have any particular recourse against that. Some locales really don't like handing out restraining orders... Or enforcing them, when they are broken.
- b112 5y ago
  https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-photos-and-videos-of-yourself/ https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-pho...
  - chmod775 5y ago
    This is very similar to how it works in most western countries. You can photograph people in public all you want, but you cannot publish those without their permission. Blurring or the people not being in focus/center can allow you to do so without getting everyone's permission though (think of crowds, passersby in the background).
    - maerF0x0 5y ago
      > but you cannot publish those without their permission. I wonder if someone could argue that using their photo as training data could make the model itself a derivative work? iirc those require royalty/license too.
- donkarma 5y ago
  hope you don't mind my drone recording you and posting your location online at all times then
  - parasense 5y ago
    That's fine, actually. Why would anybody have an expectation of privacy from aerial vehicles far above?
- kube-system 5y ago
  The amount of privacy one can expect in public is slightly more than zero, even in countries with very lax privacy law like the US.
- tkfu 5y ago
  It might be a "common delusion" where you live (I'm guessing the US), but in every country I've lived in (n=6), it's an accurate understanding of basic privacy law. You can't just go and take someone's photo without their permission, even if they're in a public place.
  - parasense 5y ago
    Nonesense... * What about looking at people with one's own eyes, without the express consent of other people? * What about people with photographic memory, who are effectively walking cameras? * What about artists who draw pictures of people they see in public? Where does this nonsense ever end? While the question is hyperbolic, and I apologize, that's intentional use of the "Reducto absurdum" fallacy to help illustrate the absurdity of this kind of idea.
imglorp 5y ago
We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. BC and Clearview both have a point. But which jurisdiction is in play? Is it the one where the person lives or where the picture was taken? Was it the company that took the picture, one of a dozen networks in play, the one that transmitted it to a server, or the one that aggregated it into a database, or the one that sold the data? There could be 20 countries involved. Laws really need to catch up to the tech which has far outpaced them.
- vkou 5y ago
  > We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. It's easy to reconcile. If you want to operate in a jurisdiction, you are subject to that jurisdiction's laws, and legal injunctions. This is a very basic thing, on the level that a school-child can understand it. Just because you're operating using computers doesn't change a damn thing. When a jurisdiction tells you that you can't operate in it, unless you change your behaviour, you either change your behaviour, or stop operating in it. Or keep operating, and be treated by it like a criminal. Or appeal. If you don't like Canadian internet laws, don't do business in Canada. If you don't like Russian speech laws, don't do business in Russia, or plan a vacation in Leningrad. If you don't like Quebec language laws... Don't operate in Quebec. You're not entitled access to every market in the world, if you can't comply with their rules. If the rules are contradictory, pick the ones you care about more.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    > If you want to operate in a jurisdiction What defines "operating"? Does it mean you are physically based there? Your infrastructure being there? Your company registration? Your bank account? Etc. Back in the day these weren't problems in practice; for physical goods/services you typically were based in a single jurisdiction. If exporting goods, customs take care of it. The internet has no "customs" equivalent though, so you can very well be based in one jurisdiction and yet process personal data of residents of another. Sometimes you may not even know where the data subject actually resides.
pomian 5y ago
Interesting to follow what happens. Great that there are still 'watch dogs' looking out for us. The answer from the company to the order from the commission: "those recommendations were impossible to execute." Imagine if a environmental commission ordered a company to stop polluting, and the company answered with those words!?
- donkarma 5y ago
  very simple to execute if you cease operation
dathinab 5y ago
Surprise, if you base you company on something which is illegal, or likely becomes illegal, you might no longer be able to comply with law without shutting down your company.
donkarma 5y ago
they don't really have a product outside storing data, an amateur could scrape Facebook and do facial recognition and the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because of how expensive the storage would be
- octoberfranklin 5y ago
  Actually scraping Facebook is really difficult. They have some of the most aggressive browser-fingerprinting out there. Archive.is gave up trying because their facebook accounts kept getting restricted, and each new account needed a new SIM card to sign up so they aren't free..
  - Flankk 5y ago
    You also don't have a right to make copies. That all changes if you purchase the data.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Yes, you do. It's a natural right, not limited by either the constitution or copyright law. You cannot distribute your copies, that is all.
      - Flankk 5y ago
        TIL intellectual property theft is a natural right.
chmod775 5y ago
If you cannot comply with Canadian laws, you cannot sell to, or operate in, Canada. I don't think Clearview AI has any employees in Canada, so what do they stand to gain from this lawsuit? Does that tiny startup have any customers of note there?
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Yes. I can't quote anything on this, but they were in trials with major tourism companies at the very least. Probably lucrative enough on their own, but in terms of data collection as a resource, those contracts would be a gold mine.
- ecdouvhr 5y ago
  I suspect they simply wouldn't care unless they actually fear repercussions from Canadian authorities. Whether those potential repercussions would be something to fear here and now, or if they simply want to keep the door open for potential future expansion, is not quite clear. On the other hand, the scraping/facial recogniton they do would also violate European privacy regulations, and it could be they feel a win in a similar case would come in handy if they ever decide to offer their services to European customers.
  - avens19 5y ago
    This is my guess. They're worried about precedent. If this is allowed to stand it gives other jurisdictions a roadmap for how to shut this down
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Is the RCMP a customer of note? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-clearview-ai-1.6060228 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-clearview-ai-1.6060228
- mthoms 5y ago
  The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is almost certainly a customer (though no-one will ever admit it). They could be the ones pushing Clearview to fight this in Canadian court.
brimble 5y ago
> U.S. ‘mass surveillance’ company Google? Facebook? Microsoft? Any cell phone company? Most ISPs? Any of the CRAs? Any credit card company? Any major bank? About a thousand companies most people have never heard of? Palantir? Checks article > Clearview AI OK. You really gotta specify in the headline. There are a lot of possibilities with that vague a description.
towe12301923 5y ago
> The commissioners found Clearview scraped images of faces and associated data from publicly accessible online sources (including social media) and stored it in its database. > What the commissioners recommended was that Clearview: > • cease offering facial recognition services to Canadian clients; > • cease collecting, using and disclosing images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada, and; > • delete images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada. > The company said those recommendations were impossible to execute. Clearview claims that they have stopped selling to Canadian clients but they don't know where the people in the images are from. Probably true if they're just scraping images, but their argument seems to be "innocence by ignorance". We don't usually allow that sort of argument in other areas. Stores cannot sell cigarettes/alcohol to minors and banks cant unknowingly launder money, and it is on them to make sure they collect enough data to comply with those laws. It may be hard or even impossible for Clearview to operate while following the law.. but maybe that just means they shouldn't.
- mthoms 5y ago
  >Clearview claims that they have stopped selling to Canadian clients but they don't know where the people in the images are from. Probably true if they're just scraping images, but their argument seems to be "innocence by ignorance". This part of their defence is outright laughable. What's the point of having this sort of database without the associated metadata?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > This part of their defence is outright laughable. What's the point of having this sort of database without the associated metadata? I'm not a fan of Clearview AI, but I understand it's still useful even for faces that aren't explicitly tied to an identity in the system, because the if the police know where the matched photo is from, they can do the legwork to fill in the missing details. I think one of the examples in an early article about it had the police feeding a suspect's face into it. The system found a match in the background of some photo taken at a trade show (the guy was working a both). It only knew the website the photo was from, which allowed the police the identify the trade show, which allowed them to track down the people working at that booth to find their suspect.
wantsanagent 5y ago
Clearview is not an ethical or well motivated company. It's not surprising they are attacking any institution who wants them to respect rights which are anathema to their business model. It's a quintessential Thiel company and I would be overjoyed if they went out of business.
legalcorrection 5y ago
It's dubious for Canada to claim worldwide jurisdiction over pictures of Canadians. These two requests, that Clearview "cease collecting, using and disclosing images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada" and "delete images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada" sound like overreach. Certainly, they can prevent Clearview from doing business inside Canada. Maybe even from accessing Canadian servers (though that would be tricky to implement and enforce). But from using images posted by Canadians to international platforms? Doubtful.
- jiveturkey 5y ago
  Not that Clearview isn't disgusting, but they do seem to be in the right here.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Its not that different from how eu claims that gdpr applies to all european citizens even if living abroad.
  - legalcorrection 5y ago
    Also of highly dubious legality. Would be interesting to see what would happen if an EU member state pursued damages on that angle and then tried to enforce the judgment in a US court. I would expect a US court would refuse to give it effect due to the other country exceeding the appropriate exercise of jurisdiction under international law.
    - jabbany 5y ago
      And this is part of the reason why places like China have things like the GFW. Because they know that the US would never cooperate with even relatively benign things like foreign privacy laws (let alone more controversial things), so best ban them from the domestic network altogether. PS: I have no intention of condoning the behavior of building censor networks like the GFW, but until there is some international court to adjudicate Internet jurisdiction cases, my prediction of the future is that there will be more and more countries adopting technological countermeasures and the Internet will be increasingly fragmented.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
I would love clearview's business model and models like it to be illegal. All sorts of internet businesses claim that they can't know the provenance of their data and therefore can't comply with certain laws. They then argue that that means they shouldn't have to comply. It really should go the other way: if you can't comply, then your business is illegal.
- rory 5y ago
  I agree with this sentiment in principal. In this particular case it gets a little hairy since the service is illegal in Canada, but the company is based in the USA and no longer accepting Canadian customers. I'm not sure what the line should be, but certainly we don't want a situation where any internet company can be shut down by any country that interacts with the internet. Of course, I also think we should make this business model illegal in any country. But that's a different thread.
toofy 5y ago
I don’t know enough about Canadian IP law, but I assume they have protections for owners of images and maybe even for the subjects of the images. clearview claims they can’t determine if a picture was taken in Canada or if the subjects are Canadian—if this is true, then they likely can’t determine if they have any legal right to be using the images in the first place. It seems to me that the diligence should absolutely fall on clearview to determine if they’re lawfully using these images in every jurisdiction. I know there are many jurisdictions around the world and each will have their own laws but I mean, come on, this is common practice for every company in existence. For them to claim “we can’t follow the laws” is absurd.
cakeface 5y ago
Is it possible for me to request that Clearview remove any pictures of myself that they have? I'd like to do that.
- dylan604 5y ago
  and how do they prove they did it in a way that makes you believe they did. Or how do you know that they didn't just use your request to confirm your identity? That's like clicking unsubscribe in SPAM.
- dEnigma 5y ago
  I once stumbled upon a link to request my data according to the European GDPR, and did so. Never heard back though.
amatecha 5y ago
Wait. Why "can't" Clearview comply with the order? Don't they know the identities of the people whose photos they're scraping and storing? Thus, don't they know if those people are Canadian or not? Or is Clearview just lazily scraping photos from the web etc. and storing whatever random username or pseudonym is attached to it, giving _that_ in search results? In which case, they should 1000% expect to be taken to task by jurisdictions all around the world for their gross overreach. Wait, plus, isn't the very premise of their business just 99.99% pure IP infringement? They don't even have the legal right to use images posted online just because they're accessible. They are protected by copyright unless CC or public-domain licensed...
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  > They don't even have the legal right to use images posted online just because they're accessible. They are protected by copyright unless CC or public-domain licensed... I'm not sure what the legal situation is exactly but it seems to be more complicated than that. The LinkedIn case appears to have determined that scraping public content is legal. I don't think you can redistribute it after that but I guess you can freely analyze it? As to distributing (possibly even selling) the result of that analysis, see the GitHub Copilot controversy. There are large OCR datasets of public domain books and old governmental records that come with a "no commercial use" clause. I'm not sure what the legality of feeding those in to an ML algorithm that gets used commercially is.
rexarex 5y ago
I didn't expect to see this in the local Whistler newsmagazine.
- black-tusk 5y ago
  Me neither, we're assured a good issue this Thursday
ulrashida 5y ago
To customers: "Uncover leads, insights, & relationships you never knew existed." To regulators: "Where did all these pictures come from? It's impossible to say."
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  I really don't understand why they think that would be a suitable defense anyway? "It is too expensive for us to figure out if we're breaking the law, sorry."
azalemeth 5y ago
Is it possible to tell if Clearview has my face in their dataset? Legally, they have no right to and I would like to get them to remove it if they do – I am an EU citizen and they have no right to have my data. However, to ask them to do that requires emailing them ID and a headshot [1]! Does this seem silly, or deliberately obstructive? [1] https://www.clearview.ai/privacy-policy https://www.clearview.ai/privacy-policy
mleonhard 5y ago
This is important. It's happening now with photos. Later it will be with DNA.
maerF0x0 5y ago
> saying orders against it are unreasonable and unenforceable as B.C laws do not apply to it. maybe CSIS should DDoS and/or otherwise destroy the company's IT? US Laws do not apply to them.
IMAYousaf 5y ago
If I wanted to build Clearview as a hobby project, but "better" in terms of its detection capacities, what would I have to do?

163 points by arkadiyt 5y ago

I feel like this is a very common delusion, the expectation of privacy when going into public. It's like public photography. Some folks get really upset if their photo is taken out in public without consent, but those folks were out in public so zero expectation of privacy. Same exact thing for the Internet.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vkou 5y ago
You're looking at the world through black and white, to the exclusion of all the shades of gray. Someone snapping a photograph of a busy street is one thing. Someone snapping a photograph of a busy street, with a focus on you, because you are doing something that looks inappropriate, out of context, is another. Someone following you around, taking video, from the moment you step out of your front door, to the moment that you step back through it is a third. That someone can be a stranger who doesn't know or care that you exist, a private individual with a deranged vendetta against you, who has threatened you with harm[1], a company that does this on a massive scale and aggregates data, a company that does this on a targeted, personal scale, a government agency that is lawfully investigating a crime, a government agency that is unlawfully acting out of vindictiveness, a government agency that is lawfully acting out of vindictiveness... None of these things are the same, nor do they warrant the same "Oh, well, it's a public space, nobody owns it, everyone can do whatever they want." It's a public space. We all own it. We all get to determine what kind of behaviour is acceptable, and unacceptable in it. The solution to predators and bad actors in a public space is not expecting that everyone who can afford it move more of their life into a private one. That's how we lose our public spaces. [1] Depending on your jurisdiction, you may not have any particular recourse against that. Some locales really don't like handing out restraining orders... Or enforcing them, when they are broken.
b112 5y ago
https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-photos-and-videos-of-yourself/ https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-pho...
- chmod775 5y ago
  This is very similar to how it works in most western countries. You can photograph people in public all you want, but you cannot publish those without their permission. Blurring or the people not being in focus/center can allow you to do so without getting everyone's permission though (think of crowds, passersby in the background).
  - maerF0x0 5y ago
    > but you cannot publish those without their permission. I wonder if someone could argue that using their photo as training data could make the model itself a derivative work? iirc those require royalty/license too.
donkarma 5y ago
hope you don't mind my drone recording you and posting your location online at all times then
- parasense 5y ago
  That's fine, actually. Why would anybody have an expectation of privacy from aerial vehicles far above?
kube-system 5y ago
The amount of privacy one can expect in public is slightly more than zero, even in countries with very lax privacy law like the US.
tkfu 5y ago
It might be a "common delusion" where you live (I'm guessing the US), but in every country I've lived in (n=6), it's an accurate understanding of basic privacy law. You can't just go and take someone's photo without their permission, even if they're in a public place.
- parasense 5y ago
  Nonesense... * What about looking at people with one's own eyes, without the express consent of other people? * What about people with photographic memory, who are effectively walking cameras? * What about artists who draw pictures of people they see in public? Where does this nonsense ever end? While the question is hyperbolic, and I apologize, that's intentional use of the "Reducto absurdum" fallacy to help illustrate the absurdity of this kind of idea.

imglorp 5y ago

We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. BC and Clearview both have a point. But which jurisdiction is in play? Is it the one where the person lives or where the picture was taken? Was it the company that took the picture, one of a dozen networks in play, the one that transmitted it to a server, or the one that aggregated it into a database, or the one that sold the data? There could be 20 countries involved. Laws really need to catch up to the tech which has far outpaced them.

vkou 5y ago
> We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. It's easy to reconcile. If you want to operate in a jurisdiction, you are subject to that jurisdiction's laws, and legal injunctions. This is a very basic thing, on the level that a school-child can understand it. Just because you're operating using computers doesn't change a damn thing. When a jurisdiction tells you that you can't operate in it, unless you change your behaviour, you either change your behaviour, or stop operating in it. Or keep operating, and be treated by it like a criminal. Or appeal. If you don't like Canadian internet laws, don't do business in Canada. If you don't like Russian speech laws, don't do business in Russia, or plan a vacation in Leningrad. If you don't like Quebec language laws... Don't operate in Quebec. You're not entitled access to every market in the world, if you can't comply with their rules. If the rules are contradictory, pick the ones you care about more.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > If you want to operate in a jurisdiction What defines "operating"? Does it mean you are physically based there? Your infrastructure being there? Your company registration? Your bank account? Etc. Back in the day these weren't problems in practice; for physical goods/services you typically were based in a single jurisdiction. If exporting goods, customs take care of it. The internet has no "customs" equivalent though, so you can very well be based in one jurisdiction and yet process personal data of residents of another. Sometimes you may not even know where the data subject actually resides.

pomian 5y ago

Interesting to follow what happens. Great that there are still 'watch dogs' looking out for us. The answer from the company to the order from the commission: "those recommendations were impossible to execute." Imagine if a environmental commission ordered a company to stop polluting, and the company answered with those words!?

donkarma 5y ago
very simple to execute if you cease operation

dathinab 5y ago

Surprise, if you base you company on something which is illegal, or likely becomes illegal, you might no longer be able to comply with law without shutting down your company.

donkarma 5y ago

they don't really have a product outside storing data, an amateur could scrape Facebook and do facial recognition and the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because of how expensive the storage would be

octoberfranklin 5y ago
Actually scraping Facebook is really difficult. They have some of the most aggressive browser-fingerprinting out there. Archive.is gave up trying because their facebook accounts kept getting restricted, and each new account needed a new SIM card to sign up so they aren't free..
- Flankk 5y ago
  You also don't have a right to make copies. That all changes if you purchase the data.
  - tremon 5y ago
    Yes, you do. It's a natural right, not limited by either the constitution or copyright law. You cannot distribute your copies, that is all.
    - Flankk 5y ago
      TIL intellectual property theft is a natural right.

chmod775 5y ago

If you cannot comply with Canadian laws, you cannot sell to, or operate in, Canada. I don't think Clearview AI has any employees in Canada, so what do they stand to gain from this lawsuit? Does that tiny startup have any customers of note there?

brailsafe 5y ago
Yes. I can't quote anything on this, but they were in trials with major tourism companies at the very least. Probably lucrative enough on their own, but in terms of data collection as a resource, those contracts would be a gold mine.
ecdouvhr 5y ago
I suspect they simply wouldn't care unless they actually fear repercussions from Canadian authorities. Whether those potential repercussions would be something to fear here and now, or if they simply want to keep the door open for potential future expansion, is not quite clear. On the other hand, the scraping/facial recogniton they do would also violate European privacy regulations, and it could be they feel a win in a similar case would come in handy if they ever decide to offer their services to European customers.
- avens19 5y ago
  This is my guess. They're worried about precedent. If this is allowed to stand it gives other jurisdictions a roadmap for how to shut this down
monkeybutton 5y ago
Is the RCMP a customer of note? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-clearview-ai-1.6060228 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-clearview-ai-1.6060228
mthoms 5y ago
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is almost certainly a customer (though no-one will ever admit it). They could be the ones pushing Clearview to fight this in Canadian court.

brimble 5y ago

> U.S. ‘mass surveillance’ company Google? Facebook? Microsoft? Any cell phone company? Most ISPs? Any of the CRAs? Any credit card company? Any major bank? About a thousand companies most people have never heard of? Palantir? Checks article > Clearview AI OK. You really gotta specify in the headline. There are a lot of possibilities with that vague a description.

towe12301923 5y ago

> The commissioners found Clearview scraped images of faces and associated data from publicly accessible online sources (including social media) and stored it in its database. > What the commissioners recommended was that Clearview: > • cease offering facial recognition services to Canadian clients; > • cease collecting, using and disclosing images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada, and; > • delete images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada. > The company said those recommendations were impossible to execute. Clearview claims that they have stopped selling to Canadian clients but they don't know where the people in the images are from. Probably true if they're just scraping images, but their argument seems to be "innocence by ignorance". We don't usually allow that sort of argument in other areas. Stores cannot sell cigarettes/alcohol to minors and banks cant unknowingly launder money, and it is on them to make sure they collect enough data to comply with those laws. It may be hard or even impossible for Clearview to operate while following the law.. but maybe that just means they shouldn't.

mthoms 5y ago
>Clearview claims that they have stopped selling to Canadian clients but they don't know where the people in the images are from. Probably true if they're just scraping images, but their argument seems to be "innocence by ignorance". This part of their defence is outright laughable. What's the point of having this sort of database without the associated metadata?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > This part of their defence is outright laughable. What's the point of having this sort of database without the associated metadata? I'm not a fan of Clearview AI, but I understand it's still useful even for faces that aren't explicitly tied to an identity in the system, because the if the police know where the matched photo is from, they can do the legwork to fill in the missing details. I think one of the examples in an early article about it had the police feeding a suspect's face into it. The system found a match in the background of some photo taken at a trade show (the guy was working a both). It only knew the website the photo was from, which allowed the police the identify the trade show, which allowed them to track down the people working at that booth to find their suspect.

wantsanagent 5y ago

Clearview is not an ethical or well motivated company. It's not surprising they are attacking any institution who wants them to respect rights which are anathema to their business model. It's a quintessential Thiel company and I would be overjoyed if they went out of business.

legalcorrection 5y ago

It's dubious for Canada to claim worldwide jurisdiction over pictures of Canadians. These two requests, that Clearview "cease collecting, using and disclosing images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada" and "delete images and biometric facial arrays collected from individuals in Canada" sound like overreach. Certainly, they can prevent Clearview from doing business inside Canada. Maybe even from accessing Canadian servers (though that would be tricky to implement and enforce). But from using images posted by Canadians to international platforms? Doubtful.

jiveturkey 5y ago
Not that Clearview isn't disgusting, but they do seem to be in the right here.
bawolff 5y ago
Its not that different from how eu claims that gdpr applies to all european citizens even if living abroad.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  Also of highly dubious legality. Would be interesting to see what would happen if an EU member state pursued damages on that angle and then tried to enforce the judgment in a US court. I would expect a US court would refuse to give it effect due to the other country exceeding the appropriate exercise of jurisdiction under international law.
  - jabbany 5y ago
    And this is part of the reason why places like China have things like the GFW. Because they know that the US would never cooperate with even relatively benign things like foreign privacy laws (let alone more controversial things), so best ban them from the domestic network altogether. PS: I have no intention of condoning the behavior of building censor networks like the GFW, but until there is some international court to adjudicate Internet jurisdiction cases, my prediction of the future is that there will be more and more countries adopting technological countermeasures and the Internet will be increasingly fragmented.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

I would love clearview's business model and models like it to be illegal. All sorts of internet businesses claim that they can't know the provenance of their data and therefore can't comply with certain laws. They then argue that that means they shouldn't have to comply. It really should go the other way: if you can't comply, then your business is illegal.

rory 5y ago
I agree with this sentiment in principal. In this particular case it gets a little hairy since the service is illegal in Canada, but the company is based in the USA and no longer accepting Canadian customers. I'm not sure what the line should be, but certainly we don't want a situation where any internet company can be shut down by any country that interacts with the internet. Of course, I also think we should make this business model illegal in any country. But that's a different thread.

toofy 5y ago

I don’t know enough about Canadian IP law, but I assume they have protections for owners of images and maybe even for the subjects of the images. clearview claims they can’t determine if a picture was taken in Canada or if the subjects are Canadian—if this is true, then they likely can’t determine if they have any legal right to be using the images in the first place. It seems to me that the diligence should absolutely fall on clearview to determine if they’re lawfully using these images in every jurisdiction. I know there are many jurisdictions around the world and each will have their own laws but I mean, come on, this is common practice for every company in existence. For them to claim “we can’t follow the laws” is absurd.

cakeface 5y ago

Is it possible for me to request that Clearview remove any pictures of myself that they have? I'd like to do that.

dylan604 5y ago
and how do they prove they did it in a way that makes you believe they did. Or how do you know that they didn't just use your request to confirm your identity? That's like clicking unsubscribe in SPAM.
dEnigma 5y ago
I once stumbled upon a link to request my data according to the European GDPR, and did so. Never heard back though.

amatecha 5y ago

Wait. Why "can't" Clearview comply with the order? Don't they know the identities of the people whose photos they're scraping and storing? Thus, don't they know if those people are Canadian or not? Or is Clearview just lazily scraping photos from the web etc. and storing whatever random username or pseudonym is attached to it, giving _that_ in search results? In which case, they should 1000% expect to be taken to task by jurisdictions all around the world for their gross overreach. Wait, plus, isn't the very premise of their business just 99.99% pure IP infringement? They don't even have the legal right to use images posted online just because they're accessible. They are protected by copyright unless CC or public-domain licensed...

d110af5ccf 5y ago
> They don't even have the legal right to use images posted online just because they're accessible. They are protected by copyright unless CC or public-domain licensed... I'm not sure what the legal situation is exactly but it seems to be more complicated than that. The LinkedIn case appears to have determined that scraping public content is legal. I don't think you can redistribute it after that but I guess you can freely analyze it? As to distributing (possibly even selling) the result of that analysis, see the GitHub Copilot controversy. There are large OCR datasets of public domain books and old governmental records that come with a "no commercial use" clause. I'm not sure what the legality of feeding those in to an ML algorithm that gets used commercially is.

rexarex 5y ago

I didn't expect to see this in the local Whistler newsmagazine.

black-tusk 5y ago
Me neither, we're assured a good issue this Thursday

ulrashida 5y ago

To customers: "Uncover leads, insights, & relationships you never knew existed." To regulators: "Where did all these pictures come from? It's impossible to say."

hiptobecubic 5y ago
I really don't understand why they think that would be a suitable defense anyway? "It is too expensive for us to figure out if we're breaking the law, sorry."

azalemeth 5y ago

Is it possible to tell if Clearview has my face in their dataset? Legally, they have no right to and I would like to get them to remove it if they do – I am an EU citizen and they have no right to have my data. However, to ask them to do that requires emailing them ID and a headshot [1]! Does this seem silly, or deliberately obstructive? [1] https://www.clearview.ai/privacy-policy https://www.clearview.ai/privacy-policy

mleonhard 5y ago

This is important. It's happening now with photos. Later it will be with DNA.

maerF0x0 5y ago

> saying orders against it are unreasonable and unenforceable as B.C laws do not apply to it. maybe CSIS should DDoS and/or otherwise destroy the company's IT? US Laws do not apply to them.

IMAYousaf 5y ago

If I wanted to build Clearview as a hobby project, but "better" in terms of its detection capacities, what would I have to do?