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I'm no fan of surveillance technology in general, nor of Clearview specifically, but no American corporation is legally obligated to obey British law. To sugges

I'm no fan of surveillance technology in general, nor of Clearview specifically, but no American corporation is legally obligated to obey British law. To suggest that Clearview is "dodging" the (British) law falsely implies that Clearview has any legal duty to obey (British) law in the first place. Sure, if they don't want to follow British law, Britain has the right to reject Clearview from British markets, but that's about it. The British government does not have jurisdiction over American companies or American citizens outside of Britain's borders, in spite of what British Parliament seems to believe.

ForHackernews 1y ago
If they do business in the EU they are obligated to follow EU laws, and if they have committed crimes they should be subject to arrest and extradition. I know you're making a point about Ofcom censorship, and I agree, but we cannot set the precedent that "if you commit your crimes using a company in Delaware, they're not illegal." If you program your AI-drone to murder your enemies, that's fine as long as the control server is offshore?
- anonym29 1y ago
  Should European citizens be subject to the laws of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and pals? Either laws in other countries matter in yours (regardless of how different they are from your own) or they don't. Picking and choosing which country's laws you do or don't want to consider yourself bound to on moral grounds is not fundamentally very different from picking which of your own country's laws you do or don't want to consider yourself bound to on moral grounds.
  - bbg2401 1y ago
    An entity must follow the law of each jurisdiction it conducts business. This is not a novel concept. If an entity wishes to process data of citizens of a particular country, then they must follow the laws and regulations of said country, in those instances.
    - JoshTriplett 1y ago
      The entire point of this is that the jurisdictional argument is unclear. As abhorrent as Clearview's business is, businesses should only be subject to the jurisdictions they actually reside in or have employees in or otherwise have a legal nexus in. Otherwise, you end up in a world in which someone says "because citizens of country X can remotely access your website, you are subject to the laws of X", for every single X in the world. If a country wants to control what its citizens access it can put up its own firewall and deal with the backlash from its own citizens. Let's not help move towards per-country internets.
  - potatototoo99 1y ago
    Yes? Of course? Have you ever traveled and thought their laws didn't apply to you?
    - lunar_mycroft 1y ago
      It seems clear from the context that what's being discussed is not "can a country enforce it's laws on a foreign citizen within it's borders" but "can a country enforce it's laws on a foreign citizen outside it's borders". If I were ever to go to North Korea their government could of course arrest me for insulting Kim Jong Un. What they could not do, and absolutely should not be able to do, is have my local police in the US arrest me for doing the same at home. Yes, even if I do it on the internet where a citizen of North Korea might theoretically see, or make use of content I acquired over the internet that originated in that country.
  - miningape 1y ago
    > Should European citizens be subject to the laws of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and pals? Are these EU citizens operating/running businesses in the above countries? Are they even inside the above countries? How are you even comparing a company which operates in the EU to an EU citizen who is residing in the EU?
  - pjc50 1y ago
    The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act tried to enforce the US embargo on Cuba on everyone trading with Cuba, American or not.
  - toofy 1y ago
    > Should European citizens be subject to the laws of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and pals? if they do business in those jurisdictions, yes, of course. if a new york cpa does business in ohio they need to be licensed in ohio and follow ohio laws. even if their firm and majority of work is based in new york. i’m really surprised people find this confusing.
A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
> I'm no fan of surveillance technology in general, nor of Clearview specifically, but no American corporation is legally obligated to obey British law. All the more when what Clearview has done is build an index of publicly available images, and associated URLs, derived from the freely-crawlable open web. Legal rulings in the US -- e.g., in Sorrell v. IMS Health -- consistently show that information aggregation and dissemination are treated as speech, so creating and distributing the Clearview index is protected expression under the First Amendment. Also, Clearview is far from the only game in town. Lots of tech companies -- including some very large ones -- have facial recognition indexes. I suspect that Clearview is being made an example of, pour encourager les autres. But it seems a little bit exceptional, as though the law isn't being fairly or evenly applied.
- potatototoo99 1y ago
  It is very amusing to suggest that your amendments matter outside of the US.
  - ronsor 1y ago
    It's very amusing to suggest EU laws matter outside of the EU.
impossiblefork 1y ago
I think the issue is that people are using personal information to train AI systems. This is a threat personal integrity and it doesn't really matter how the images were obtained. The threat to people exists despite the fact that they were on the public internet.
_el1s7 1y ago
Right, but they're scraping photos of people from the whole web, which of course includes photos of British and EU citizens. So it's not just a normal American company in the American market, it wants to be an international company but without respecting international laws, and that's not going to end up well.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  So is your argument that a company must follow laws of any locality they scrape information on the internet from? Is that decided based on where the public content is hosted, where it was created, or based on the individuals created it or are portrayed in it? If companies have to follow that then in all likelihood every big tech company would have to follow every law in the world, virtually all of them scrape data from the public internet.
  - tgv 1y ago
    Bad luck. They don't have to scrape, you know.
  - _el1s7 1y ago
    It depends on what information is being scraped and what is it used for. Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. The intention is important. And respecting people's privacy and copyrights.
    - JohnFen 1y ago
      I disagree that those two cases are really all that ethically different, personally. They're both harmful practices. A pox on both their houses.
    - inetknght 1y ago
      > Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. Hard disagree. They both violate people's privacy and copyrights.
wat10000 1y ago
Clearview doesn’t have to follow British law, and Britain doesn’t have to allow people associated with Clearview to exist freely on their territory. This is little different from, say, Russian hackers targeting Americans. Practically speaking there’s nothing to be done unless the perps enter American jurisdiction, but it’s entirely sensible to say that they violated US law and face penalties for it. It might be a little off to say that they’re “dodging” that law, but it’s close enough.
noir_lord 1y ago
> I'm no fan of surveillance technology in general, nor of Clearview specifically, but no American corporation is legally obligated to obey British law. They are if they trade in the UK (which ClearView does). The actual answer is for governments to just say clearly "You obey our laws when operating here or you don't operate here". Instead they faff around with fines that are largely priced into doing business that get negotiated down endlessly. The alternative is we allow them to operate with no way to constrain them when they break our laws at all and at that point - what use is government regulation on anything related to data protection.

ForHackernews 1y ago

If they do business in the EU they are obligated to follow EU laws, and if they have committed crimes they should be subject to arrest and extradition. I know you're making a point about Ofcom censorship, and I agree, but we cannot set the precedent that "if you commit your crimes using a company in Delaware, they're not illegal." If you program your AI-drone to murder your enemies, that's fine as long as the control server is offshore?

anonym29 1y ago
Should European citizens be subject to the laws of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and pals? Either laws in other countries matter in yours (regardless of how different they are from your own) or they don't. Picking and choosing which country's laws you do or don't want to consider yourself bound to on moral grounds is not fundamentally very different from picking which of your own country's laws you do or don't want to consider yourself bound to on moral grounds.
- bbg2401 1y ago
  An entity must follow the law of each jurisdiction it conducts business. This is not a novel concept. If an entity wishes to process data of citizens of a particular country, then they must follow the laws and regulations of said country, in those instances.
  - JoshTriplett 1y ago
    The entire point of this is that the jurisdictional argument is unclear. As abhorrent as Clearview's business is, businesses should only be subject to the jurisdictions they actually reside in or have employees in or otherwise have a legal nexus in. Otherwise, you end up in a world in which someone says "because citizens of country X can remotely access your website, you are subject to the laws of X", for every single X in the world. If a country wants to control what its citizens access it can put up its own firewall and deal with the backlash from its own citizens. Let's not help move towards per-country internets.
- potatototoo99 1y ago
  Yes? Of course? Have you ever traveled and thought their laws didn't apply to you?
  - lunar_mycroft 1y ago
    It seems clear from the context that what's being discussed is not "can a country enforce it's laws on a foreign citizen within it's borders" but "can a country enforce it's laws on a foreign citizen outside it's borders". If I were ever to go to North Korea their government could of course arrest me for insulting Kim Jong Un. What they could not do, and absolutely should not be able to do, is have my local police in the US arrest me for doing the same at home. Yes, even if I do it on the internet where a citizen of North Korea might theoretically see, or make use of content I acquired over the internet that originated in that country.
- miningape 1y ago
  > Should European citizens be subject to the laws of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and pals? Are these EU citizens operating/running businesses in the above countries? Are they even inside the above countries? How are you even comparing a company which operates in the EU to an EU citizen who is residing in the EU?
- pjc50 1y ago
  The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act tried to enforce the US embargo on Cuba on everyone trading with Cuba, American or not.
- toofy 1y ago
  > Should European citizens be subject to the laws of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and pals? if they do business in those jurisdictions, yes, of course. if a new york cpa does business in ohio they need to be licensed in ohio and follow ohio laws. even if their firm and majority of work is based in new york. i’m really surprised people find this confusing.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago

> I'm no fan of surveillance technology in general, nor of Clearview specifically, but no American corporation is legally obligated to obey British law. All the more when what Clearview has done is build an index of publicly available images, and associated URLs, derived from the freely-crawlable open web. Legal rulings in the US -- e.g., in Sorrell v. IMS Health -- consistently show that information aggregation and dissemination are treated as speech, so creating and distributing the Clearview index is protected expression under the First Amendment. Also, Clearview is far from the only game in town. Lots of tech companies -- including some very large ones -- have facial recognition indexes. I suspect that Clearview is being made an example of, pour encourager les autres. But it seems a little bit exceptional, as though the law isn't being fairly or evenly applied.

potatototoo99 1y ago
It is very amusing to suggest that your amendments matter outside of the US.
- ronsor 1y ago
  It's very amusing to suggest EU laws matter outside of the EU.

impossiblefork 1y ago

I think the issue is that people are using personal information to train AI systems. This is a threat personal integrity and it doesn't really matter how the images were obtained. The threat to people exists despite the fact that they were on the public internet.

_el1s7 1y ago

Right, but they're scraping photos of people from the whole web, which of course includes photos of British and EU citizens. So it's not just a normal American company in the American market, it wants to be an international company but without respecting international laws, and that's not going to end up well.

_heimdall 1y ago
So is your argument that a company must follow laws of any locality they scrape information on the internet from? Is that decided based on where the public content is hosted, where it was created, or based on the individuals created it or are portrayed in it? If companies have to follow that then in all likelihood every big tech company would have to follow every law in the world, virtually all of them scrape data from the public internet.
- tgv 1y ago
  Bad luck. They don't have to scrape, you know.
- _el1s7 1y ago
  It depends on what information is being scraped and what is it used for. Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. The intention is important. And respecting people's privacy and copyrights.
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    I disagree that those two cases are really all that ethically different, personally. They're both harmful practices. A pox on both their houses.
  - inetknght 1y ago
    > Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. Hard disagree. They both violate people's privacy and copyrights.

wat10000 1y ago

Clearview doesn’t have to follow British law, and Britain doesn’t have to allow people associated with Clearview to exist freely on their territory. This is little different from, say, Russian hackers targeting Americans. Practically speaking there’s nothing to be done unless the perps enter American jurisdiction, but it’s entirely sensible to say that they violated US law and face penalties for it. It might be a little off to say that they’re “dodging” that law, but it’s close enough.

noir_lord 1y ago

> I'm no fan of surveillance technology in general, nor of Clearview specifically, but no American corporation is legally obligated to obey British law. They are if they trade in the UK (which ClearView does). The actual answer is for governments to just say clearly "You obey our laws when operating here or you don't operate here". Instead they faff around with fines that are largely priced into doing business that get negotiated down endlessly. The alternative is we allow them to operate with no way to constrain them when they break our laws at all and at that point - what use is government regulation on anything related to data protection.