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Silicon Valley Firms Want To Nix Calif. Internet Privacy Bill
An anonymous reader writes "Silicon Valley tech firms, banks and other powerful industries are mounting a quiet but forceful campaign to kill an Internet privacy bill that would give California consumers the right to know how their personal information is being used. A recent letter signed by 15 companies and trade groups — including TechAmerica, which represents Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other technology companies — demanded that the measure's author, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, drop her bill. They complain it would open up businesses to an avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits."
"it would open up businesses to an avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits."
Good!
'It will lead to costly lawsuits' is not an argument. On the contrary - this is an argument to put the law in place.
What's news for some is old-hat for others.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
.
It is as if the companies are saying, "we stole all this data from our customers, and it would be too expensive to allow them to have it back."
In other news, the great and good of the world are demanding continued immunity from a hithertoo largely alien phenomenon referred to as 'consequences', widely believed to be some sort of communicable disease popular among people who don't matter. Important People warn of vaguely defined, but catastrophic, outcomes should these 'consequences' be allowed to spread from the squalid and undeserving sectors where they currently breed and into high value portions of society.
why shouldn't customers have this right? Shouldn't all this be mentioned in the T&Cs anyway?
"We reserve the right to use your information however we want. Press Agree to acknowledge you accept this and to start using our wonderful service".
It sickens me to see all of these business people who somehow feel entitled to abuse the information of people to their advantage and have no sense of guilt or remorse over it. They get people to sign papers that include open-ended words like "...with our associates" without ever stipulating who those associates were, are or will be.
I always say "no" to those words when I see them because I see them for what it is -- a huge open door for them to insert changes of ALL sorts. Meanwhile, your end of whatever agreement says you have no right to change or do anything and if you have a dispute, you are to give up your right to trial or to sue much of the time.
And now, when people want to know what's what, and what they are doing behind the scenes, we get what? If business is doing something which violates the trust of their customers, why doesn't a customer have a right to know?! How else can a customer know when it's time to take their business elsewhere? These entitled business people want to maintain their rights to screw people over.
" avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits"
Well, whether it would be an avalanche or not, would remain to be seen. However, no company should've gotten that broad freedom of data use as they had in the first place, so however late it is, the proper thing to do is to allow individuals to see how companies handle their data and what they do with it.
Regarding lawsuits, them being "afraid" of lawsuits means that they already think there would be reason for lawsuits, which in turn gives a lot of reasons to even more demand for proper data privacy laws. User data handling should be controlled in a way that people wouldn't have reason to sue. Yes, dream on.
Anyway, whatever privacy laws would be better than the current state of do-whatever-you-want and change your terms of service by the weather approach most companies follow.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Of course they want the bill dropped. Anything that cuts into their profits is unacceptable to them. Any loss of data they collect is unacceptable to them.
I think I speak for many when I say, screw the tech firms...
Well, avalanche of requests from individuals and costly lawsuits is exactly what we need. Why would the coprorations be complaining about a privacy bill? It's not like they're hiding something.
You almost have to admire the sociopathic chutzpah that it must take for AIG to comment, much less demand to get their way, on just about anything ever again ever...
As a former employee of a business that tracks a huge amount of personal information, I can tell you that most of these companies are already required to keep these records because of EU privacy records. Our databases were literally divided domestic and foreign for this reason.
So while it would take some effort in moving data and changing internal procedures, the bulk of the work is already done for most of these companies.
Can anyone name one good thing to come out of the valley in the last 10 years? all I see is privacy invasion and vapid bullshit with no business model...
I am dead serious, please name one positive innovation to arise from the valley/Bay area tech sector since 2003.
People don't want to pay for Google, Facebook, etc. Therefore, they use advertising to make a profit. What the privacy advocates don't want to admit here is that anyone using a free, ad-supported service has no moral right to not have their use evaluated for better advertising. This is true even on sites that use AdSense and such as their primary way of delivering content. If you are getting spied on at the WSJ's paid for site, you have a right to shout about that from the roof tops and bay for blood. If you do it on Google News, you're kidding yourself.
We do need more commerce. A lot more of it and a lot less advertising in our business models.
> A recent letter signed by 15 companies and trade groups — including TechAmerica, which represents Google,
LOL. Google with the same Eric Schmidt who wants Drones banned because he's worried about the invasion of privacy when they fly over your mansion estate?
""You're having a dispute with your neighbour," he hypothesised. "How would you feel if your neighbour went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"
Gee I don't know Eric. About the same way I feel when you run your fingers through my hair. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/21/drones-google-eric-schmidt
Would this encourage these big companies to move out of California if this bill passes? Are they using that as leverage? Probably so. Probably very effective. Probably so effective...
"it would open up businesses to an avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits."
Good!
Yeah, costly lawsuits by sleazy lawyers like John Edwards. That man made his money by convincing juries that hospital baby deliveries caused birth defects. Loosely worded laws will get exploited up the wazoo by lawyers like him.
What the privacy advocates don't want to admit here is that anyone using a free, ad-supported service has no moral right to not have their use evaluated for better advertising.
Is that meant to be sarcasm or satire?
"Better" advertising?
This is about collecting data - and selling it.
This is about creating profiles of people to not only sell crap - and it's all crap when it comes down to it - but it's a proxy for government's to collect information on people.
You know, just by using a scary letter and sending it to: Google, Medical Information Bureau, Credit Bureaus, credit card companies, ISPs, Cell phone providers, I CAN create a dossier that would make an East German Stazi agent of old jump for joy?!
So much information is collected on us that it creates this lop-sided power over us - the consumer.
Because shit like this HAS happened!.
And it's just the beginning.
Businesses use it for predatory lending, charging us more just because their algorithms say so, and considering the data available, I can easily discriminate against people that I'm prejudiced against. Illegal? Who gives a shit! Prove it!
So, take your advertising, crap that being sold, and shove it.
I will NOT miss ANY site that has to charge for their content - because it's not worth paying for anyway.
There are no exceptions.
They complain it would open up businesses to an avalanche of requests from individuals
How hard would it be to set up a website where, on submitting details only you (should) know, you get back on email with the details of who has what information on you, and how it is being used. Would take someone like Google about a day and peanuts for a budget? Since these guys have already banded together to form 'TechAmerica', I'm sure this excellent umbrella organisation would be just the place to host the service :)
as well as costly lawsuits
Why? Because they are doing something illegal with our data?
Why? Because they are doing something illegal with our data?
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Good advice Eric. Maybe you guys at Google should take that advice?
why shouldn't customers have this right? Shouldn't all this be mentioned in the T&Cs anyway?
"We reserve the right to use your information however we want. Press Agree to acknowledge you accept this and to start using our wonderful service".
It is not reasonable to expect the average Google user to understand what even that admittedly plain statement actually means, mostly because depth and breadth of what constitutes "...your information..." is far from plain, if not deliberately hidden.
There is a coming backlash to the ubiquitous collection of personal data. There has to be. The sharing of information for monetization purposes is alarming. Some of this data is harmless, some of it would ruin lives. What with technology leaps quietly occurring in the background, it is simply a matter of time before websites are able to track you from your desktop to your mobile, even if you are not logged into any services. There is going to be a big breach of data. It has to happen because companies are careless with data. The want the money associated with your data, but not the security processes that naturally have to protect it.
It's 2013. I don't have a Facebook account, a Google account, a LinkedIn account. I think companies that track and score people based on their supposed "clout" are stupid, polarizing, and serve to create a digital apartheid. Personal data should be personal. Cookie and other data should be first party only. If a company needs metrics, let them do it for themselves. If they cannot, they have a bad business model.
Point: personal data should be expensive for the companies to have. Breaches should cost millions and should be a federal offense, especially if SSNs are involved. There should be no appeals. You lose data, have a breach, you bought the farm.
Scrub out the clause you don't like.
Since they make 95%+ of the money from your mortgage repayments, they would be REALLY daft (and therefore not a safe option) lender. If the value of your information is a much larger proportion of that, then they're pretty incompetent and therefore still not a safe option.
The trend in the last 15 years or so has been "if it's good for a corporation's profits, it's good for America." Rep. Lowenthal is either going to see her political adversaries get a fat campaign check or the anti-privacy coalition will make her an offer she can't refuse. I've seen too many of the staunches defenders of the public go 180 when the cash starts moving.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
with my business and website. I have dropped my Google+ page which showed in the search results and will not be using Facebook/Twitter and etc... Also deicde to either go with Vimeo $200 per year or pay OVH $59 for a server to host my product/how to videos instead of Youtube.
I have the products that my constomers want and I don't want ME my BUSINESS and my CUSTOMERS to be someone elses PRODUCT.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
People don't want to pay for Google, Facebook, etc.
I don't even want to USE Google, Facebook, etc. But the thing is that they want to track me anyway. They lurk on almost every website. These companies invade the web. So don't pretend it is my fault. I have to install a zillion firefox plugins to block them. This is not a "it's free, so shut up" situation, but an "it's evil, these corporations must be punished" situation.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
...it is called stalking, and is a crime. When corporations do it, it is called a business model. If corporations are people, they are committing the crime of stalking and should be held accountable for it.
They complain it would open up businesses to an avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits
And, rightly so.. Of course all the f>cknut spy corporations are lining up for this one.
You go girl, ahem, Ms Assemblywoman!
The article quotes TechAmerica's director of California government affairs Robert Callahan stated that a 2005 California privacy law already enables consumers to ask what personal information companies are using.
Does anyone know what this law is and how to use it?
Indeed. If they're afraid of costly lawsuits then they have no business in the tech industry. Nor any other industry.
A lot of companies have discovered this, and therefore moved their business operations elsewhere. Hence this whole deal about outsourcing - too many people here are big whiners who make the legal costs associated w/ doing anything skyrocket, w/ the result that the cost of doing business in the US is orders of magnitude higher than the cost of doing it elsewhere. So they simply move operational costs offshore, fire Americans - whiners and non-whiners alike - and then everyone is left whining that outsourcing is looting US jobs.
Indeed. If they're afraid of costly lawsuits then they have no business in the tech industry. Nor any other industry.
A lot of companies have discovered this, and therefore moved their business operations elsewhere. Hence this whole deal about outsourcing - too many people here are big whiners who make the legal costs associated w/ doing anything skyrocket, w/ the result that the cost of doing business in the US is orders of magnitude higher than the cost of doing it elsewhere. So they simply move operational costs offshore, fire Americans - whiners and non-whiners alike - and then everyone is left whining that outsourcing is looting US jobs.
That is a false assumption. It might partially apply to the US but the US is not the only western country to have experienced a boom in outsourceing, and that is regardless of fuckedup-ness of legal system. Outsourcing is a financial decision for the most part, and a decision about putting your fingers in your ears and hoping for the best, in the short term.
The bill is a problem for the kind of business who does not wan't people to know what kind of data the business keeps on them, or does not yet have an automated solution to those requests. The former: Good riddance, hopefully the latter will wisen up and implement it. In either case, you and I are better off with the bill than without.
... whatever
before they built massive businesses based upon buying and selling stuff that did not belong to them (other people's personal private data).
This law needs to pass (along with laws like it elsewhere) so that individuals can recover what it rightfully theirs, and if that results in a giant popping of the current internet bubble (where massive money empires like Google and Facebook are built on nothing but buying and selling other people's private data) then so be it. we have an entire generation of younger computer users who think the internet is "free" (as in beer) because they live their lives on Facebook and Twitter and Google... while being oblivious to the fact that they are actually paying a price no previous generation of Americans was willing to pay (their privacy and dignity and autonomy).
We cannot pass a law that would permit people to know how data about them is being used because the companies who are using that data would be liable for what they are doing.
So if companies start breaking the law early and often, we're obligated to protect them so they can go on doing the same and prevented from stopping them.
Jesus fucking christ.
I'm sorry. I can't help but think that Google is incapable of stopping sucking on the money spurting cock long enough to think about ANYTHING else.
You really can't represent to end users how their data is being used without implicating yourself in criminal and or civil wrong doing?
You have no way of communicating that information at all without also being crushed under the weight of viable lawsuits by scammer attorneys and their *wounded clients*?
Because I think I could do that. I think I could do that in such a way as to make any scammer attorney and their "aggrieved clients " realize they're going to lose and lose big time. I think I could launch an sympathetic educational / PR campaign to virtually all potential jurors which would 1) tell the truth and 2) prevent almost all lawsuit abuse.
That is, if I wasn't doing anything against the law.
Hey Google. Privacy is a thing of the past- get over it. If you're doing something online you don't want people to know about, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
In Europe, lawsuits are limited by the 'loser pays all' principle, which is not there in the US. As a result, such a bill in Europe wouldn't result in a flood of litigation. But in US, where even the winner does not see his legal costs reimbursed by the losing party, such a thing would threaten a flood of litigation. And anything that makes operating a business more difficult or expensive, or eliminates the number of ways that businesses have of making money, is just one more contributing factor to such a business looking offshore for alternatives, as opposed to simply closing down.