October 28, 2025
Face/Off meets Law & Order
Criminal complaint against facial recognition company Clearview AI
EU privacy hawks aim for jail as Clearview shrugs off fines; commenters roast US apathy
TLDR: Noyb filed a criminal complaint in Austria to target Clearview AI’s leaders after the company ignored EU fines for mass photo scraping. Commenters are cheering the shift from paper fines to possible jail time and roasting the U.S. for treating privacy like an afterthought.
The internet’s favorite surveillance villain is back in the spotlight—and the comments are spicier than a group chat leak. Privacy group noyb just filed a criminal complaint in Austria against Clearview AI, the company that scraped an alleged 60 billion photos to build a face search engine for police and big brands. Clearview has already racked up fines and bans from EU watchdogs over GDPR—Europe’s big privacy law—but critics say the company simply ghosted the penalties. Now, criminal charges could mean real heat: personal liability for executives and even jail time if they set foot in Europe. Cue popcorn.
The top mood in the thread? Fury that Clearview “ignored” Europe and eye-rolls at regulators’ toothless fines. One user summed it up: this has “been going on since 2021,” and Europeans are tired of watching a US company “dodge the law.” Meanwhile, Americans in the comments admitted envy, wishing the US took privacy as seriously, with one NSFW metaphor about how our data gets passed around. Others joked the EU just switched from “emailing fines” to “Liam Neeson mode,” quoting Taken. There’s gallows humor too: people asking where the “delete my face” button is, and memes about GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) finally levelling up from paper tiger to actual tiger. Whether Clearview blinks or doubles down, the crowd’s clear: no more pay-to-play penalties—bring on handcuffs and headlines.
Key Points
- •noyb filed a criminal complaint in Austria against Clearview AI and its managers for alleged GDPR breaches.
- •Clearview AI is described as scraping the internet to build a database of more than 60 billion photos for facial recognition.
- •EU authorities in France, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands issued fines totaling about €100 million and bans against Clearview AI.
- •Clearview AI largely ignored EU actions; only in the UK did it appeal the ICO’s decision, with a final ruling pending.
- •Austria’s law (§ 63) allows criminal actions against managers; if successful, Clearview executives could face jail time and personal liability, especially if traveling to Europe.