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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?
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 data…
The internet has always stretched through many different legal jurisdictions. It's tech companies who have decided that they can hide fugitive at the other end of a wire.
Back in the early days this wasn't a problem in practice because internet-based entities were operating in good faith, so even if the legal landscape was murky, nobody had a need to resort to it. This has now changed as companies are now acting in bad faith doing things many find reprehensible, and a legal precedent and/or a change in law is needed to effectively deal with those bad actors.
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?
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.
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?
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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 thoug…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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 thoug…
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 data…
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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 thoug…
For globally distributed businesses governments can and will target payment processors.
> The internet has no "customs" equivalent though
We can thank regulators for not understanding this "computer" thing. This environment gave the industry 20 years of innovation. Nothing more depressing than dealing with custom and special snowflakes regulations (most of the time, to protect some local rent-seeker!).
In this case, BC can do whatever it wants, they have no jurisdiction. They might as well claim ownership of the moon.