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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.
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.
If you look at the list of companies on the letterhead, you'll see that companies you pay(often quite significantly) for, are not signed on to your distinction.
FROM: California Chamber of Commerce
American Insurance Association
American International Group
Association of California Life and Health Insurance Companies
California Bankers Association
California Cable and Telecommunications Association
California Grocers Association
California Land Title Association
California Manufacturers and Technology Association
California Retailers Association
Direct Marketing Association
Internet Alliance
NetChoice
Personal Insurance Federation of California
State Privacy and Security Coalition, Inc.
TechAmerica
TechNet
R. L. Polk & Co.
Reed Elsevier, PLC
In fact, the conventional 'free as in adsense' crowd is remarkably absent(or, rather, hiding behind a few industry pressure groups with 'tech' somewhere in the name).
The list is heavily dominated by outfits who are either overt spammers(DMA, looking at you), data-broker creeps(Reed Elsevier), and companies with a strong actuarial interest in everything about you(the insurance and banking entities).
This has essentially nothing to do with ad-supported internet stuff.
> 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
Sleazy lawyers are to the world of civil law what cops are to the world of criminal law.
They work hard for their bad reputations, and they don't tend to result in much money returning to the actual injured parties; but in a well-functioning society, they exist to deter people even worse than they are...
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...
Unless the legislators are total morons who know nothing about history, the law will be written to target people who do business in California, or do business with Californians, rather than businesses in California.
Jurisidiction-shopping is trival(which is why small British protectorates with sunny climates and...sparse... tax codes tend to have some extremely profitable PO boxes that somehow end up booking all the revenues that are definitely not generated by actual operations elsewhere); but that doesn't change the fact that you have to go where the customers are.
For the most part, all the multinationals have already jurisdiction-shopped everything that they can(just as Washington about how Microsoft mysteriously makes all its money in Nevada, despite having almost nobody there...); but they tend to do little more than bluster against laws of the form 'if you do business here, here's how you'll have to play'; because you have to do business where the customers are(and because the laws, no matter how apocalyptic the bluster, tend to be pretty toothless). California, in particular, is Not Exactly Small as a market, and has pretty good luck getting its way.
Those are weasel words. Anyone has a moral right to not being tracked by private companies. Therefore, they have a moral right to not be subject to behavioural studies intended to improve advertising effectiveness. Let's not forget that advertising is a form of brainwashing, propaganda designed to induce particular behaviours. It is essentially conspiracy to psychological assault.
Where the companies go wrong is in assuming that tracking people without explicit consent is ok. Where the companies go wrong is in assuming that once given, that consent cannot be taken away again. On the contrary, people are allowed to change their minds.
By all means, companies should if they so wish track people without the ability, IN ANY WAY, to identify a specific individual. And this SHOULD BE VERIFIABLE, either through a formal audit similar to an IRS audit with serious consequences for noncompliance, or through letting any individual at any time demand a comlete list of the information gathered about them together with the option to completely eradicate said information verifiably, or be sued.
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.
(Just to clarify the above, and perhaps to explain why I've always found the 'right wing' and 'libertarian' hatred of tort lawyers so curious, aside from the ones who are trivially shills for corporations and people who simply wish to be tortious with impunity, whose motives are at least transparent).
With criminal law, and the criminal justice system, the idea that some sort of restitution is the objective, or the notion that money made by functionaries is being gouged right out of the mouths of victims, doesn't really enter the picture: Cops, DAs, Prosecutors, prisons, etc. are all cost centers, your tax dollars at work, that exist to (in various combinations, depending on who you ask) visit retribution on malefactors, prevent malefactors from future criminal activity, or to deter others from taking up crime. There are some, more or less ad-hoc, victim-assistance programs; but the idea that "the criminal justice system is such a scam! they tried the guy and the victim's family got like $3 worth of weregild after they'd finished paying the cops, lawyers, and jury! WTF?" simply never enters the picture.
In civil law, civil actions between (rough) equals can actually involve establishment of damages to Party A and extraction of compensation from Party B. However, in more asymmetric cases, 'civil' law really resembles nothing so much as a privatized version of criminal law, essentially a flavor of bounty hunting. Instead of having an actually-remotely-adequate regulatory apparatus(because the idea of our doing that is...unrealistic...), we leave the field open: See somebody do something tortious to a person or persons who can't fight back on their own behalf? Prove it in court and get your cut of the damages! This arrangement isn't much better than criminal proceedings at getting restitution routed to the actual injured parties; but it creates an incentive for independent private actors to hunt down and punish malefactors, analogous to the one you would see if the criminal justice system were built on bounties rather than a class of civil servants who get a salary for the purpose.
While I'd obviously prefer to see more damages make it to the damaged(and the Principle-Agent problem inherent in having a lawyer representing your interests, or worse the diffuse interests of hundreds or thousands of people is an obvious one to keep watch on), I'm always a bit surprised by, not to say a trifle suspicious of the motives of, people who seem more offended by the idea that somebody else got paid for working on the case than they are by the fact that the case had to come to court in the first place. In criminal contexts, we might disagree over exactly what a cop or DA's salary should be; but it is downright uncontroversial that such people get paid to discourage malefactors. In order to handle crime, we allocate some amount of money to the in-no-way-directly-productive task of apprehending and punishing criminals. As a long term, society wide, investment it may be a net gain; but it's a cost center in the near term. The people who handle civil lawsuits are essentially the same thing, just on contingency rather than salary.
Unsurprisingly, though, none of the 'tort reformers' ever seems to propose replacing those wicked trial lawyers with state regulators who have actual teeth, nor do they celebrate the fact that so much regulation is simply left undone on the state side, with for-profit private actors going into the business of taking up the slack... You'd think that, among people who dislike state regulatory power, 'trial lawyers' would be the private-sector heroes of justice, doing well by doing good, and discouraging malfeasance so that the dead, bureaucratic, hand of regulatory entities like the FTC, FDA, etc. don't have to. This is not, however, a position much seen in the wild...
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.
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.
Absolute horseshit. I have every right in the world (moral and otherwise) to not have any part of my life misused or abused for any reason, let alone for the profit of others. Is it realistic to expect that to actually play out in the real world? I dunno; I suppose there was a time in the American south when a black man had no expectation of being free, completely apart from what the morality of that issue was.
What I really don't understand is how you ignorant bastards ever got the idea that businesses have a right to do what they wish as long as it will make them money. If a business decides to entice people to use their services by making them free, and further decides they'll make money by advertising on said services, that fact itself creates no obligation whatsoever on the part of individuals using that service. If said business decides they cannot make enough money on said services without invading the privacy of the individuals using it, it is not those individuals who have made an improper decision, it is the business.
If you are a business who cannot make money without doing something nefarious, it does not obligate anybody to allow you to do those nefarious things. It may well mean you have screwed up your business model and either need to change it, or make way for someone who can successfully do business without engaging in such behavior.
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
Actually, there was a guy I work with who was dealing with some real estate agency who was selling a house to him and really gave him some nonsense about these various programs. They kept steering him in one direction but he had VA benefits to use and other qualifications. I'm not quite sure of all the details, but in the end, he ceased doing business with them and didn't get the house because of all the games they were playing trying to get him to use a particular financing plan. I'm not sure who lost out the most, but they could have sold the house and I'm sure that loss must have hurt. But they were most definitely willing to play that game with him primarily, I believe, because he is military and they really believe military people are really THAT stupid. (For the most part, 'they' are correct in that assessment, just that he wasn't one of them... and neither am/was I --- reminds me of the time a car dealership was trying to sell me a "sport" version of the "Yugo" for like $12,000... it had racing stripes... it still had the weak engine and no real features. I was like "are you shittin' me?! A Yugo?!" I didn't want one of those at any price, but I did try to mess with him by negotiating down but he would budge. Sickened me, because it meant they were dead set on raping the next sailor who came onto that lot.)
Oh the sales game.. and especially sales with financing involved. They sicken me so much. And yeah, there are contracts and legalese involved. Last car I bought, I just got pre-approved for an amount, went shopping, got what I wanted and told them "No, I will not be financing through you and my lender will ONLY give me this much. Give me what I want at this price. I cannot bargain with my lender." In the end it worked. Good car; exceptional price and no weird contracts. The dealership called me back within a few days trying to convince me I owed them some more money somehow. I told them "fine... okay... I'll just bring the car back. I really told you the finance company would not give me more and I simply don't have more... so when do you want it back?" They called me back and said "keep it...." hehehe...
Why can't buying a car or a house be like buying a can of soup? I give you money, you give me the thing? No? You want to dick around with me to see if you can squeeze a little more out?
And don't get me started on "trade-ins." They scam people out of FREE CARS so damned often that practice should be 100% criminal as fraud and/or theft. They accept the "trade in" and roll whatever is left on the loan (if there is any) into your new loan (if you finance through them or their company) and accept your car. Whatever they offered in the trade, they ALSO roll into the loan "to pay off the car." In the end, you paid off the car and gave it to them for free!! Nice deal right?! READ the paperwork carefully... VERY carefully. It seems they will ALWAYS try to pull some crap or another. As I said with my last car purchase, I thought I finally defeated the games when I had ONE MORE to deal with... I was literally prepared to return the car. I was NOT playing. But they gave in. Shit made me so mad.
Sorry... someone pushed a button there didn't they?