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."

Comments

It's about time

[Barbara, not Barbie]

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.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

that may be but users should not have to dig through mountains of legaleze to understand that the service is offered to them ONLY because they agree to let complete strangers comprehensively know every last interaction they make with the service, potentially exposing to those people more about their lives than even the user knows about themselves.

It's not just counting clicks, it's building an entire psychology about each person, beyond reasonable survey-like data gathering. *THAT* little detail is what the users should be very weary of.

Re:It's about time

[slashdyke]

It is not quite that simple. If Joe uploads a photo, and tags a face as belonging to you, and then Mary uploads a photo with a face that matches and also says it belongs to you, it does not take facebook very long to know what you look like, and who you might know even though you do not have a facebook account.

regime ?

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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 !!!

Re:regime ?

[Mitreya]

newspeak ?

Nothing but newspeak!
"U.S. concepts of free expression and commerce will battle European support for privacy and state legislation."
I think what the summary is trying to say that company coming from corporation-controlled US will suddenly encounter an actual user-privacy law. There is nothing about free expression (though something about commerce) in selling user's data to everyone who is willing to buy it. Even if corporations are (apparently) people, selling their user's data is not free expression of speech.

Re:regime ?

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

European parliament is elected, the commission (government) isn't elected directly, it is appointed by the parliament. Still, we have a choice of more than two parties.

And yes, everybody is "forced" to use Facebook. Most people get tagged on photos sooner or later, even if they don't have an account. FB finds out information you might not be willing to release: birthday, phone numbers, where you live, who your friends are, what your password for your mail account is... if a friend releases that information about you, it doesn't even require an intervention, decision on your part.

Re:regime ?

[Muros]

I liked the bit of the article where it equated this legislation with censorship. "There is potential for radical disruption of the way users experience the Internet in the EU. This would transform Facebook and Google into censors-in-chief." The big lie here, of course, is saying that it is making censors of Google and Facebook. It is merely telling companies to allow people to censor themselves.

Re:It should be noted that...

[Barbara, not Barbie]

It's not just statistical data - all those "Like" buttons - when any page with a "Like" button is displayed, it makes a call to facebooks' servers, sending your unique id to facebook to let them know you've seen that page. So over time, facebook develops a rather complete profile of your browsing habits. And no, you don't have to be logged in for this to work.

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.

Re:U.S. concepts of free expression

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Targeted advertising.

[peppepz]

Is it OK to you for any entity (government, facebook, google) to have a file about you containing:
- 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.