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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 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.
The AIG executives pal around with the executives from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. Of course they have sociopathic chutzpah - this is the group of people who committed 11-figure frauds, got a giant bailout from the US taxpayer, and then worked hard in Washington to ensure that the agencies and regulations proposed to prevent that from recurring either didn't exist, had no funding, etc.
In other words, these are criminals who are upset at the police for catching them, and their solution is to just make sure there aren't any police or that they own the judges.
I am officially gone from
> 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.