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Upcoming EU Data Law Will Make Europe Tricky For Social Networks
Thorfinn.au writes "EU politicians are mulling new data protection laws that could make Europe a hostile place for social networks. The EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding and the German Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Ilse Aigner drew up proposals for the new data protection law which reads: 'EU law should require that consumers give their explicit consent before their data are used. And consumers generally should have the right to delete their data at any time, especially the data they post on the internet themselves. We both believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws. Otherwise, they should not be able to do business on our internal market. This also applies to social networks with users in the EU.'"
...Such as Google. Given that information posted on social networks is generally searchable, that information, once cached, is very, very difficult to erase.
See: Wayback Machine. I've used this wonderful site myself, very recently, to grab snapshots of a website I helped set up in 1997 (kitbag.com, which sells sportswear), to show someone something (which was relevant to the conversation at the time, I can't remember now what that was all about even though it wasn't two weeks ago...). Said site now uses php, I believe; way back then it was coded in ASP.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
the so called "Social networks" look more and more like voluntary surveillance databases !!
aaaaaaa
Dear Service Provider, Please delete all my data (texts, phonecalls, emails, etc) that you have stored due to the data retention directive. Thank you.
Heavens forbid we might actually regain control over our data again. Oh the humanity, how ever will the industry survive? They might need to actually check and track data internally after they've raped and pillaged it (although you can't rape the willing).
That would also make it awkward for search engines such as Google. Given that information posted on social networks is generally searchable, that information, once cached, is very, very difficult to erase.
See: Wayback Machine. I've used this wonderful site myself, very recently, to grab snapshots of a website I helped set up in 1997 (kitbag.com, which sells sportswear), to show someone something (which was relevant to the conversation at the time, I can't remember now what that was all about even though it wasn't two weeks ago...). Said site now uses php, I believe; way back then it was coded in ASP.
This only means that Google would have to respond to a takedown request directly from the person who owned the profile (or their heirs) -- they wouldn't be responsible for a request made to Facebook to delete data, because they would not receive a copy of that request. As for the data already cached, Facebook et al are going to have to do some major purging AND send search engines a request to do the same. Until they do, Google should not have to purge anything since they didn't originally collect it. Now this data protection act WOULD apply to Google+, but not so much to the search engine.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
It seems the EU believes that some social network practices are hostile to its citizens and I can hardly disagree. Remember those complaints to fb from that group of Austrian students? It's an interesting reading for anybody who designs any service handling customer data (basically all of them).
Very interesting language. It suggests that data you haven't posted might be considered yours. I wonder how this applies to a range of gray areas social networking sites provide - such as someone posting a compromising photo of you, or even more interesting, something you've posted but someone else shared/reposted.
I disagree with the earlier poster who said it was difficult to delete data once it was cached. That is not true. A data "cache" by its very nature is transitory; once the cache is routinely updated, "cached" data that has been deleted goes away.
If it doesn't, then it isn't "cached" at all... it is stored. That is a different matter. Like the WayBack machine that was used as a (bad) example. WayBack doesn't "cache" data, it stores it for long term.
But none of that has any real relevance for "social networks", except for items that are explicitly made public. Certainly it is true that nobody has a right to expect privacy or exclusivity to data that has been deliberately made public.
What this really affects is your private communications and connections to other people, and what you have stored on some social network that ISN'T public. I happen to agree that somebody should have the right to delete such "personal" or "private" data, and that when it is deleted, it should go away... permanently.
We all know that Facebook reserves the right to store data permanently. Your deleted data is truly deleted, but their TOS explicitly says that they have no obligation whatever to delete data from their archives. That would indeed run afoul of the European data protection laws... but so what? That's Facebook's problem. There is nothing that says a perfectly good and legitimate social network could not be built that conforms to those laws.
If you chose to delete your google+ account, it says it'll "try and destroy all data".
Keyword, try - I deleted mine, no idea if they really destroyed anything, but it says there was no way to recover my account if I went through with it.
FTFY
The wayback machine is a wonderful thing, yes... But a positive example doesn't negate a negative one.
Guns are a good thing - they really helped that one time in the forest when a bear attacked you. They just sucked badly, when a good friend got shot.
Cigarettes are a good thing, because they make you look 'cool' - until lung cancer sets in, at which case, cigarettes probably weren't quite as cool.
The wayback machine is nice to look at some of your old work - but the wayback machine also allows you to remove your site from it - not an individual page or version, yes, but at least it does give you _some_ way to keep a lid on your data.
But picture the bad side - you post something bad about a friend (after a fight you've had). Later you feel sorry for it - and you want to remove it; and you find, you can't.
Another bad side may also be when you change opinions on something over time, and people find pages of you arguing 'the other side' - maybe you were against abortion at some point, now your pro abortion - and some of your pro-abortion friends might find pages of you advocating against (or vice versa).
There are certainly things I argued 20 years back (_on the net_) that are still visible, but that I now see fallacies of. And I have no chance of removing the old comments. If you discuss something just among friends, you can, at least, hope that they'll forget it over time - or that they will also see how your change of heart comes about and therefore ignore what you said before.
On the net, you don't have that choice.
You may now argue, that people should think better before they post - but how often do you read the "How to avoid beginner's mistakes on XYZ", _before_ making some of them?
In my case, 20 years ago, I wouldn't have thought that that data would still be around now; at least, not publicly - at the time, I just didn't think it was feasible storage-wise to keep it all. Now I know different.
Today you might be thinking - well, whatever I post, I don't think anyone will be able to find it 10 years from now - but you're basing that thinking on technology that you see today; and you might think google will not have an easy time finding what you said 10 years ago, so it will not manage to do that 10 years from now, either. On the other hand, in those 10 years, technology will grow leaps and bounds - maybe in 10 years, you can just click on a photo of someone on the internet, and just right-click and select 'personal history' and the future google dredges up _all_ it can find on that person: from the 'more informed' comments that person might be making then, to childish comments uttered in the early 2000s.
http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html Lets face it social networks are scum. I do not do face palm, twitter or any other social networking sites. It is better for you not to follow the sheep for publicity use either as an individual or a business.
The best overview of Social Networks based on my life experience of well over 40 years, is simply like real life friends and so called friends. When you have money, a nice car, a nice house etc people want to know you. The same if you are famous. When all your money and fame disappears, so do the "flies around shit" and you are only left with a handful of true friends :)
Just like politicians and most media; they will run from one "Crisis to the next". Once you can get your mind around that truth... truly it really does help you feel more at peace with yourself and others.
All cows eat grass!
Or we could just let private individuals keep their dignity?
Nah, didn't think so, pointing and jeering is so much more fun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
You make it sound like google has some kind of legal obligation to keep your g+ data alive. Had you PAID for their services you might have a leg to stand on, but at this point they're just being nice by NOT purging it!
True. And contrary to this news items title, this law will make true social networks thrive - just not corporate controlled ones. I already meet the letter of the law with Disapora, and am perfectly happy thank you.
Facebook will have no problems complying with the law. All the service providers working in the individual EU countries which protect privacy already do.
Always happy to see there are areas left where politicians are not busy selling us out to corporations.
I absolutely want to have to give explicit permission before people use my data. And yes, I want to be able to remove my data.
Does it cause some additional work? Yes, it does. I have several web-based games that will be affected by a law like this. But seriously, what it means is an additional tick box during the signup ("by signing up I agree... bla bla") and having to track who posted what and removing it when he wants to. Probably easiest solution is to add a button saying "delete all my posts" somewhere.
So, all in all, an hour or two of work.
So, FB with your billions of revenue, stop whining.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Say Facebook et al. won't surrender to these new regulations, for whatever reasons. So according to the proposal, these social networks would no longer be allowed to do business on the EU's internal market â" which would be enforced exactly how? By blocking their DNS entries on a pan-European level, pissing of dozens of millions of users (i.e. voters); or at least those who aren't tech-savy enough to circumvent such futile attempts in the first place?
Bring it on, I'd say! Let's see who holds the whip hand.
If you want to pick on it, then you should educate yourself first. Cigarettes have significant benefits in short term, from neurological to cardiac. In this regard they can be compared to caffeine. Their major problem is severe damage caused to lung and thorax/mouth areas which massively outweighs benefits in long term.
You "usage" argument is also shaky. Everything humans use is a tool. Tools, among other things ENABLE action that would be otherwise impossible. Therefore it is indeed viable to argue that action can be influenced by presence and efficiency of a certain tool. Great example of this is indeed gun crime - for example in Kosovo (a well documented area) there has been a very significant increase in gun crime related to crimes of passion after war, due to significant increase of availability of assault rifles.
That's a solution but it's a risky one. I elaborate.
I'm 40+ now and I think about what I write publicly (yes even right now). But I'm not perfect nor foretelling so I can't be sure that anything I write is correct and I won't know better in future, or that I won't change opinion for any reason. Furthermore everybody starts young and with little foresight. One way to build up experience is making mistakes and those mistakes should not haunt people for all their lives because the Internet remembers them forever. We can't demand that children are born with adult minds. Not writing anything anywhere because it could come back to us in the future is a little bit too radical, a condemn to self-isolation and a risky proposition both socially and business-wise.
So either we stop paying attention to the past (impossible and undesirable) or the Internet stores only what we want it to store about us and let's us delete all the rest.
Another I just thought of is the fact that any decision taken in Europe will not apply to the UK. It is well established case law (recent decisions and reason by Judge LJ [localgover...wyer.co.uk] repeated from previous decisions such as those of Baroness Hale of Richmond and Sir Nicolas Wall, President of the Family Division of the High Court) that EU Law does not supercede UK domestic Law*.
EU law does not superceede any national law in any country (well, perhaps with very few exceptions which I not aware off).
The EU law system works like this: every new EU law is basically "reference" for wich the participating countries craft a similar national law. For that they usually have a grace period of about 5 years.
And: the UK do the same, they also incorporate EU laws by issuing the relevant national laws.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I must agree with you. The internet is a place where you can find anything. I do advocate the "if you don't want it on the internet, don't put it there". Specially since if anybody really wanted to make sure something you (or anyone) said stays online it will be easier, faster and less costly for THEM to keep it online than for you to take it down.
On the other hand, the argument about: "I might argue about something and 20 years later I might say the opposite" just does not stand to be a valid one. At least not to me.
I guess it's just that I find it irritating that what the internet is for me - this free place where anything can last forever* - is being slowly legislated and with rules being thrown at it because people can't be bothered to think for themselves for a second, nor they can be bothered to be civilized enough as to understand what you, I or anybody may have done in the past is on the past.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Uh, what? EU directives absolutely do affect UK law. The ECHR is completely irrelevant to this, because it is from the Council of Europe, which has nothing to do with the EU. Your argument makes as much sense as saying that the fact that the USA PATRIOT Act doesn't apply in the UK is evidence that EU laws don't apply in the UK.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And make sure no one else puts it on the net either. How do you do that?
Who wrote this summary anyway?
What is so *hostile* for social networks?
That when users press 'delete' on a post they made of facebook, then Facebook will actually have to delete the post instead of only hiding it like it does today.
If Facebook wants to play in Europe then either they start to follow privacy rules or they step aside and give someone else a chance that does.
I bet you anything that if facebook is faced with the choise of not doing business or folloing privacy rules, they will choose to stay in business.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Furthermore the EcJ has ruled that EU laws can be used in lawsuits against governments. This specifically takes away a common reason for governments to delay issuing national laws. As the EcJ is supreme to national courts, the opinion of the UK courts is moot.
Yes. The weapon is called a sling, and they can be deadly at ranges up to 400 meters. World record is presently 477 meters. A crossbow would work at long range, as would a longbow, and they tend to be quite accurate as well.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's true. Perhaps in future it will have to add that capability for European users.
It's not thinking before you post, either, if by the age of 30 you aren't embarassed of at least one thing you did a decade earlier then you haven't had any sort of life.
Generally the term assault rifle refers to rifles chambered for intermediate rounds and usable in both semi-automatic and fully automatic fire modes. They were invented by the Nazis after it turned out that most battles happened at ranges too long for submachine guns (fully automatic rifles that use pistol ammo) but not requiring as much precision as the slow semi-automatic or even bolt action battle rifles offer. ARs offer a higher rate of fire with less recoil than the full-sized-ammo-using battle rifles.
For spray and pray you'd probably want a submachine gun. A proper machine gun (light ones use full powered rifle rounds, heavy ones even bigger bullets, they're designed to fire hundreds of bullets) is probably too unwieldy for terrorism.
On the other hand all that heavy gear probably fits more into gang warfare than any reasonable legal scenario and would drastically increase the collateral damage of gang fights. The big guns aren't something you'd use for self defense or carry concealed, keeping them banned allows the police to arrest any gang members carrying them right away instead of waiting for the gang to start firing a heavy machine gun into the rough direction of their competitors.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.