Watchdog bites back against blockage of $9M fine on US selfie-scraper Clearview AI

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is looking to appeal against last month's decision by a tribunal that decided it wasn't legally authorized to fine Clearview AI over alleged privacy violations. The data protection watchdog said it believes the law was misinterpreted and that the US selfie-scraper shouldn't be …

[Rol]

WTF!

It really is beyond all comprehension that a UK tribunal would blatantly class every UK citizen as a criminal on the run from US authorities.

You're all sacked for gross misconduct and dare I say treason.

New appointments to the tribunal will be decided by those who are not cap in hand to our foreign overlords. If any can be found in this fast becoming septic isle of sewer level politicians.

[Andy The Hat]

Re: WTF!

I don't believe that's true.

I interpreted the tribunal decision as suggesting that a company performing *any contract* for a foreign government/judiciary etc would be exempt. If that is the case then just getting a Michigan Sherriff dept toilet cleaning contract (possibly with a database of toilet facilities to make it computer related activity) will probably allow legal scraping of UK data ...

However I hope that is not the correct interpretation of what are notoriously one-sided UK/USA "agreements".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: WTF!

So I guess that if Clearview had been specifically contracted by some law-enforcement agency to design a tool for that agency's sole use, then I suppose you might have to say the exemption applies, and therefore the scraping was (or could be) allowable. But even then, the whole "treat everybody as a suspect and borrow/steal their pictures wholesale" is somewhat problematic.

But it seem to me that if a commercial company creates the tool in advance of any such contract with law enforcement, then I can't see how the exemption it might apply, even if at some later stage they do sell or license it to law enforcement; the creation-by-scraping was already an offense.

Hmm.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: WTF!

"I interpreted the tribunal decision as suggesting that a company performing *any contract* for a foreign government/judiciary etc would be exempt."

If that was the case, spying on behalf of a foreign government as a private contractor would also be legal :-)

The dark trench coat one -------->

[nematoad]

Gah!

Watchdog bites back against blockage of $9M fine on US selfie-scraper Clearview AI

Look, it's one thing to switch to using "International English" a.k.a. American English. It's another to start to force a British courts decision into using a foreign currency. The fine was £7.5 million and the headline should reflect that.

O.K. qualify it in USD if you have to, but please treat a British court's decision with the respect that it deserves.

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

Re: Gah!

I dunno who's responsible for the article titles but crap like this and the increase in obviously misleading clickbait isn't doing much for my confidence in the wisdom behind El Reg's transformation into The Registrationizer.

[Johnb89]

Re: Gah!

I came here to note the $ in the headline for a UK article, which the 'mericanisation of the reg is getting silly.

But I still find the reg is far less click baity than most things, even the tax funded BBC which has become unreadable for the click bait headlines... so much for 'public service, publicly funded journalism' there.

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

Re: Gah!

I agree with that. The Register isn't as good as it used to be (hey, it's worked for Viz for decades) but most of the general news outlets are just absolute trash nowadays; my attempts to read it just result in feeling annoyed and somehow more ignorant than if I hadn't bothered. I was going to say "mainstream" but then I remembered what our local rag is like: it makes the Fail look like a work of genius.

[Martin-73]

Re: Gah!

Lemme guess, owned by newsquest media... 'SUBSCRIBE FOR 1 POUND A MONTH TO VIEW THIS POORLY WRITTEN ARTICLE FULL OF TYPOS'

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

Re: Gah!

It's either them or the other huge conglomerate whose name I forget. Its dubious output rarely strays from the perennial articles about LTNs, food hygiene ratings or poking some minority or other, adorned with photos in the style of a 1970s girls' comic. I look at it once in a while to see if they've actually managed to report anything that vaguely looks like news but always come away with brain leprosy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The watchdog doesn't need another expensive legal cae

They need a cricket bat.