Bit of a rub that to request your messy, potentially erroneous, public profile, you have to give private, authenticated identification and contact information - basically the most valuable information they could want, dramatically increasing the value of your profile that you were so concerned about in the first place.
> Bit of a rub that to request your messy, potentially erroneous, public profile, you have to give private, authenticated identification and contact information - basically the most valuable information they could want, dramatically increasing the value of your profile that you were so concerned about in the first place.
The concept of being opted-in by default and being forced to authenticate yourself to opt out is getting more and more ridiculous by the day.
These systems need to be opt-in, and that requirement needs to be enforced by some kind of powerful government agency with the power to arrest and jail non-compliant operators. Anything less feels like it would end up being a complete surrender to companies like Clearview AI.
I've been thinking about this for a while. A fairly simple solution would be to turn the incentives around. In the EU, people are already the rightful owners of their data, so that needs to be applied world wide. But that's not enough.
To really flip the table, we need to make it mandatory to pay people for use of their data. If a company is exploiting[ß] someone else's property, the owner must be compensated for the privilege. Take a page from SaaS companies' nickel-and-diming ("pay per use") billing strategy, too. Just turn it around: forbid blanket permissions and consents.
The idea is to ensure that other people's data needs to be universally treated as a toxic liability, not an asset.
ß: in economic sense, although other meanings apply equally well.
> The governments are the customers of such products. We can't expect them to protect us.
So you're saying we should just surrender to companies like Clearview AI? I don't agree with your fatalism.
I think you're making a mistake in assuming that governments are unaccountable and cannot be prevented from pursuing interests that against those of the people. That's clearly not the case. If you were right, we'd already have unchecked police surveillance (isn't government is the consumer of surveillance products?), but we don't. That's only the case in non-democracies like China. In democracies, society (and the government itself) is capable of putting significant constraints on government action.
I suppose it depends on the definition of government. I was thinking of the executive branch (maybe I confused the terms). Parliament legislation would be the branch that has the responsibility to protect from such things.
I came here to make the same comment. I don't like what this company is doing, but the information is already public. People should know that anyone can read your public data and assemble it. It is not very different to living in a town. In a town everyone knows public, and no so public, information about everyone. Police, or a private investigator, can always go and interrogate the butcher or the hairdresser and ask information about you. They can also read the local gazette. The difference now, and it is not minor, is that the town is global.
Privacy starts from us not revealing our private information. That's why we have curtains at home. It is us who put the curtains on windows.
Came here to say this. Do any of the privacy laws allow for deleting your profile without proving to the company who you are? Could you have the government make the request on your behalf? Sending Clearview your license sounds like confirming your credentials in a haveibeenpowned-like honeypot. Seems irresponsible for the author to even suggest that to readers. There should be other ways.
I asked this in a sibling comment to yours but couldn’t the government, who issued your ID in the first place, make requests on your behalf to enforce the privacy laws they’ve created?
