Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Calls for National Privacy Law
tabdelgawad writes "Brian Krebs, who writes the Washington Post's Security Fix Blog notes that Microsoft has just asked Congress to enact a new federal privacy law to preempt the growing hodge-podge of state laws that regulate how companies can use personal information. Go Microsoft!?"
Before your heads explode, you must say to yourself, Microsoft is only a company. Companies job is to make money, not to do good or evil, if doing good will help the company make or save money then they will do it. In this case for companies like Microsoft it is easier for them to follow one set of privacy laws except for 50 different laws and with the internet it makes it more convoluted.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's much cheaper to bribe your way around one law than it is fifty.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
One need only look at how the federal banking regulations are repeatedly used to crush California's much more stringent privacy requirements to see the real reason behind federalized "privacy" laws.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
The purpose of calling for federal regulation is to keep costs down, not to protect privacy. Some companies are actually interested in protecting privacy because failure to do imposes costs. HP is particularly good in this regard in that it lets customers access their data. The companies you have to watch out for are the ones with business models that depend on selling personal information.
Exactly. Right now, I think privacy laws are pretty weak. But this isn't necessarily a good change -- remember that CAN-SPAM eliminated a bunch of far stronger state laws and left the end user with far less recourse in many cases.
To take this a step further, Microsoft's next logical step would be to gear up their lobbying machine to make certain the federal privacy law would supercede all state laws, limit corporate liability for violations, and leave as much latitude as possible on what they can do with the information.
I hope everyone is compiling their list of items that should be included in a consumer-focused privacy law and is ready to contact their representatives. If this goes forward, I can guarantee you that corporate America has their checkbooks ready to support their idea of how your personal information can be gathered, held, used and sold.
Could this be Microsoft's motivation for the bill? Big companies like Microsoft can pay to get their products through a certification process, and thus used by companies who must comply with this act, but lots of OS software (some Linux distros and many apps) will not have the necessary resources to go from 'Release' level to 'Government Certified Release' level - leaving no option but for companies in the future to use the certified Microsoft WonderServer2009 over open source alternatives.
Oh please, think about it before gushing over Microsoft. Microsoft only does things out of self interest. There are at least two Machiavellian motives for Microsoft to want a National privacy law. One is to undermine tougher state laws. MS knows that Congress is in the pocket of industry and will pass a weak national privacy law not a strict one. The other motive is to shoot Google in the foot. Google collects detailed personal information on every every Google transaction from a record of every Google search every made to the contents of your gmail in and out boxes. Privacy laws could hurt Google and anything that hurts Google helps Microsoft.
I'm no fan of Google's use of private info, but I never, never trust Microsoft.
A fair guess is that Microsoft has seen which way the wind is blowing and decided to put forward a proposition that's essentially on behalf of business before someone else puts forward a proposition that's a lot more tilted towards Joe Citizen or other business models.
A difficulty with any law of this kind is that essentially if it's going to have teeth then it's going to be anti-business, in the sense that business will always push for a greater invasion of privacy than legislators or citizens are going to feel comfortable with. It's rather hard to believe that a convicted monopoly is the best arbiter of this unavoidable clash of interests, though to be fair it's an issue that exists in every country in the Western world.
Of course, one can't help noticing that the requirements over "secondary" uses of information would be problematic for a company with a lot of alliances with third-parties and an interest in personal data, like erm Google, and less problematic for a company where more of it is kept in house, like erm MSN or Windows Live, and where the information is much less personal. And various hints that regulatory compliance might cost big bucks could knock out a lot of small guys. By amazing coincidence, a federal law would then knock out some perhaps tougher state laws, too.
Nope. The idea that a convicted monopoly should "help" politicians decide what's in my interest strikes me as gross. Even grosser, perhaps, is that the politicians should think it's a good idea to accept this generous offer.
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Privacy are 2 things: - how can one company collect and use your data - who can they share it/sell it to Google depends only on the 1st one. They just need to enter a contract with you (through eula/term of use of their service) for you to grant them some of this and then you can GIVE them your data. Most people wouldn't mind a restriction on the usage of those data to what was agree upon. I personnaly would like stronger laws on the sharing. In the US, any company owns YOUR data and can do as it pleases them. Europe already has such law, where you have a right to know what data they have on you, can change/update that data and can ask to erase it (and they have to do it, no run around). They also cant share it without your approval. MUCH better for your privacy...
Hmmm.... How can I spin this against MS to make it seem like they're doing something evil...
I am so sick of this nonsense. I swear, I need to stop clicking on any slashdot story with the name "Microsoft", "Google", or "Apple". Or maybe I should stop looking to slashdot thinking that maybe people could somehow look past their biases and read a story for what it is.
Yes, Microsoft is probably acting in their own best interest. So do Google and Apple. They're all trying to make money. That doesn't mean it won't benefit us. Don't try to tell me that you never act in your own self interest.
I know, Microsoft does anti-competitive things, and that's not cool, but don't let your opinion of them cloud your ability to think for yourself. We need to have our personal information protected, and here MS is in agreement with that. What's the big problem? Seriously!
My thought: Microsoft is trying to get Federal rules that they can live with and that'll override more restrictive state rules. Take a look at opt-in vs. opt-out in their proposal. They advocate opt-in for a very limited class of data that they know the general public's getting touchy about, and I'll bet they make that a headline point. But for all other classes of data, they want opt-out enshrined in law in a way that prevents any state from requiring opt-in across the board. And once this is nailed down in Federal law, it'll be all but impossible to get it changed later no matter what happens.
I think that's Microsoft's strategy: cave in on the few points the public's riled up about right now, while simultaneously nailing down favorable terms everywhere else.
This sort of statement applies to companies that aren't Microsoft, as well. The goal of a company is not philantropy, it is success (unless you are a not-for-profit company whose goal is philantropy, in which case, philantropy is success, but I digress)...
The same "company goal" that Microsoft has is shared by Google, Yahoo, Netscape, Intel, AMD...
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The company benefit from certain actions may just be as simple as 'branding' and positive public relations, but actions a company takes are almost never selfless.
I'm glad that at least SOMEONE here realizes that. (added: it's not just you, but you're the most recent example that I've seen):)
[Now if people would just realize this beyond Microsoft, I think we could all finally come to an understanding about the nature of business that I think the average Slashdotter isn't quite getting]
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
This is yet another example, though admittedly it's better than a lot of what's already in existence.
Here in NZ, we've had a Privacy Act for 15 years, and it's stronger than this proposal. You have a right-to-access-and-correct information held by any organisation, even the Government, for example. Getting a credit card or a loan is not a licence for the bank to sell your name and address to a dozen different direct-advertising agencies. Buying something on HP will not require you to purchase a larger mailbox just to cope with the influx of targeted mail.
If you allow the corporations to define the rules of the game, you are fair game. I'd hate to live in a society where any company that has my details can sell them.
Oh, and to the people who say that this exceeds the authority of the federal government, surely this is an inter-state commerce matter? A uniform set of rules under which you may be fucked over by corporations sounds like inter-state commerce regulation to me.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Too busy to grab the links just now, and the thread will be old and dead before I have time to do so, but several of my recent posts have been on this topic. You can search for them (assuming you have the time and interest).
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Yea, right.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
the little guys who make the country run, or the big shots who want to limit the little guys?
the answer to the question is the heart of the argument. I don't generally expect big multinational outfits to be pushing for little guys to get their rights back as it says in the constitution.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Hrm... Think of factory conditions in this way, if you would:
We should buy as much from possible from sweatshops to increase the wages of their workers.
Stop laughing >.<
Firstly, if we buy a lot from sweatshops, that would mean there would be massive $money to be made in sweatshoppery. Opportunistic taskmasters would open their own sweatshops, wanting their own peace of the pie. And, they'll want "workers," too. Eventually, the sweatshops will run out of workers to exploit, and would have to, gasp, pay them more in order to grab workers away from competitors. By putting a sufficiently large carrot in front of the taskmasters, their own greed will help the impoverished. Spooky, eh?
Also remember, that in countries that can barely feed themselves, their idea of a "living wage" is completely different.
Also, what would happened if we all stopped buying from sweatshops? They'd be shut down, of course, and yay, we liberated the poor, starving serfs earning diddly/squat per hour. Of course, that means that they're now making $0 per hour, because we just killed their one source of income and only chance of feeding their family, as feeble as was.
Although sweatshops are deplorable, they are the first babysteps towards a modern economy. We have to learn to balance humanitarian issues with economic ones. How would you rather spend your money? Would you rather a small portion of it drops into the pockets of the starving and impoverished or would you rather give a large chunk of it towards unskilled, over-privileged, unionized button-pressers?
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