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Comment by ryanisnan | Hacker News Reader

I was relieved this year to learn that the Canadian government had the wisdom and prescience to ban Clearview AI from operating in British Columbia, Alberta and Québec, to stop collecting and using information on Canadians, and to delete data collected without consent.

[1] https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-news/news-and-announcements/20...

edit: Edited to indicate that this ruling does not protect all Canadians, just those in three provinces.

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>the Canadian government had the wisdom and prescience to ban Clearview AI from operating in British Columbia, Alberta and Québec, to stop collecting and using information on Canadians

So the Canadian government doesn't mind them collecting and using information on Canadians if they live in Saskatchewan, the maritime provinces, or the territories? How strange. Are the people in those territories/provinces 2nd class citizens or something?

No. The Canadian government can't do anything about this because Canada is a federation (like the US or Germany), and these laws ultimately fall into the domain of provincial commissions. As the article states, the federal government has no order-making power in this case.

The above commenter's wording was inaccurate. The order applies for all Canadians.

The confusion comes from the finding that Clearview AI violated provincial privacy legislation (BC,AB,ON,QC) as well as federal privacy legislation (PIPEDA). There is a very lengthy report by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, resulting from a joint federal-provincial investigation, regarding the operations of Clearview AI and articulating how it was violating Canadian law:

https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/investig...

Why only those three provinces?

I wonder in such scenarios if a company might operate through and intermediary

Have they complied?

This probably is the question! It looks like as of December 2021, they had not yet complied with the processing or removal of biometric data, but it looks like they had stopped collecting data.

One thing to note, is that the OPC decision did not protect all Canadians, just those in British Columbia, Alberta and Québec.

[1] https://mcmillan.ca/insights/clearview-ai-ordered-to-comply-...

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