IT Essentials: Regulators hate this one simple trick

Deny, ignore, and carry on with business as usual

IT Essentials: Regulators hate this one simple trick

Companies have the power to ignore regulators, but is there a change on the horizon?

It turns out that global law has a loophole: you can save loads of money in fines by just ignoring them. At least, that's what infamous web scraping facial recognition firm Clearview AI has found to be true.

Clearview is the shadiest operator in a shady market, and countries including the UK, France, Italy and Australia have all politely (and then not so politely) asked the company to delete its data and leave.

The problem: Clearview has stuck two fingers up, blown a raspberry and continued with business as usual. A fine levelled against it in the UK has been overturned, it's ghosted the French data regulator, and now the Australian regulator has abandoned its own attempts at enforcement, partly because the company refused to engage.

Clearview's claim that it's only subject to US law, because it doesn't have an office in the UK/France/Italy/Australia, is a pathetically transparent attempt to avoid the consequences of its actions. Sadly, it seems to have worked.

That implies that one, or probably both, of the following are true: regulators are so toothless that companies can safely ignore them; and/or even tier two and three firms have so much power that they can easily slap down any legal challenge. Tier ones, of course, simply treat fines as the cost of doing business.

There have been recent hints at a change in regulatory approach, the most obvious being the arrest and charge of Telegram founder Pavel Durov this week. The move signals an increase in the importance of personal responsibility, which may be the only way to truly hit a rule-breaking company where it hurts.

That said, the fines do serve another purpose: stopping Clearview from setting up a base in any of the countries where it's still facing legal action and dissuading other organisations from working with the company. But that's little compensation for those people (basically anyone reading this article) whose data has been illegally slurped.

Clearview is far from the only offender. It owns just one of the many straws sticking into the massive pool of public data, but there are plenty of others and they all funnel to the same place: a big beast called AI.

There are signs that beast might just be a pit of endless ravening that will never fatten up enough to feed anyone. The pool of useful training data is starting to be tapped out, and AI is still to make any sort of meaningful return, as Intel, Meta and recently Nvidia have all admitted.

We'll release the results of our own AI research, where we dig into this subject in greater detail, at the IT Leaders Summit next month. Attendance is free for end user leaders, so register now to reserve your space.

We've released the final episode of this season of Ctrl Alt Lead, the podcast where we interview IT leaders about what's moving in the market. This time I'm talking to David Green, head of innovation at Oxfordshire's Blenheim Estate, about how and why he's installed a sensor network across the estate, as well as sharing his tips for other leaders pursuing a similar strategy.

Ctrl Alt Lead will be back in October, with guests from Admiral, BT, Motorway, Inchcape and more.

Also, check out the Rising Stars 30, our list of the young IT professionals with the energy, passion, drive and ideas that are helping their organisations to thrive. These people are the IT leaders of tomorrow, so make sure you remember their faces.