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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.
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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."
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.
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...
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.
Hey! Be nice. Our good buddy Eric has a 100% consistent and hypocrisy-free commitment to the principle that surveillance technology should never be allowed into the hands of people who he might conceivably be vulnerable to...
Street-view cars and omnipresent online surveillance are OK; because those things are crazy expensive to operate usefully, and because if you don't want your house photographed you can just buy a larger plot of land, a higher fence, and more rentacops! Civilian drones, though, some bored kid with a couple hundred bucks could buzz his Betters for nothing more than the cost of electricity to recharge his little model airplane, and we just can't have that.
> 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
That's different though. The drones issue is about _his_ privacy, not yours.
And I stand by my previous statement concerning drones. I'm happy for it to be legal for my neighbor or government to fly a drone over my property, if it's also legal for me to disable it and then take possession of it when it crashes onto my property, and for my neighbor/government to be responsible for anything it breaks when it crashes.
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.
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!
If you don't want them using that information, don't give it to them. It's your choice. The government should not get involved.
These businesses can still get info about you even if you don't directly deal with them. So you're arguing froma false premise from the start.
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!
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