Data collection via web scraping: privacy and facial recognition after Clearview

Abstract

Web scraping, intended as the series of available techniques for automatically gathering data publicly available on the internet is ubiquitous in today's society, characterised by an ever increasing amount of data on the web. This contribution aims to shed light on the existing legal framework for fighting illegal scraping personal data, with a focus on biometric data. The recent judgment of the ECtHR in Glukhin v. Russia and the Clearview AI "saga", are crucial in the analysis, considering their impact on the proposed EU AI act as amended by the European Parliament, which included the untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet in the category of prohibited high-risk activities.