> Can anyone elaborate why it would be considered illegal to scrape data in Switzerland?

Speculation but I think it can be as simple as Art. 4, p. 3 FADP [0]: "Personal data may only be processed for the purpose indicated at the time of collection, that is evident from the circumstances, or that is provided for by law."

When users upload data to Facebook, they don't consent to have that data used by third parties for facial recognition.

[0]: https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19920153/...

You grant Facebook a nonexclusive sublicenseable transferable licence for all purposes.

Copyright and data protection are separate issues and even so, FADP doesn't let people off that easily. From the same article 4:

> Personal data may only be processed for the purpose indicated at the time of collection, that is evident from the circumstances, or that is provided for by law.

> The collection of personal data and in particular the purpose of its processing must be evident to the data subject.

Note that it adds the qualifier "for the purpose indicated at the time of collection". I don't think there's a realistic argument that Facebook's UI indicates or makes evident, at time of uploading/posting a photo, that the photo can be used by third parties performing facial recognition.

And then, even if you give Facebook consent to do certain things, that consent does not extend to third parties scraping it.

Yes, but (a) one can be in pictures without having any agreement (b) fb license cannot grant you rights contradicting swiss law (my assumption, neither lawyer or swiss), ...

I believe slips this knot by making any uploader responsible for securing rights from every person in any picture they upload, no?

You are not supposed to upload pictures showing non-users. Facebook upload wizard clearly tells you that.

How is Facebook supposed to enforce that?

I suppose they could use facial recogniton to prevent those uploads...

Licensing and processing are entirely orthogonal rights. The former does not grant the latter under the GDPR framework.

Does the GDPR apply to Switzerland though?

No, only European Union

Actually, it’s more nuanced than that. GDPR applies anywhere if you offer a service in the EU or monitor EU subjects’ behavior in the EU.

(PDF link) https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/files/file1/edpb_gui...

It is not subject to GDPR, but Switzerland implements everything in GDPR by themselves. Ukraine, former Yugoslavia, and Turkey do the same.

Parts of former Yugoslavia are actually in the EU (Slovenia, Croatia).

I meant the parts that are not in EU, such as the Republic of Serbia (which is different from the Serbian Republic).

Scraping is generally not illegal in Switzerland. He considers it a Persönlichkeitsverletzung. A violation of a person‘s privacy which are very strong in Switzerland. According to the tv report, the photos were uploaded without the consent of the people on the photo. Photos were taken while some were walking by in the background. You cannot just photo/video people here without their approval and publish the photos.

But IMHO on a public event that rule doesn't apply, right?

>“He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company should not get any ideas of doing the same thing.”

Or else what?

How would they even know this was done?

All facial recognition tech benefits from plausible deniability. You could just easily say a face was recognized by an individual who saw the photo online and sent an anonymous tip. They have no leverage.

the value proposition of companies like ClearviewAI is that they're building an automated system, which is of course why they precisely don't try to pretend to be some kind of private eye detective firm and why they are now on the hook for it.

If the government gets serious it also could simply come knocking on the door and demand a tour.

> I also don't see how it can be illegal if the data is on the public internet.

It can be seen as an issue of intent. By posting something, that datum might be there for personal use, and is not intended for further commercial use, especially by companies outside the one hosting the information originally.

The act of data aggregation is one that I personally think should be heavily considered for regulation, especially since it can de-anonymize people. This in my opinion is a privacy invasion, performing extra actions to access additional private data when no access to the more private details was granted, and those details did not exist publicly in an accessible way. Especially at scale and yielding personally targetable results, this isn't something we want organizations or governments to use against people unchecked.

>I'm not sure how anyone can prevent data scraping

Is rules/legislation against scraping really meant to prevent it, or merely provide a mechanism to punish the perpetrators when discovered?

Author here. The argument the data commissioner makes is that, while the images are public, users can assume they are protected from other purposes, e. g. facial recognition, because of the ToS which disallow bulk download. Thus, by violating the ToS, we also violated their personal rights. However, you need to be aware that this is an interpretation of the data protection law, we don't know of any court ruling that would confirm such an interpretation, yet.

> I'm not sure how anyone can prevent data scraping

Not the first time politicians proposing something technically off limits. It’s all just magic to them anyways.

That's not how laws work, though. Just because something is technically possible doesn't mean it has to be legal.

There's no way to technically prevent murder or assault, or dumping chemicals in a river, but it doesn't make them any less illegal.

Depending on the national law (no idea about Switzerland) data can be protected by copyright laws. Eg even if the base data is free to use the combined dataset might be protected as it's a unique 'creative work'

GDPR limits the use of personal data to the specific usages the user explicitly agreed to. Any other use of a person's data would be illegal.

If I remember correctly, broad terms like "for anything" are not permitted.

> He said because they are media it may be ok but the average joe and company should not get any ideas of doing the same thing.

That's not the first time I've seen someone claim that a journalist claim is allowed to perform some kind of information processing that's off limits to regular people. These claims are specious and ridiculous. Journalists do not form a distinct class with special privileges, even if they claim to be one.

“Journalist” isn’t clearly defined, but they do have some special privileges in many countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism#Legal_status:

”Journalists in many nations have some privileges that members of the general public do not, including better access to public events, crime scenes and press conferences, and to extended interviews with public officials, celebrities and others in the public eye.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporter%27s_privilege:

”Reporter's privilege in the United States (also journalist's privilege, newsman's privilege, or press privilege), is a "reporter's protection under constitutional or statutory law, from being compelled to testify about confidential information or sources."”

Also, in some (¿many, I would think, but I don’t know stats?) countries the justice system will weigh the right of the public to know against law infractions when deciding whether to prosecute journalists who performed crimes in order to gather information.

For an example, see the pentagon papers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers). All concerned knew the information was top-secret and stolen, but in the end, nobody got convicted for publishing them.

We'll, there definitely are distinct classes of journalists that have special privileges. These classes are not defined by law but are implemented and supported by institutions (such as when special access is granted to events or killings generate international attention).

There is no such thing as a "licensed journalist" because such licensing has been historically used to limit freedom of the press. However, there is an implicit understanding of what constitutes being a journalist that is similar and it is displayed when Judges choose whether or not to force a journalist to reveal their sources.

The core idea is that intent matters. Building such an app to create public discourse by someone with a clear history of journalistic actions is likely to face different regulatory penalties than an individual with no such history who builds such an app for entertainment or profit.

Edit: There is argument to be made that this "soft licensing" serves to extert control over journalists.

They're nonsensical. There's no legal definition of journalist. You don't get a license from the government

This is Switzerland, not the United States. In Europe at least in many countries journalists do indeed have special privileges and they do have recognised legal status and licenses, usually represented by private/public institutions that oversee ethical standards in the industry and so on. In Germany for example this would be the German Press council, in Sweden it is the Opinionsnämnd etc..

For the love of god can we please stop pretending that every country on the planet is the US.

I sure wish those journalists would have any more credibility than regular people though.

No licence needed, true, but governments issue press cards for certain privileges peculiar to professional journalists.

GDPR has exemptions for the purposes of news reporting, not for specific people.