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Facebook On Collision Course With New EU Privacy Laws
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook and other U.S. internet companies are faced with a new EU data protection regime, the Christian Science Monitor reports. U.S. concepts of free expression and commerce will battle European support for privacy and state legislation. 'Companies must understand that if they want access to 500 million consumers in the EU, then they have to comply. This is not an option,' said a spokesman for the EU Justice Commissioner."
Facebook (and other operators, such as google) need to understand that they don't have a "right" to sell any and all information they can gather. If they can't meet the rules, someone else will be happy to do so and take their users away from them. That's what competition is about.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
... U.S. internet companies are faced with a new EU data protection "regime" ...
newspeak ? the word "regime" should be used at EU Govts. ?
mmaaaa... EU are axis of evil "regimes", they do not let our companies do douchebaggery which is our way of life !!! they want accountability... !!! how dare they !!!
It's stuff like this that advertisers - and anyone else with "preferential access" (police, etc.) get. Think of it - others have a more complete history of your browsing habits than you do. Facebook is the new cyber-stalker.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Not to mention the strange use of the words "regime" and "battle" and the Orwellian language of the article. But what did we expect from the Christian Science Monitor? While on the one hand winning multiple Pulitzers, and being fairly left-right neutral, it is well known for its corporate bias. The EU data protection laws won't harm freedom of expression as defined in the First Amendment, but will prevent companies from making a profit of selling private user data. Hence, the CSM wants to agitate against that, but because of its readership it cannot do so by simply stating this. The result is this article.
- your name
- your phone number, and the names and phone numbers of all your contacts
- your web history
- your web search history
- your past and current email
- your gps position, its history, and the places you "starred"
- the pictures you take with your phone
- your wifi passwords
- the music you bought online
- the books you read online
- your investments portfolio
- the office documents you're working on
- everything you "liked" on the web, be it apps, music, cuisine or politics
under just the promise that they'll never be doing anything bad with that data, except "targeted advertising"?
Even their ability to sell some of that data, purged of personal identifications, is "bad" enough for me. If advertisers get to know where you work and what you like, that's enough to understand who you are in many cases.
Should read
The EU legislation has NOTHING to do with freedom of speech. The summary is busy trying to paint a red herring argument where there is none, just to stir up good old "Proud American" sentiment.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The site belongs to facebook. It is hosted in the US.
Facebook International HQ is in Dublin, Ireland - which is part of the E.U. They are also currently building a massive data center in Sweden which will handle all traffic from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
This idea of trying to regulate what people do with the devices they own is simply laughable.
Welcome to the real world, where there are regulations governing businesses, and regulations that cover many of the devices that businesses use. You may also want to educate yourself regarding some of the reasons that Europeans generally support pro-privacy and anti-data-collection laws. You may be surprised to learn that it was a trade union that rose up against the communists and fought for the first free democratic elections in eastern Europe.
Yes, but Facebook is a European company, and it does business in Europe. Either one of those would make it liable to E.U. jurisdiction.
Freedom of expression as defined in the First Amendment is irrelevant in Europe. It wouldn't matter if EU data protection laws violated that amendment. At the end of the day, US companies have to decide if they want access to the market in the EU area or not.