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New EU Legal Privacy Framework: We're Not Kidding
An anonymous reader writes "Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission announced today a new regulation for data privacy in Europe (PDF) in replacement of a 1995 Directive. Recently, privacy laws have been under a lot of criticism for their practical inability to ensure a high level of protection to EU citizens. The new data privacy framework will bring a lot of changes: 24 hours security breach notifications, mandatory security assessments, end of notifications to local data privacy agencies, mandatory data protection officers and huge administrative fines: up to 2% of the annual worldwide turnover (that would have meant $1.2 Billion for Microsoft in 2008). Indeed that's 'the necessary "teeth" so the rules can be enforced.'"
Where do I sign up to vote "yes please"?
No sig today...
How is any of this going to protect you from the police?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
No it can't just be ignored. If these laws pass, every EU country will be forced to implement them. The European Commission has very sharp teeth indeed on stuff like this, and does not take kindly to companies trying to ignore its rules.
I agree, but for a different reason. ACTA. This says that have to keep stuff secret, or not keep it, and ACTA says they have to keep it, and give it to the *IAAs. The media industry will not want this loophole.
The article could be misinterpreted to mean this is a done deal as is.
O2 must be glad they made their massive screw up before this came into effect...
It tries to claim jurisdiction over any company that handles the personal data of EU subjects. How exactly do they intend to enforce this over companies that have no physical presence within the EU?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Are these same rules going to apply to the EU, the member governments, and municipalities as well? Of course, collecting that 2% would be just book keeping ...
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
I really hope this passes. It'll be interesting to see all the stuff that I thought I'd deleted off Facebook suddenly reappear* so that I can actually remove it permanently.
*Apparently FB doesn't actually delete anything and it's just hidden from the user.
Summation 2
Transferring personal data from inside the EEA to places outside like the US, where there are not such strong data protection rules, requires either the subject's consent or certain specific guarantees under a safe harbour agreement. Otherwise taking the data out is already illegal.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I disagree that this may not go somewhere. Doesn't sound like an opt-in only scheme and there are different ways of enforcing such things that appeal to large bodies. Even if it was pushed in an unavoidable way at country level legislation many groups would find ways of circumventing it if it didn't suit. The reason things work is less to do with it being enforced and more to do with those adopting it see it has something in it for them. Many people are behind such ideas so thats a big plus for many large agencies and business etc etc since adopting something many are asking for can be very attractive even if the actual
That's roughly what a lot of people said before the EU went after Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour, too. More than $1,000,000,000 in fines for defying sanctions later, those people had changed their tune.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but being associated with Big Media is pretty much toxic for politicians right now.
Oh, and also in case you hadn't noticed, the EU hasn't actually signed ACTA yet. Technically they have until March next year, IIRC, though I expect someone will try to sneak it through in the very near future before the politicians realise it's too close to SOPA and PIPA (in some respects) and likely to cause similar grief.
Also, while the European Commission (the unelected guys who seem to be behind the secret negotiations) still publicly support ACTA, whether they can get it through the European Parliament (the elected guys who recently got new teeth under the Lisbon Treaty and seem to be enjoying exercising their powers) is a different question.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
How can a European Commission decide to charge 2% of the annual worldwide turnover, seems a little above their station...?
Thats what EULAs are for.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Big Fines should go to the users harmed, not the State. A corporate screw-up should be punished, but the money shouldn't be flushed down some bureaucratic hole.
Also - who is responsible for the fine if the breach is due to "off the shelf" software?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
No law like this will be passed on EU level unless it is absolutely certain that the core countries will adapt it without fuss.
Funny thing: some rights, you cannot sign away. So the EULA is irrelevant. For example, no contract of indentured servitude is legal. In the same way, you cannot sign away your right to privacy.
The idea is to create a fine that will actually hurt the companies. If they said X% of the turnover in EU, it would just give companies even more incentive (in addition to tax dodging) to claim their profits are actually from somewhere else.
I'm trying to come up with some sort of logical/ethical/economical/whatever reason for why EU shouldn't be able to fine X% of worldwide turnover but I can't come up with any.
I agree but agreeing to "Company G storing your data in various locations around the world" isn't giving up your privacy and I'm sure G's lawyers & lobbyists will quite gladly spend time & money making a few judges agree.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
The EU isn't that weak. The EU is sort of a cross between the UN and the USA (If you consider each state to be sovereign states instead of egotistical providences). I don't know how close to which end of the spectrum it is, however.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
I'd like to see that in court ... an EULA can't violate the law, and if it's against the law for them to share your data with the US, they can't change the EULA to say you waive your legal protections.
I would hope that something like that would basically get pursued as a willful violation of this, and lead to a fairly epic smackdown.
Of course, since with the Patriot Act that the US has given themselves the right to demand data from US owned companies ... so I can see it being possible for an organization to be left with the choice of whether to violate US or EU laws; you couldn't be in compliance with both.
It's also why it's illegal to give certain kinds of data to US-owned organizations in some countries ... anything in the government of Canada can't be handled by a US owned company, because they could be required to hand over the information.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but being associated with Big Media is pretty much toxic for politicians right now.
Not really, considering that they're all associated with Big Media. In order for that to be a problem their political opponents would have to be able to point fingers and say "Look at him! He's in bed with Big Media!!", but none of them can do that without their hypocrisy being on display. The MAFIAA and these other organizations/business groups buy off everyone. Why throw your support behind one candidate that could potentially lose an election if you can afford to hedge your bets by supporting both? There's nothing to lose, and mountains of money and influence to gain.
This is the fundamental problem with politics in the United States as of late. In order to truly compete on the same level as these politicians you need to allow yourself to be corrupted by the same people they are. By the time you finally gain enough exposure to run for office beyond a local level, you've become the very person you're competing with. Selling out is as much a requirement for office in our government as being an American citizen. Even if you miraculously buck this trend and achieve some higher office, you have both parties and their considerable resources hammering you down pretty much constantly. They'll spare no expense to destroy you.
America! Fuck Yeah!!
In most of Europe, we don't vote for judges. They are appointed and are quite immune to lobbyists. Also, most of Europe has a civil law system, and under that system, the laws do not get "interpreted" by the judges...
It is a bug of the American system that judges are affected by lobbyists and get to decide what laws mean. This doesn't mean our system is better. This is just a bug we don't have.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but being associated with Big Media is pretty much toxic for politicians right now.
It may be toxic, but they don't seem to care! http://torrentfreak.com/australia-us-copyright-colony-or-just-a-good-friend-120121/
Oh, and also in case you hadn't noticed, the EU hasn't actually signed ACTA yet. Technically they have until March next year, IIRC, though I expect someone will try to sneak it through in the very near future before the politicians realise it's too close to SOPA and PIPA (in some respects) and likely to cause similar grief.
Poland is looking to sign it now. That was the reason for all those attacks, and they seem to be pushing them forward against the public wishes. http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/01/25/0211219/piratbyran-co-founder-says-stop-ddosing-polish-sites
Also, while the European Commission (the unelected guys who seem to be behind the secret negotiations) still publicly support ACTA, whether they can get it through the European Parliament (the elected guys who recently got new teeth under the Lisbon Treaty and seem to be enjoying exercising their powers) is a different question.
That would make sense, but the politicians all over the world seem to be doing the opposite of what is sensible. Once again, the entire world of elites are ignoring the people. And once again, there will come a point where the people remind them that they are outnumbered.
I have been studying this stuff for a while and I must say there is something good on the way Some hints, likes , +1: - it must now be passed through the European Parliament might take long (2 years) but Reding is know for pushing things through, after that we have the 2 years of transition period! - The legislation is very technology neutral, which is good, because it keeps the perspective on the consumer and not on technology. Hence capturing all aspects of cookies, webbugs, flashshit, browser fingerprints etc. - opt/in will be the standard, (and is the only way it makes sense to me) - more precise and transparent privacy notices, not something like "we share information only within our group" .... (btw. we are a giant with 5000 companies)
- It might be that the data portability changes the game. If they really adopt formats for export/exchange (which hardly worked in enterpise integration) this can move you from service A to B in theory, weaker lock-ins, more focus on consumer service.
lets hope!!
Apart from - you know - the fact that two of the more important EU institutions are the Council of Ministers and the Parliament - both of which contain people you voted for.
If the website you input your data into is hosted in the US, the company did not transfer your data, you did.
to be precise: The important part is a regulation, hence it does not need to be transposed into national law! It is mandatory for the member states to comply. It is down to the European Parliament to adopt it, which of course has representatives from every member state.
One of the important rules is "If the data subject's consent is to be given in the context of a written declaration which also concerns another matter, the requirement to give consent must be presented distinguishable in its appearance from this other matter." In other words, merely consenting to a long EULA that involves transference of data isn't enough. There has to be a separate checkbox to allow redistributing data. EULAs that allow one party to change the terms at any time won't qualify, either.
The Council of Ministers doesn't contain anyone I voted for. It contains people selected by the leader of the political party that won the national election. Neither the candidate MP I voted for nor the one who was elected to represent me is a member of this party, so my MP does not have any say in their selection. MPs are not supposed to respond to comments or questions from people in other constituencies, so the people who 'represent' me in the CoM are not actually supposed to communicate with me at all, and I have no influence on their reelection.
I am much better represented in the Parliament. I have 5 MEPs, one of whom does a very good job (although when the Welsh Nationalist is the sane one, you start to worry about the system), but at least there is one MEP who represents my views and is accountable to me there.
Unfortunately, every time we try to push more power to the Parliament, the Eurosceptics manage to get it overturned...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This law simply looks like an empowering of the EU, and giving it the ability to assault companies and organisations. None of which really deals with the issue at all.
This law needs individual assertion. A citizen needs to have the right to have access to their data, and have rights to control it with limited caveats. Only laid out circumstances should exist where someone can hold your data (your employer for example) or government departments (your passport or health records) - and the citizen should have a right to challenge/edit or amend the data. In other cases of data usage (for example on the web, facebook, marketing companies) - citizens should have rights to (at least some of the) money earned from their data, a right to control what is held, and a right to have it removed on request. Where data is misused or abused, the citizen should have a direct route to compensation, with heavy compensation in cases of personal damage, damage to reputation, or so on.
I don't want Vivian Reading to give Facebook a multi billion dollar fine, that gets chucked down the back of the brussels gravy train, screw that for a game of soldiers, they already lose and waste far too much and abuse too much already. No, screw that, I want my own individual rights brought back in line so I at least have a recourse in all cases in terms of my data.
I believe that re-establishing the basics, and allowing a person to talk to an org with laid out and clear rights is a fair re-establishment of a status quo thats been blitzed for too long. I don't want or wish for the EU to gain powers for itself in my name, and to load up taxes and businesses for its own benefit.
All fines and reperations should be between the individual and the company that makes or causes the breach, government should not get its foot in there handing out red tape and crippling laws for its own benefits and empowerment.
We`re all equal
In most of Europe, we don't vote for judges. They are appointed and are quite immune to lobbyists. Also, most of Europe has a civil law system, and under that system, the laws do not get "interpreted" by the judges...
It is a bug of the American system that judges are affected by lobbyists and get to decide what laws mean. This doesn't mean our system is better. This is just a bug we don't have.
As a point of fact, at the federal level and in many states judges are not elected. Instead they are appointed (by someone or some group that was also elected), and are basically set for life.
Depending on the jurisdiction involved (varying states or the federal justice system), they either have lifetime appointments or appointments to a mandatory age of retirement.
Some jurisdictions allow for the removal of judges based on the quality of their work (i.e. a judge who made *many* *very* *boneheaded* decisions may get axed, but only in some states), but most only allow for their removal because they had committed a crime in office.
In these systems, the only lobbyists are legal counsel for the prosecution and defense, as it should be.
The 24 hour security breach notification and stiff fines sound like a good idea. Punishing abuses, fraud, and negligence are one of a governments primary responsibilities. I'm also for forcing companies to disclose more information that potentially involves harming people (loss of private data, pollution, etc.). I'm not such a big fan of the mandatory officers and inspections. If you make the penalties big enough and force them to own up to their failures companies will determine how to achieve adequate levels of protection on their own. As always, companies/people will follow the incentives/disincentives.
EU law has direct force in national law, EU law trumps national law, and questions of interpretation of EU law are handled by the EU court, whose decisions are binding for the national courts. The EU is very far from toothless in areas where it has legal competence.
If they are indeed replacing the '95 directive the "published document" will have the form of a EU directive, which member states are compelled to turn into national law. If they don't do so, the EC (or, I think, any citizen with standing) can sue them in the EU court for failing to comply.
What you are referring to as toothless is probably in issue domains like foreigh affairs and defense, where the member states have full competence and the only thing the EU can do is try to forge some sort of consensus.
True.
However, the company has to operate entirely outside of the reach of European legislation for that to apply. Some do, but any business with a European presence is subject to those laws, which actually covers a surprisingly large number of the big names: Facebook have an office in Ireland, PayPal (Europe) are registered as a bank in Luxembourg, all the giants like Microsoft and Google have European offices, etc.
The export restrictions are a more significant issue for smaller US companies that provide B2B services rather than dealing with customers directly, though. For example, a lot of US-based start-ups that make it easier for small businesses to accept credit card payments, handle customer relations, etc. have run into trouble offering their services to EU businesses because of the personal data export issue. These days, there is a specific safe harbour agreement with the US to make such commercial relationships easier as long as the US company is held to similar standards as they would be in Europe.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The details of that enforcement are up to the member states, though. Quite often we've seen the meaning of laws bent by the legislation that puts them on the member states' statute books where individual states are either more or less in favour of said laws. There are lots of ways to interpret even the strictest sounding law, in terms of evidence required, leniency of punishment, etc.
No it can't just be ignored. If these laws pass, every EU country will be forced to implement them. The European Commission has very sharp teeth indeed on stuff like this, and does not take kindly to companies trying to ignore its rules.
How serious are they about data protection, if even the EU governments themselves are even ignoring the most basic principles of secure database deployment.
Case in point, recently the database of the Luxembourgish service medico-sportif was breached. No, not by an evil-genius uberhacker, but by a sportsman who saw a password on a note stuck to a medico-sportif doctor's screen ...
It turned out, that the service ignored the most elementary security precautions:
===> these data protection laws are only there to placate the public, so that they allow more and more data gathering, in the mistaken belief that such data will be safe with the government or whomever. But there is no real will to follow through with application of even the most basic security measures.
You have a good point about the written civil law system in most parts of Europe, the main exception is the UK where civil law is made in the courts but luckily the judges are appointed and have so far been reasonably immune to lobbyists.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Except in most of Europe a EULA has little to no standing in a court of law.
They're a bit like the disclaimers you see at the bottom of some companies E-mails, a waste of bandwidth.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Not quite. Yes, the local (read: national) government make the laws, but they cannot ignore a EU directive. It MUST be implemented. It's up to the national governments to do it, and they have some leeway how they implement it (in a nutshell, you can almost always be stricter but rarely more lenient), but not implementing it results in a quite serious fine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The MAFIAA and these other organizations/business groups buy off everyone.
Everyone? They can't buy off the pirates, which are now popping up in every European country, and firmly intend to participate in the 2014 European elections...
Ok, so you may say, pirates are not in parliament yet, and 2014 will be too late to stop ACTA. However, even now, pirates are already creating enough of a stir that the current political parties are feeling compelled to adopt some of their stances about the internet. Case in point: the recent commemorations against "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (preemptive data logging), where the pirates found some rather unlikely allies, including some parties who voted in favor of this directive 6 years ago
...taking the data out is already illegal.
Oof... like that makes a difference for people like them to whom the law simply doesn't apply
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
As a point of fact, at the federal level and in many states judges are not elected. Instead they are appointed (by someone or some group that was also elected), and are basically set for life.
... and so they will stay forever faithful to whichever party appointed them, which is not necessarily a good thing either.
Indeed a president in office during a period where lots of Supremes happen to retire and/or die has suddenly the power to (indirectly) set judicial policy for the next 30 years or so...
No, just stop it. This bullshit of, "Well I didn't vote for the people who won, therefore I don't have representation" is patently false.
The lobbyists still choose the appointees though. There are plenty of people whose minds are warped to follow the course of evil even without regular payments.
Not all of the US is Common Law. Louisiana uses a system based off Napoleonic Law.
You voluntarily interacted with a server in the US. You voluntarily gave that server information.
Did you read my post? It's not that I didn't vote for the person who won - the person in my constituency who does represent me (even though I didn't vote for me, he is accountable to me and the other people in my constituency) has no say in selecting the people who go to the Council of Ministers. They are selected by the government (a coalition at this point, more commonly a single party with a majority) from the pool of their MPs.
These ministers are not allowed to communicate directly with other the constituents of other MPs. This means that the people who is supposedly representing me at the CoM are not allowed to communicate with me. I am not supposed to write letters to them, and they are not supposed to reply. In contrast, I have 5 MEPs who represent me and even though I only voted for two of them (I think - one definitely, I can't remember about the others) they are all supposed to be available for direct communication with me.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And yes the money goes in our government coffers so next year we need not pay as much tax.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I'm no expert on the topic, but I think it's more likely that the law makers (Congress and the House of Representatives) are so deep in the pockets of industry, not the judges (who only interpret the law). Yes, corrupt judges probably exist, but it's far more effective for industry to "buy" the law makers: Once a law is passed, it can be held unconstitutional or the executive branch can choose to ignore and not enforce it, but it is still a law that can be brought into play if it suits someone who paid for the law to be passed.
My solution? If contributions of any type (money, services, time, and goods) and to any number of elected/electable officials could not exceed a paltry sum (like $100 or the equivalent) during a fairly long period (like 12 months) it would be far more difficult for powerful special interests to buy themselves the laws they want. No more lobbyists, no more "war chests" on the campaign trail, no more of this insidious bribery...
--Udo.
if they offered citizenships overseas for say, $100 a year. The additional rights and privacies would more than pay for the fee - and maybe get you out of NDAA Gitmo without passing Go.
art: US? Seriously? Have you ever BEEN to Europe?
transport: US? Seriously? Where do you live that has better transit systems than most of (modern) Europe?
punishment: US? Is that YOU getting punished or your desire for strict punishment on OTHERS? The latter -- US, the former, Europe.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
And yet somehow, bureaucratic oppressive Europe got awesome privacy legislation. What did the democratic land of the free get? SOPA.
Life is good here in the socialist hellhole. ;-)
If a company is convicted of Capital Crimes then all the CxOs and the board of Directors is blacklisted from being involved with a company AND IT SHOULD BE A FELONY FOR A COMPANY TO ATTEMPT A HIRE for the period of 10 years. I would say that the execs being PERSONALLY on the hook should work.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I don't know what's so great about being poor in the US. Rich in the US, I'll accept.
I find it a bit telling that he separated "citizen rights and restrictions" from "privacy". They call that gerrymandering.
I guess for patriotism I just don't get why that's a good thing, and I'm not from either place, but I do get that he looks like a patriotic US citizen judging from all that.
The only good thing about being poor in the US is that if you have your wits about you, innate skill, know how to play the system, and have a bit of luck, you can become rich in the US instead.
Liberty, Equality, and the "pursuit" of happiness.
(unlike France: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity)
Of course, in Europe, you have a social system to fall back on, even if you have certain liberties limited. Pick your poison, nothing's perfect.
You missed the part about distinguishable, and separate,permission being required for it to be legal.
A long ToS / EULA with that buried in it would be illegal
True. And they will, because it actually simplifies things, like removing obligatory reporting to state-level data protection authority. And in most states personal data protection is already strong, so business won't have change much.
The change will be dramatic to overseas companies. That is a reason for, not against.
As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.
As much as people seem to clamor for various forms of privacy protection the data shows they only care about it when prompted with questions. People are readily willing to give up privacy for small rewards and don't want to bother with the various protective measures already in place. There is nothing any law can do to really enforce data privacy when consumers don't find that privacy valuable enough to vote with their feet or use existing privacy controls.
There are really two types of `privacy' (often it's more about public but not readily discovered information) violations possible.
1) Security breeches by hackers or data theft by employees.
2) The sharing of personal data with institutions/people the user would object to viewing that information.
There is little regulation (perhaps government supported security information/response/prosecution centers could help) of companies can do about hackers or data theft. Sure, you can fine companies for data breeches and force publication but this creates an unfortunate incentive for companies not to discover security breeches. A well designed law would impose increased penalties for breeches exposed by outside agencies, e.g., law enforcement but even this law would create incorrect incentives for the current executives whose interests are still likely to reduce spending on discovering breeches in the hope that the bad news won't come on their watch.
Besides, I'm highly skeptical that poor security would be remedied by even larger financial incentives.
It's not even clear if such remedies are even desirable. A better law would simply demand appropriate compensation for people harmed by leaked credit cards and the like and leave it up to the companies (and consumers) what level of security is appropriate. Sure, we would be much safer if we replaced credit cards with fancy cryptographic two factor authentication but the costs in convenience and money would far far exceed the costs of making people whole from credit card theft.
This leaves the 2nd issue. The problem here is that the difference between desirable functionality and privacy violations here depends on the user's preferences. Does the user value getting to see free TV episodes more than the cost of having their viewing history shared with advertisers? What about discounts on medical products for similar sharing?
Sure, the law can require all sorts of consent and legal hoops to jump through but as long as people view actually making these calls as too burdensome to warrant real thought/action all you end up with is annoying privacy policies and click through agreements no one reads.
While popular with voters who think they care about privacy as long as they aren't willing to seriously consider it in their consumer choices (evaluating for themselves how seriously a company is committed to protecting their information from inappropriate revelation) such laws are likely to impose more burdensome regulatory costs than benefits to the consumer.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Social Mobility is higher in much of the EU than in the US. Try again.
The rules proposed seem quite reasonable, and if you can't be bothered to secure my data, then I don't want you in business in the first fucking place.
Its not the rules that will be unreasonable. They'll sound like peace, motherhood and apple pie which nobody could possibly object to.
The problem will be the inevitable requirement to maintain a metric shedload of paperwork to prove you've followed every last fucking detail of the rules, including the ones that are self-evidently inapplicable to your situation, or make no technical sense... If you work for an organization, make that the imperial shedload of paperwork to prove that you've adhered to your Data Protection Officer's ultra-cautious over-interpretation of the rules (and/or the ones who your IT manager hypes up to ensure that he gets a pay raise for added responsibilities). Be assured that the detailed rules will be so complex and open to interpretation that if you do get investigated the auditors will find something wrong.
Of course, that only affects the conscientious people that you would like to do business with (and then screw up because they were too busy filling forms to actually attend to their systems). The real cowboys know how to dodge and weave and will probably ignore the law, find loopholes or just plain lie on their paperwork.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
You forgot some.
self determination and social mobility: advantage US.
Europe does a lot of things right and a LOT of things wrong. To pretend it is the panacea is disingenuous. The Declaration of Independence is a good read if you want to understand some of different philosophies....
If you think the rich run the show in the USA, wait until you see the aristrocracy in Europe. With 1000 year advantage, they make the US look like a bunch of pikers. Or did you forget that part as well?
Nope, which is why I didn't mention things like Personal Freedom, etc. I pointed out exactly the 3 I thought outrageous.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Every time I see that measured, it consistently shows the US having the least social mobility of all developed nations. For example, here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp1993.pdf and http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/81/
I do often see the claim that the US has an advantage here, but I have never, ever seen it backed up, while I have seen the counterclaim backed up.
Money: USD has heavy fluctuation. EUR is quite stable in comparison. US has wider margin between poor and the rich, making rich richer and poor poorer. It's harder to strike "little bit rich" in US in that sense.
Commerce: EU companies generally concentrate more on the quality of things, and has countries with the easiest entrepreneurship anywhere in the world, ie. Finland is one of the easiest countries in the world to run a company! and many other EU companies join the same. Companies in EU also enjoy big tax breaks for sole proprietorship, promoting entrepreneurship that way. US is more strict. I've compared forming a company at US and Finland.
Society: Depends on what is meant here. Social welfare? Cultural provisions? Friendlyness of people? Entertainment activities? Culturally most EU countries can't even be compared to US, the gap is just that big. Entertainment: US has Vegas, but we have plenty of "small vegases" all around EU. Often a part of a city. We also have "Free Cities", which are practically under Anarchy. Laws and Citizen protection? Well, we don't torture people, we do not detain them for indefinite periods of time without court. etc..
Art: You can't be serious. Look at France, Spain, Italy. Da Vinci? The Renaissance period? Art movies? Hollywood movies != ART generally, very very few of them are.
The poor: Social welfare saves many of the poor, and helps them get back to their feet. Some of them even become rich after social welfare network has saved them.
The Rich: Yeah, it's harder to be megarich in EU, so US has EU beat right there. But on the flip side of coin, almost every EU citizen can be considered rich, even unemployed poor people.
Military: This is a joke too as well, right? Ok. EU doesn't have it's own military, each country has their own. but no united military. But EU is host to some of the toughest armies in world. For example our army is nothing to mess with, fending off the Russians in Winter War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
Russians had 200 times more tanks, 3 times more men, 34 times more aircraft. Russia suffered over 4 times more casualties, while technically we lost, in every sense we won that matters -> we remained independent, we lost some ground tho. This continued to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War
Yes, we are one small country, but a country which packs hell of a bunch per person in active service. Last 10 years there's been a lot of stuff about our military service (everyone has to go) being too tough, our military strategies and weaponry used has been at the spotlight for being too cruel & effective (we swapped to something even more cruel and effective and stockpiled away the stuff in spotlight), and just lately that we have way too much rifle inventory, i think they were Kalashnikov clones they intend to melt now because we simply have too many of them.
Our official stance is to stay unallied because our military is a sufficient deterrent, yet we share a very long border with Russia, and are strategically important location for Russian commerce. Every General knows they are up for more than bloody nose if they pick up a fight with us, what we lack in hardware and technology we more than make up for in "Sisu" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu, guerrilla tactics, use of weaponry which other countries want to ban us from using. Then you add up our elite being extremely skilled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4
And we are just one small country part of the Europe. I would assume Norwegian and Swedish are some tough guys too, even tho Swedish don't have neighbours to worry as much.
and then you count in rest of Europe, with German people, France (those guys don't have any self preservation instinct!) and their Foreign Legion, Italian and of cours
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
We are talking about today, not past history, something which happened BEFORE even US existed.
You haven't probably heard that many EU countries too have their own form of "The Declartion of Independence".
Also, the root laws protecting citizen rights are not as easily broken here in EU than in US.
Get out from under the rock, and look around. Think PATRIOT ACT, TSA, Homeland security. All the breaches in citizen rights happening there.
They are broken so casually that even tho i'd like to visit US, i simply do not dare out of fear of getting ass raped in GITMO for next 15 years because i carried with me a laptop with encrypted password database in it.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
All this talk of fining a company 2% of its worldwide revenue is fine up to a point, but the point is how do you fine a group that gives it product away for free. Take FreeBSD (please) as an example. If they do not have a source of revenue, in other words they have a $0 based ROI, how can you fine them? Do you go after the individual authors and developers?
Pigskin-Referee
Linux: Yesterday's technology, tomorrow
Google Ireland accounts for most of Google's revenues.
It pays most of that out to Bermuda to dodge taxes:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/google-tax-cut/google-terminal.html
I've written to ministers acting in their ministerial capacity before, and got a form reply saying that I should direct my questions or comments to my own MPs. I am supposed to write to my MP, who will then submit a written question to the relevant department. This is almost always, in my experience, answered by a civil servant and not by the minister. As the CoM has a different bureaucracy to Westminister, this means that questions relevant to the EU are usually never seen by the appropriate person if sent by anyone other than one of their constituents. In contrast, I do get personal replies to letters I write to two of my five MEPs.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
> The Declaration of Independence is a good read if you want to understand some of different philosophies....
Do elaborate.