AWO represented Privacy International in its third-party intervention in Information Commissioner v Clearview AI, a significant legal challenge over the extraterritorial reach of UK data protection law, international law principles of state immunity and comity, and the scope of “behavioural monitoring” under the GDPR. The Upper Tribunal heard the Information Commissioner (ICO)’s appeal on 9-11 June 2025.
The case concerns Clearview AI, a US-based company that the ICO found had scraped billions of images from publicly accessible websites to build a facial recognition database. This database has been offered to law enforcement and private commercial clients around the world. Following a complaint by our client Privacy International in May 2021, the ICO investigated Clearview AI and issued an enforcement notice, ordering the company to stop processing UK residents’ data and to delete any data obtained unlawfully.
Clearview AI challenged the enforcement notice at the First-Tier Tribunal (FTT). Despite finding that Clearview AI was processing UK data subjects’ data at scale and in particularly invasive ways, the FTT was swayed by Clearview AI’s argument that, as a US company providing services only to foreign state entities, it fell outside the material scope of the UK GDPR. The decision thereby removed a substantial swath of the ICO’s jurisdiction over particularly intrusive data processing. The ICO appealed to the Upper Tribunal, who now has to determine crucial questions about whether UK data protection law can be enforced against companies that operate internationally but process UK citizens’ data.
AWO represented Privacy International in successfully obtaining permission to intervene in the proceedings, and in making written and oral submissions to the Upper Tribunal on the interpretation of the GDPR’s scope provisions and the broader implications of the appeal for individuals’ rights. PI’s submissions underscored the worrying implications of the first instance decision for the protection of data subjects in a global and interconnected world, and its incompatibility with the intention of the GDPR to protect data subjects against precisely this type of intrusive processing.
The ICO was supportive of Privacy International’s intervention, and the Upper Tribunal welcomed its contributions to the key debates at play in the appeal. Clearview AI was repeatedly asked by the judicial panel to respond to our client’s arguments and positions, demonstrating the importance of this public interest intervention.
This case may turn out to be an important inflection point in the development and regulation of surveillance technologies. A judgment in favour of the ICO would protect the important extraterritorial nature of the GDPR, an essential means of protection for UK data subjects in an age of global digital surveillance.
AWO acted pro bono for Privacy International, with Lucie Audibert leading the case. AWO instructed Aarushi Sahore and Marie Demetriou KC, both of Brick Court Chambers and who also acted pro bono. We are grateful to our counsel team for their important and powerful contributions to the case.
Read more from Privacy International about the case, its submissions, and the wider context.