Slashdot Mirror
Hamburg To Fine Facebook Over Facial Recognition Feature
An anonymous reader writes "Johannes Caspar, data protection commissioner for the German state of Hamburg, today declared he will soon fine Facebook over its use of biometric facial recognition technology. He said 'further negotiations are pointless' because the company had ignored a deadline he set for it to remove the feature. German authorities could fine Facebook up to €300,000 ($420,000)."
Most european countries can fine facebook if they want.
It's silly for one state/province/city/school board to try to regulate the activites of an international website.
The situation is different from, say, a company actually setting up a location or conducting physical sales somewhere.
How is a site even to know whether or not it's sending packets to a particular locale?
If it's so intolerable to Hamburg for Facebook to "do business there", they can always just block Facebook.
Germany actually has industry. It's like how if a homeless bum owes $1000, he's never going to pay it, whereas an upper-middle-class guy with a job can owe $300,000 on a mortgage and another $20,000 on a car and still have a future ahead of him.
Facebook's even going to notice that?
I'm a nature photographer.
So what will you whine about when Canada does the same thing? The privacy commissioner launched a similar investigation into this as well, though our fine could be in the several million dollar range.
Om, nomnomnom...
In other news, Facebook tells Hamburg where they can stick it and Casper disappears under mysterious circumstances.
Silly goose, only the government can use facial recognition!
If they want to do business only in America, then they can ignore the laws of the rest of the world.
You are right... The problem is that Facebook might want to do business with an EU company. At that point things become funny...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
If they want to do business only in America, then they can ignore the laws of the rest of the world.
Are they doing business in Germany?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
That works fine until this upper-middle-class guy's job is shipped over to some third-world shithole nation where the work is performed at a small fraction of the cost by somebody with an even smaller fraction of the skill doing a very horrible job at it. Now the upper-middle-class guy is $300,000 in debt and jobless. Since he was a manager for a few years, he no longer has any technical skills, and there are no management jobs available, so he's shit out of luck. Even if he took that job at Burger King, it'd still take him over 20 years to pay down that debt, and that's without spending money on anything else, and without taking into account the interest! Furthermore, thanks to "Free Trade" and their outsourcing blunder, the company he used to work for will go under in a few months, so he has no chance of ever going back there. He can't even start up his own business, because nobody is willing to lend him any more money given his current $300,000 debt load. Even though he's making absolutely no income, and the interest on his debt grows daily, he still needs to provide food and shelter for his family. He can't sell his house, because nobody else is financially sound enough to purchase it. Even worse, he can't sell his car because he lives in the suburbs where there is absolutely no public transit and the only way to get the basic necessities of life is to drive 20 km into the city. Welcome to America, circa 2011.
Facebook.de / German-language facebook / office in the city of.. Hamburg, Germany.
( http://www.facebook.com/careers/department.php?dept=hamburg )
So... Yes.
I.e., what can germany do to facebook? Boycott it?
Order German ISPs to block facebook. Its as simple as that.
Obviously. Taxes are indeed high, though as long as you keep buying our resources, we won't have any shortage of money.
Om, nomnomnom...
More to the point who is going enforce the German law?
As I posted elsewhere, the court can order German ISPs to block facebook.
a physical office is doing business you blithering idiot.
Hamburg, Germany
Our German office is located in beautiful downtown Hamburg, surrounded by splendid shopping opportunities we are also just few minutes walk from the vibrant harbor area and the most infamous part of town - St. Pauli!
Open Positions
Account Management (1)
Account Manager (Hamburg)
Ads Marketing (1)
Head of Brand & Agency Marketing (Hamburg)
Corporate Communications (1)
Head of Policy (Germany)
Monetization (1)
Senior Strategist, Global Customer Marketing (Hamburg)
Sales International (3)
Client Partner (Hamburg)
International Client Partner (Hamburg)
Regional Director Europe (Germany & Nordics)
I don't understand - yeah, 420k is like nothing to facebook, but why would they ever pay? I.e., what can germany do to facebook?
Confiscate assets held in Germany? Including everything in their German offices and all their income going through German bank accounts (such as the fees they charge German advertisers for serving up German advertisements -- sorry, sponsored links -- to German customers)?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
All right, but why do they even have offices in Germany? Or any other country foreign to their home country? What does it gain them? It's obvious how it exposes them. Are they stupid?
This is why you rent a house, lease a car, and learn chinese. $300 on rosetta-stone and you can live like a king as a cab driver in shanghai!
Who do you think you are, Johannes Caspar? Facebook doesn't respond to anyone else complaining about their high-handed actions, so why should they respond to you?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
They've already tried that two or three times and failed miserably at it.
Yes, I'm going to riot in the streets because some company based in another country has decided to stop doing business with people in my country.
"what do we want", "Legal immunity for overseas corporations" "when do we want it" "NOW!"
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
well obviously they do.
unless someone got really high and started throwing darts a map then opened up offices wherever the darts landed. then forgot all about it.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
Presumably you are not from Germany. Privacy and data protection are regarded quite differently over here compared to, say the US. We had two totalitarian regimes in one century on German soil who drew most of their power from the insane amount of information they collected on individual citizens, and the last few months of public debate have been dominated by several data snooping and retention initiatives by our government and police, and this debate may well cost a few top-ranking politicians and public servants their seats/jobs.
People here regard information about themselves as their property. When Google announced the expansion of StreetView to Germany they brought a shitstorm upon themselves. Take a look around German cities in StreetView. A large number of houses had to be blurred out because of complaints by residents. Google very narrowly avoided concerted legal action from our federal and states' data protection officers. Facebook will have to follow the law or risk being banned. We had quite a few successful social networks here before Facebook opened up to international users. Right now they are barely keeping themselves afloat, but should Facebook be kicked out they would jump to fill the void with a legal alternative.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
If they want to do business in Germany, they comply with German law. Not sure what's so difficult to understand on that point... wouldn't be the first time Facebook has had to adjust its practices to stay on the friendly side of the law. Actually, it wouldn't be the first time they've had to adjust their practices to comply with German law, at that. The reason you can hide your profile from search, among other privacy features you've been granted, are because of the orders of the German and Canadian privacy commissions....
It's nearly impossible to block internet traffic unless you prohibit encryption and even then there is stenography(where you hide data in other data).
Block a domain name? Well there are alternative name servers.. very easy to setup. You can even mix and match them.
And while any website may prefer a local domain for a country there is nothing preventing anyone from setting up service for people that speak a language... not all German speakers are in Germany and nor are all English websites from the UK. Facebook makes money in ad revenue and clicks. If they pull away from Germany then there will be brokers that will figure out the complexities and arrange ad space for German advertizes that want to reach the German speakers that are more than capable of getting on Facebook. If anything it will probably make the site more popular.
It all comes down to a question of convenience. You can be sure Facebook isn't the only one doing facial recognition for online pictures. Basically what this commission wants to prohibit is pictures on Facebook period because it's the pictures that are the issue and causing privacy concerns.
Apparently they do. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2519524&cid=38017546
can't tell you why 'cause i have about 0 knowledge in whats involved in running a global corporation.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
Have you ever wondered why can someone get paid less and do OK with it? This in my opinion is the true turning point, WE as a whole should be thinking as one. Forget the borders and nations and whatever. WE need to figure it out. Hell, if half of Africa isn't hospitable for harboring so many humans, maybe the science should make forward for making it hospitable. WE want to go to Mars? If WE are thinking WE can make that place livable, maybe WE should start here on Earth first? Is it normal for anyone to think that the current time period (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_periods) we live in is the end of the list ultimate one? Frak that. I'm sure change is coming and for me rather then turning to a God I'm starting to believe the 2012 predictions. NOT the paranoid ones, but the original ones: Beginning of the new age. Still I'm not even sure I can last a year to wait for it. I'll do my best, but shit is dire. WE seriously need an intervention from the higher power (be that God or Alien - I'm picking Aliens on this one). In the end just think about this for a moment: money is a universal currency and is equivalent by the power (be it brain or labor) a person gives. If that translates to an UNIVERSAL currency, if a job in America and an job in India is paid the same... would it matter? Of course not.. It's US ... the HUMANS that made it that way. Borders make us separated... Borders make us get that living somewhere else is a good idea... This is a problem in it's root. WE need to UNITE. - imagine this:
Aliens come to Earth. That shit is kinda new to us, but whatever, TV style.
1: They lend in America - "Howdy ho" guns pointed at them, because American are generally scared of everything going on in the World.
2: They lend in Serbia (that's where I'm from) - "De ste rodjaci" - (translated: "Welcome cousins" - lousy translation) hugs all over, thinking "Get us out of this mess, we are now the link to the higher power"... "Jackpot" would say the most. But still the reaction is the CURRENT one. Thinking "We'll stick it to the World, we got our diplomat and his on OUR side, not anyone else". Still thinking about the difference between nations and countries.
3: Anything goes... A lot of envy I sense in everyone's eyes, a lot of WTF going on.
Bottom line... WE are still divided. WE still live in multi-national world. The problems WE are having right now are pathetic at least.
And still after all those thoughts, it comes back to this: Do your job better then others and live good OR do your scams better then others and live good.
PS. I'm veeeeeery drunk.
Peace and love, whoever you are.
PSS. How do I make the (Enter/Break/Return) - also known as next paragraph here? Blah. block of text. TL;DR. I get it. :*
x kepa x
I dunno, but i don't think paying a fine for breaking a law makes it okay to continue breaking that law forever.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
No. We never levied fines. We gave ultimatums, including blocking and seizing their assets in Canada, and the changes went in.
Om, nomnomnom...
You have it backwards. If German users want to use a US service, they can deal with how the service works as constituted in its home country. If the Germans don't want to use some service, they always have that option. This is legal fuckery, no more. Typical mommy government idiocy.
I'm no fan of Facebook -- quite the opposite, in fact, I outright despise them -- but again, my answer is not to use Facebook, not to try to tell them what they can or cannot do.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
and you will understand why Germans have a stick up their ass about this sort of thing.
How does Facebook do business in Germany? Simply because Germans use it is not enough.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Yes, complete censorship is impossible, however they are not trying to prevent German users from dealing with Facebook, they are trying to prevent Facebook from dealing with German users.
i highly doubt it will make the site more popular for German users.
I can't see a lot of people jumping through hoops just to connect to a social networking site that all their other German aren't using because they also cannot be bothered.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
Well first of all I really doubt FB would suspect all German accounts. Remember, to them customers are products. Though I can see Facebook users rioting... Some undoubtedly would figure out ways around the block. It would advance proxy technology by a decade :D
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
If you run a site that is accessible internationally, how can you ensure that you're always abiding by all nations laws? At what point can a country up and decide you're breaking one of their laws and they can start fining you?
Need any dad jokes?
This was addressed in the Steve Jobs biography. When asked why he didn't build factories in the US by Obama, he replied that even if he could get all the permits and stuff sorted out, he wouldn't be able to find 30 thousand or so engineers he'd need to keep the thing running.
He's not talking about engineers with 4 year degrees, he's talking about people with the technical training to operate and maintain factory equipment. You don't get that kind of training in college.
You're advocating essentially a "if you build it they will come" mentality. While it may work, it's not something a lot of people would bebt tens of billions of dollars on. That said, Apple could undertake the effort of training people themselves. I suspect they'd rather get their products made as soon as possible, however.
Also, the US has higher industrial output than germany, by a significant margian. It was only recently overtaken by Cina. The problem is that it's mostly in airplanes and chemicals and cars. Not computers. And there are now significant barriers to entry for building new factories. To the extent that it rarely happens anymore.
Facebook has fewer guns than the Nazis did - and the Nazis may have been enabled by information but they executed their plans by force, which is what one of the parties here (not Facebook) is doing.
But, anyway, I were Facebook, my response would be to disable the accounts of the Hamburg users and apologize for not having the desire to customize the platform to every locality's unique laws. Facebook could potentially be up against tens of thousands of micro-customizations here which would be hell to QA.
Let the people sort out with their government how important this sort of prosecution is to them, and let the local networks take back their old job.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You are simply ignoring the simple fact that Americans are still buying Apple products, nevertheless your arguments.
If the Americans were so concerned with their jobs, they would agree to pay a bit more for Made In USA products.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Lol yeah Greek debt is the problem when Germany has more than three times the debt of Greece.
I think that's a bit like saying to your bank manager "why worry about my $5,000 loan when Bill gates has loans many times that size.
Way to miss the point. Listen up, moron. The question is, why bother with the German physical presence. The internet is connected everywhere. It just doesn't make sense to me why they want the German physical presence.
Just maybe they don't want to offer Facebook to all the world outside the USA without any advertising revenue. Maybe they want to advertise German companies to German users of facebook
More to the point who is going enforce the German law?
As I posted elsewhere, the court can order German ISPs to block facebook.
Or just send the bailifs round to Facebooks office in Hamburg
Freeze payments from European advertisers to FB or vice versa and confiscate the $420k. That's what they would do in case FB refused to pay. BTW: They are not a German company and they are not bound to German legislation, ok. So I am going to start a business in Berlin, Germany and sell copies of Windows 7 Ultimate Pro for a fiver. I'm not a US comany, so why should I fucking care about Mickeysofts "intellectual property"? Notice something?
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Google did not leave China.
"the German state of Hamburg"
Actually Hamburg is a so-called "free city" inside Germany (i.e., is not part of any state / land) due to its history as a free city since 1189. While technically it is a self-governing entity at the level of state, its name and real status is that of a "free and Hanseatic city".
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I have friends who have exactly this plan in mind. One is currently a secondary level science teacher, the other an Eastern Bloc / Asia specialist for a high-class tourism company. They plan on moving to China to teach English. You get paid UK-level wages, but pay China prices for everything. You're effectively a local millionaire.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I just don't get what the problem is... How can anyone abuse street view and it's images of buildings? - I mean I've been to Germany more times than I can count and I've taken pictures of buildings (I love interesting architecture) a gazillion times with no hassle what so ever. I've even been allowed inside private yards and so on to take pictures from that angle as well, and still no problems. What harm can street view do? - It already blurs persons so it cannot be the risk of 'locating' individuals that's the problem. And the street view don't show who's inside the buildings, not what valuables are in there, so it cannot be the 'shopping catalog for thieves' they're afraid of either.
I'm the kind of person that welcomes cameras and similar. I'm not doing anything even remotely questionable in public so I don't care if someone want to make a note of me doing basically the same thing every day. I go to work the same way at the same time every day and the route is also always the same. I go home usually at the time, again the same route every day, only sometimes I shop for groceries on the way. When I shop for groceries I buy more or less the same things - milk, bread, cereal, sometimes a sixpack, sometimes a lightbulb, sometimes some clothing, shoes and so on. Nothing to hide there. I'm sure most people's lives are equally boring.
What the cameras may reveal are people up to no good.
I cannot accept that people have any right to be left alone while they semi-break the law or whatever other mischief they might be up to. If guy is visiting his mistress and don't want that to be caught on camera, the correct solution is to not do that. You are no more 'safe' when there's no cameras around. Think of the stupid show "cheaters". Yes, spouses do hire investigators to follow the cheaters and gather evidence to be used later to this effect. The only certain way to avoid getting caught is to stop cheating. You don't have the right to cheat in private. If you move around in public, people (possibly with cameras) and cameras might see that. It the nature of being "out in public".
And when it comes to crime, I'm all for the use of cameras to spot, identify and convict the criminals. It's both just and appropriate that people doing rioting in London was caught on camera, identified from those pictures and convicted based on what they were seen to be doing and whatever evidence could be found otherwise (stolen goods from looting for instance). I find it necessary that those committing arson and other form of gross vandalism were convicted to pay for the damages in full. I know they most likely never will be able to settle this debt, but they will have to live with it, just like their victims will have to live with the losses from the arson etc. - it's fair and just.
Actually I'm in favor of ALWAYS convicting criminals to pay restitution for the losses incurred by their victims. And I don't mind if you lock up those unable or unwilling to pay until they do (in special debtors prisons), with the option to work in jail towards settling the debt. Sure, it may take them the rest of their lives, but then they won't do more mischief while they're behind bars, and society will be much better off. After all, about 98% of all crimes are committed by people that have committed crimes before so throwing people in jail for a very long time after just one offense will reduce crime rates immensely. It will also be an effective deterrent.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
He's not talking about engineers with 4 year degrees, he's talking about people with the technical training to operate and maintain factory equipment. You don't get that kind of training in college.
You mean the sort of training that companies used to pay for their employees to get, back when America and other Western countries were less fucked?
Of course there's a flip side to this. Facebook lawyers could just say " You can want money in one hand and shit in the other hand, then see which hand fills up first. Go ahead and BLOCK FACEBOOK if you don't like it, then we'll see how long it takes your massive crowd of users to make your life bitter hell."
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
You know that Facebook has an office in Hamburg and that they do business here and therefore fall under German jurisdiction, right? You know that Facebook collects data on members and non-members through embeddings in third-party websites which violates German law, right? You know that Facebook keeps changing its TOS and introducing new privacy-invading features after people signed up on what they thought were acceptable terms, which violates German law, right?
Wait, you say you have no bloody clue as to what is involved in this issue? Sorry, I didn't realise you were an idiot.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
None of which actually stops their use or forces them to pay.
He's not talking about engineers with 4 year degrees, he's talking about people with the technical training to operate and maintain factory equipment. You don't get that kind of training in college.
Not in America you don't, that's part of the problem.
You're advocating essentially a "if you build it they will come" mentality.
Of course, you think people are going to train for jobs in factories that don't exist on the hope that once they are trained someone will build factories for them to work in?
While it may work, it's not something a lot of people would bebt tens of billions of dollars on.
Actually it's exactly the kind of thing people would bet tens of billions of dollars on, because that's how it works, that's certainly how the industry thrives in Germany.
That said, Apple could undertake the effort of training people themselves.
And that's what they should do, but of course they get higher profit margins by not doing it, sure they are selling out their country, but hey it's higher profits.
I suspect they'd rather get their products made as soon as possible, however.
Rather as cheaply as possible.
Also, the US has higher industrial output than germany, by a significant margian. It was only recently overtaken by Cina.
No, no they don't. Germany is the one recently knocked off the top by China, the US is in 3rd place.
1 People's Republic of China $1,581,000,000,000
2 Germany $1,337,000,000,000
3 United States $1,289,000,000,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports
And there are now significant barriers to entry for building new factories. To the extent that it rarely happens anymore.
No there aren't, it's just that it's cheaper to offshore that manufacturing so that's what the shareholders prefer.
Well fortunately you are not in the business of being a multi-national corp. So it doesn't need to make sense to you.
Facebook don't allow German people accounts simply to be nice and have a global presence. They do it to make money from companies who want to advertise to those users. If you want to make money in a country, particularly one with a big economy like Germany, it's a whole lot easier if you have a registered company in that country. That usually means employing people and having an office.
Once you want to make money in a country, you will usually find that the country itself has some very definite laws you have to follow before they will allow that to happen. It rarely works to say "We're American, just give us the cash and don't bother us with your quaint laws and customs."
You are simply ignoring the simple fact that Americans are still buying Apple products, nevertheless your arguments.
I don't think he's ignoring that, Americans are just buying things made by the chinese.
If the Americans were so concerned with their jobs, they would agree to pay a bit more for Made In USA products.
Except that most things aren't 'Made in USA' anymore not because of consumer price choice but because making them offshore provides the company with better profit margins, just look at the enormous profit margins on Apple gear, they own ~7% of the PC market yet make ~35% of the profit, just google it. They also make the lion's share of the profit in the smartphone market despite having a comparatively small marketshare.
Unfortunately, Zuck can probably find 420k $ between his sofa cushions, so it's not much of a deterrent.
~Syberz
This was addressed in the Steve Jobs biography. When asked why he didn't build factories in the US by Obama, he replied that even if he could get all the permits and stuff sorted out, he wouldn't be able to find 30 thousand or so engineers he'd need to keep the thing running.
Yeah, maybe if your definition of engineer is "someone who assembles an iToy".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
And there are now significant barriers to entry for building new factories.
And, oh let me guess, it's all the government's fault?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
1) Office in Hamburg
2) Work with German advertisers
THats two reasons right there.
You are simply ignoring the simple fact that Americans are still buying Apple products, nevertheless your arguments.
If the Americans were so concerned with their jobs, they would agree to pay a bit more for Made In USA products.
But Americans don't get the choice between "made in China" and "made in the USA" iPhones. The problem is that companies have outsourced their manufacturing to China almost wholesale, there isn't anything much a consumer can do about that.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have friends who have exactly this plan in mind. One is currently a secondary level science teacher, the other an Eastern Bloc / Asia specialist for a high-class tourism company. They plan on moving to China to teach English. You get paid UK-level wages, but pay China prices for everything. You're effectively a local millionaire.
The downside being that you have to live in China.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yet another moron who doesnt realise that Facebook does business with German companies using the data of German citizens
THAT makes it part of the germans jurisdiction.
Because they want to do busines in Germany (they want money, shock!) and so this helps them do business with german companies.
Dropping the first part, the office, doesnt affect ehy are doing the latter - meaning they would still be under german jurisdiction.
PSS. How do I make the (Enter/Break/Return) - also known as next paragraph here?
Use the P (for paragraph) tag?
Is this a trick question?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Exactly, it's no use to Facebook having all their German/EU members just go through Facebook.com in the US.
US advertisers arent't going to pay to advertise Californian pickup truck deals or cheap Kentucky real estate to Belgians, and the same the other way round.
So they have decided to have a physical European presence, sell German language advertising and use a German Facebook.de web address and so on. At that point, they can't pretend they only operate in the US.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I just don't get what the problem is... How can anyone abuse street view and it's images of buildings?
I did not say this behaviour was rational. I for one love StreetView, and I can only shake my head over those people who seriously fear its use by muggers, terrorists etc. But I understand where they are coming from.
On the other hand I run my own mail server because I do not trust any commercial provider to ensure the privacy of my messages. And I run pretty much overkill grade encryption between my mobile devices and my home network. Not that I had anything to hide, mind you, my life is just as "boring" as yours. But since I do nothing wrong why should I allow the state or anyone else to poke through my personal messages? Similarly I am very careful about what and how I post to my Facebook and G+ accounts - which are both registered under pseudonyms using dedicated e-mail addresses. And similarly I am very much against the widespread use of cctv, police video recordings at lawful protests etc. We still have an assumption of innocence until proven guilty, and that extends from the formal legal principle towards an expectation of being left alone by the state as long as one does not break the law.
Besides, if half of all the money that is thrown out of the window on technical solutions that, in the end, work at best 10% of the time, was spent on more and better trained police I would feel much safer. What good is it to you when your being beaten to death by some lowlives is caught on tape from five different angles but the one officer who could have saved your life had to be let go because the state could not afford their salary?
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
They fully understand that. They're more interested in having their government openly opposed to personal liberty instead of clandestinely eroding freedoms under flimsy and transparently vacuous premises, and having a very comfortable life of reasonable luxury.
This is why I'm not joining them, as enticing an idea as it is.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Apparently, you can't
Granted - you and I also no ways around that. But Mom & Pop don't ... and that's the point. They don't know that FB tracks them and even if they would, most of them have no idea how to avoid being tracked.
Paying would imply some agreement that this would, could or should be illegal,
That's because it is illegal.
(I assume I'm missing something.)
You certainly are.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm not sure that shorthand is all that hard to crack. Perhaps you mean steganography.
There are lots of culprits. New development projects are often tied up in litigation for a period of time as local communities oppose them for various reasons. Existing buildings can be difficult to demolish because of historic structures. Comprehensive environmental impact reports must be prepared and show no negative impact or else litigation can completely torpedo the project (and honestly, it's pretty damn hard to build anything with absolutely no environmental impact, you're essentially limited to replacing and upgrading existing facilities). On top of that, getting necessary permits takes time, which delays projects and costs money.
Obviously, if you're in the tech sector, you can't afford to wait years to get these legal considerations worked out.
In China, the government gets on board and promotes new projects. They don't care about negative environmental impacts, destroying historic structures, or what kind of impact a development will have on the local community. While their approach is far from perfect, you have to admit that the US approach does a lot to stifle new development.
Perhaps the US could overcome this if there were some alternative protocol businesses could use to avoid litigation as long as certain standards for environmental/community impact were met and independently reviewed by a government body in a timely fashion. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Thank you Hamburg!
You're listing exports, I'm talking about actual production.
The industrial sector in the US produces 3.2 trillion dollars worth of goods, while in china it's 2.8 (China comes out ahead 4.7 - 3.2 when you're measuring by Purchasing Power Parity rather than a straight currency conversion). Germany does not even produce 1 trillion (your numbers include "re-exports").
Nobody wants to look at my ugly mug anyway.
I used my cat "Wiki" as my avatar until he died and now I'm using "Ixie" for as long as she lasts.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
That's the French who always take to the streets. Germans just grumble and stay at home.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Facebook unfriends Hamburg...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Most of those paranoid enough to blur their houses objected to the connection between the image and the exact GPS location. Images per se were generally not the problem.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
That's just the cost of doing business. Even if one state actually believes they can fine a company in a completely different part of the world, this will not make a dent. It's a token, at most, and not a very good one.
Move sig!