A while ago, ICO fined Clearview AI £7.5 million for allegedly unlawfully storing facial images in contravention of UK data protection legislation. This was in line with similar action taken by data protection regulators in Australia, Italy and France.
Clearview AI works as a search engine for faces, and recently admitted that its database contained 30 billion (yes, billion) images scraped from the internet.
The overturning of the fine seems to have been more about jurisdiction than data protection because Clearview AI is only used by law enforcement agencies outside the UK.
So what can we learn from this?
- There is no blanket permission for data scraping activities generally
- Each one of us is probably in the Clearview AI database
- Nothing posted on the internet is private, and there is a constant tension between data privacy and the monetisation of our personal data