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New California Ballot Measure Demands Groundbreaking Privacy Rights (mercurynews.com)
Supporters gathered 625,000 signatures to put the "California Consumer Privacy Act" on the ballot in November -- far exceeding the 365,880 signatures needed to qualify. The Mercury News reports:
The proposed initiative aims to allow consumers to see what personal information companies are collecting about them and ask the companies to stop selling that information, and also seeks to hold businesses accountable for data breaches. "Today is a major step forward in our campaign, and an affirmation that California voters care deeply about the fundamental privacy protections provided in the California Consumer Privacy Act," said Alastair Mactaggart, the San Francisco real estate developer who is bankrolling the measure. He has spent $1.65 million on the effort, according to filings with the California secretary of state.
The measure is opposed by companies such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Google, which have all donated $200,000 each to fight the measure. Facebook has also given $200,000 to the opposition. However, Facebook last month said it would leave the effort to fight the initiative.
The article notes that Facebook's decision to stop publicly opposing the privacy measure occurred "around the time Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was testifying to Congress about the company's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal."
The measure is opposed by companies such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Google, which have all donated $200,000 each to fight the measure. Facebook has also given $200,000 to the opposition. However, Facebook last month said it would leave the effort to fight the initiative.
The article notes that Facebook's decision to stop publicly opposing the privacy measure occurred "around the time Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was testifying to Congress about the company's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal."
If there was a way he could make this law apply only to him and his family, he would have done it that way, but there is not.
He'd have to be much, much richer, or a politician or some other big celebrity. Then he could use the relative difference in his "importance" level in society to argue for special rules that applied to him but not other people. Kinda like how leaked personal information can hurt the image (and therefore career) of movie stars. Or legislators claim that it's "risk to national security" if they don't get x or y special treatment.
Companies should not be allowed to sell or share data on customers with any other company. Any data they collect should only be allowed to be used for their own internal business purposes. Sad it's come to this but enough has become enough.
Protecting people against activities that make the rich richer and violate the non-rich? What is capitalism coming to! This must be socialism, right?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Occasionally there are people with money that also have a conscience and do not only care about themselves. Shocking, I know. Don't they know that in true capitalism such behavior is anathema? These dangerous deviants sometimes even happen to live in the US.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In a world where people actually use their brains: voters. Alas...
Let's hope California cuts itself off from social media. Would make the Internet a much nicer places without all that SF-based outrage over everything.
You know what?
Fuck direct democracy and fuck California ballot measures.
This kind of stuff is what gets us into such a mess in the first place, where policymakers and regulators get their hands tied by people voting (or being asked to vote) on things that are beyond their level of knowledge to make a judgement call on, even if you're super informed about the issues.
In the next June election, we have the following ballot measures:
1. Authorizing a $4 billion bond (yes $4 Billion loan) for environmental / parks projects
2. Putting various procedural requirements on the decision to use cap-and-trade funds (what does that even mean/imply)
3. Including rain capture systems in property taxes
etc.etc.etc.
Why am I being asked to decide on these hugely consequential things (#1 + 2)? Why is the public being asked whether it's good to take out a $4B loan? Of course they're going to say yes, without a care in the world! Why is #3 even in the same category as the rest? A few years ago, there was even the ballot measure addressing disease testing of porn actors.
This is fucking ridiculous. It's time to stop believing the public has the knowledge and the attention span and more importantly the informed judgement to make these kinds of calls. Stop believing that you're qualified to decide things that aren't your job, and believe in effective government -- and give that government the tools and power to do so.
Democracy will be the death of democracy otherwise.
We joke about Google cutting off companies or groups they disagree with, but with this ballot and the right to get companies to stop selling your information, they may just find themselves cut off.
The scope of data collection is so vast, so pervasive, so all encompassing, that companies may not even know what all data they hold about you.
Sure, they can cough up what's explicitly attached to your profile, if you have a profile, or your shadow profile. But the indirection inferences possible from other things are mind bogglingly vast, and they don't exist until someone bothers to make them.
Google may know you visited a site about liver cancer, because that site like most sites uses Google services. That's logged in a log file somewhere, but maybe not as "Joe Bloggs may have liver cancer or know someone who does".
Statistical patterns also provide data. When did you visit? That reveals info about your sleep / wake patterns. Info your friends disclose about you provides yet more data for them, but it may be attached to your friends' profiles. Still, the inferences are there waiting to be made.
I don't want data harvesters like Facebook and Google to be collecting any data about people who have not explicitly opted in.
The CA state government is serious about controlling and/or protecting its environment, gun ownership, etc.. They also tax its citizens more than other states by a significant margin. To be effective in this endeavor, they "state" has to collect a TON of private data - far more than any corporation.
Yet they want to protect individuals from corporate abuse of data collection and sale?
While the effort is noble and I agree that corporations have long overreached on data collection while keeping the federal government at bay in D.C. with fierce bribery... er, fierce lobbying, this move feels more hypocritical (and power-hungry) than helpful to average citizens.
The libtards in California have now made it the #5 economy in the world passing the UK.
Good on California, though we did give you a hand by shooting ourselves in the foot, then kicking ourselves in the nuts for good measure then arguing with each other about whether we'd prefer to be shot in the foot again or kicked in the nuts even harder.
For some reason deciding to not do either is not on currently the cards.
You're welcome by the way.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you don't live in California, you wish you lived in California.
No, not really. I lived in California for awhile. I was very happy to it as a I left it going back to sane states. A place where I can water my lawn and not paint it. Yes, they where painting their lawns green when I was there.
You may have one of the highest economies but it isn't a healthy economy, with 700B in debt. At 13.9% you also have the highest tax rate. Do you know what the tax rate in that my state is? It's 0%.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
You also have one of the fastest growing homeless problems. You share that with New York. Wonder what you and NY have in common?
https://endhomelessness.org/ho...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
I have already address California's water dependency before so there is no need to rehash it. Other than to say with out taking water from other states California wouldn't be able to do any where near as much as it tries to do.
But the worse sin that California forces on the rest of the country is that shreeking fool Maxine Waters. You know if you would get rid of her then we could work together on the rest of your problems.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Oh you also have the highest rate of junkies shooting up in the streets and subways.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
"If you don't live in California, you wish you lived in California."
What are you smoking? The weather is nice if the state is not on fire. Otherwise you have endless freeways with endless traffic, endless taxes, endless welfare, endless regulations, endless people, and endless stress. A large GDP has NOTHING to do with quality of life. California is to America what America is to the rest of the world, a place of masturbatory excess best to be avoided.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Don't plant non-native grasses and you won't have to paint your lawn.
They just use their "government" face (lobbyist politicians) whenever they do something you livestock might not like, to get you to hate the very and onl concept that could save you from them: An *actual* government. Like an *actually* democratic one. Aka without "representatives" (aka corporate lobbyists), let alone senators (aka "former" nobility old boys club. *literally*.).
Keep in mind that your freedom as a human being is a zero-sum game.
The more power you give to others and/or government, the less freedom everyone has.
A large government is large basically because it has many things to do, and that's because it has many powers.
Because a large government necessarily has many powers by definition, the people it governs have less freedom.
If the federal government was small and didn't have a lot of domestic power, scope, and control, it would not be such a target and opportunity for corruption.
Governments should be designed like a computer network that handles power/force instead of data. A network built of numerous nearly stand-alone computers with a variety of hardware, OS's, security suites, etc is far more secure against being suborned as opposed to a bunch of dumb terminals, all alike, totally dependent on a master mainframe.
Fortunately, there are already plans written for just such a system designed by some of the very first network security design geniuses. We just have to get the current iteration returned to more closely resemble the original design specs.
https://www.usconstitution.net...
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
California is prone to boom and bust to be sure. You just have to take advantage of the downcycles. Bottom of the last property recession, 2 bedroom condos in San Diego, in areas close to jobs, were going for the mid-$100,000 range. HOA, tax,utilities added together were about $500/mo. If you put down 20%, you'd pay about $1100/mo to live in one of those condos, with healthy tax deductions. Hardly expensive, and within 15-20 minutes' driving distance of where the good jobs are. Also within the same distance of nice beaches.
False. People may have more power under a big gov, because it can keep corporations in check.
LOL! "Keep them in check"!?!?
Look around you. How's that been working out?
Large government and corporations merge.
It's been called the "Military-Industrial Complex" but more accurately today it would be the "Military-Industrial-Information Complex".
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yes, because Google has stopped doing business in all of Europe due to the GDPR (which I will add is much more strict and has more teeth than this proposed legislation).
OH WAIT that is not true at all. It turns out that folks DO want Google services? You don't say...
Since when is social media, free stuff where you are the product, and business models which treat employees like contractors considered tech leadership?
Maybe Silicon Valley should get back to doing things which made tangible products such as CPU's, and specialized chips.
Maybe instead of "Silcon Valley", it should be called "Silly Ventures"
But the worse sin that California forces on the rest of the country is that shreeking fool Maxine Waters. You know if you would get rid of her then we could work together on the rest of your problems.
This is the only part of your post that is sensible. It would help if she could correctly remember the names of people she is talking to (she called him Zuckerman in the hearing a few weeks ago). But most of that House committee was a dumpster fire. Questions about conspiracy theories, questions about FB's biz model ("We display ads Senator") and little to nothing of any real insight or value. The only thing I'm certain of is that there is no way any regulations that might come out of that group would be deeply flawed at best.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
So for everyone to maximize their freedom they would need to live alone and not rely on anybody else
Your logical failure is: "False Dichotomy".
You can be free (not in the absolute sense, we are not Sith here) and live and work among millions of people.
If you're "maximizing freedom" (maximum freedom is "anarchy" BTW and nobody wants that) you're also "maximizing" the freedom of association. If I voluntarily trade something that I have that someone else wants for something they have that I want, no freedoms have been lost on either side. That changes if there's someone else standing there with a gun forcing me to trade (or not) with this other person/entity and/or sets the prices, terms, and conditions, etc.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Actually, another few years of Trump and the US might just ask England to take us back.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's just what we tell the rest of the country to keep you from coming here.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You've never been to California, have you?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem is that the voters don't have much input into the selection of candidates. This is something that can be addressed by things like Instant Runoff Voting. (Well, I prefer Condorcet, but IRV is a lot easier to explain, and it's nearly as good.)
As it is, there wasn't a single candidate in the last Presidential election that I thought desirable. Not in any party on the ballot. Decent candidates know better than to run in minor parties, and the major parties intentionally reject them.
FWIW, I did vote in the last election, but I wasn't disappointed that my candidate lost, only that a more objectionable candidate won.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What is this "free market" you talk about? Where can I find it?
The only approximation of the "free market" I can think of is the underground market in illegal drugs. If that's your ideal, then I don't really care for it. I prefer something where one can ensure that one is getting what one purchases, and where one isn't stolen from. That's also an ideal the doesn't exist, but I find it a much more desirable one.
P.S.: When a drug starts getting too profitable, the approximation of a free market disappears from the illegal market, also, as there are turf wars to restrict who the customer can do business with.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
My town has enough trouble finding volunteers to count paper ballets now. You want to make it more complicated, more labor intensive.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Anarchy is lawlessness. Some laws protect freedom, such as laws prohibiting slavery.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Since all California-based multinationals modified their practice for EU's GDPR, asking them for provisions covered by this legislation should not cost them much (except in lost data sales, of course).
You'd make yourself look less silly if you tried checking your spelling.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Like Iowa, which just passed a law based on heartbeats?
Yes. That happens in a society that frowns on infanticide.
A place where I can water my lawn and not paint it. Yes, they where painting their lawns green when I was there.
That happens nationwide. You can go into any Lowes, Menards, Home Depot and get it. They even sell little colored succulents. Yay?
Which is why I chose not to live in California. I actually like trees and other plants that don't require a desert climate. Please don't try to turn the rest of the country into one.
Yes. I grew up in Escondido, lived in San Diego, Torrance, and Monterey. Driving anywhere in CA is like playing Oregon Trail: three miles an hour and you hope you have enough water.
That's total horseshit. I just today drove from Cambria to Santa Barbara to see visit the Channel Islands and will drive home to the Central Coast tomorrow. It was a perfect Saturday with all sorts of stuff going on along the coast. There was hardly any traffic and certainly no delays. I've ridden my bike during the week along Hwy 1 and often have several minutes go by without a single car going by, in the middle of the day.
I understand that people who don't live here have a hard-on for California. It's like they're mad at the state or something. I guess I'd be mad if I had to move away too. I moved here from Texas, and let me tell you that the traffic is much, much worse in Houston or Dallas/FW. And on top of the traffic, you're in fucking Texas.
It's a bargain living here compared to Texas.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It would make that worse. Condorcet doesn't work that well on a hand count system, because there's too much shuffling of ballots. And that isn't even the big problem in most places. In most places the big problem is the amount of additional information the voters need to process to vote as well as they can. But it's still better than "plurality takes all", which is the main US voting system. (It's not majority wins, as most elections are decided with no candidate getting a majority.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
To be fair, I've only lived in Austin and San Antonio; I haven't enjoyed the traffic in DFW or Houston, so I'll take your word for it. And yes, despite my conservative streak, I do not wish to live in Texas. ;)
"If you don't live in California, you wish you lived in California."
I manage people in CA, but don't live there. I've visited frequently over the last ~30 years, and spent about a total of a year of my life in the state. It's a great place to visit, but no fucking way do I want to live there. And clearly, I'm not alone...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/1...
https://www.nbc26.com/news/nat...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...
Just another day in Paradise
And also property rights. And also somebody needs to fight crime. And then somebody needs to help in case of natural disasters. And...
Somehow, libertarians never live in countries with true libertarianism, like Somalia or Chad.
Somehow, libertarians never live in countries with true libertarianism, like Somalia or Chad.
Nearly all sane libertarians understand that there must be *some* government for the exact reasons you mentioned and more.
Libertarianism =/= Anarchy
Nice job killing that stereotyped and propagandized image of libertarians all being extreme zero-government anarchist nutcases that you parroted like a good tool, though. A fine piece of political/ideological bigotry by anyone's standards. [golf clap]
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yeah, libertardians always want no government, except when they need it. They can't bear that the logical conclusion of their belief system leads to hellhole countries. Every time it's been tried, libertardian ideology of every-man-for-himself lead to anarchy and lawlessness. It usually ends when some group gathers enough power to impose their will on everybody else.
2) Low taxes have high costs
Yeah, like an electorate from CA that's fleeing to find them.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/1...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...
Just another day in Paradise
I'm not sure what parts you would consider un-sensible. They are all true. High tax rate, high homeless, large public debt, and water dependence on other states. This is all public record an known issues.
The only thing that I have any personal with is calling Maxine Waters a shreeking fool.
"Impeach!! Impeach!! Impshreeek! Shreek!!! Shreek!!!"
Crazy fool has no clue what happens if they Impeach Lord Trump. We get Mike Pence and then God help us all. That crazy fool thinks he is on a mission from God to put gays back in the closet and women back in kitchen.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Looks like this is an opt-out bill, but one thing I don't like about it is how it literally requires the link to be called "Do Not Sell My Personal Information".
Question?
Is voting a duty / responsibility, or privilege?
Cheap storage VM.
Think about it.
The authors of our US Constitution and Bill of Rights had no concept of information age relevance to privacy issues.
If they did, you can bet your every breath that provisions for protection of these Rights would more clearly be indicated.
So, when you consider full context of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, we US Citizens have already been violated!
How is this remedied now?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Respectfully, your lucky experience does not negate mine and I'm truly happy you've enjoyed the beauty that is Santa Barbara! I've driven the 101 several times from the Bay Area to Buena Park/SD and have spent the bulk of it sitting in LA parking lots.
Granted, LA is pretty horrible. But I don't think LA is that representative of California as a whole.
Large governments do not necessarily infringe more on personal freedoms than small governments. A government that coordinates universal health care provides more personal freedom than we've got now, when health care is tied to employment. When we want to provide services to everybody, we need government, because private enterprise will cut off the less profitable potential customers. We need government involvement in education or lots of people wouldn't get an education. We need government involvement to make sure everybody gets access to drinkable water (not that that always works).
The Federal government mostly operates within the Constitution, although the interstate commerce clause has been stretched pretty badly. The Constitution really didn't work well for everything. The Electoral College broke down almost immediately, probably the most obvious failure. The Federal government we had in 1800 would probably be a failure today.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Just because our government is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of BigCorp does not make OP's assertion untrue; it simply means our government has been corrupted because it was infiltrated and co-opted.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Just because our government is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of BigCorp does not make OP's assertion untrue; it simply means our government has been corrupted because it was infiltrated and co-opted.
But the point is WHY is it corrupted, besides basic human nature?
The answer, young padawan, is that government becomes corrupt when there's enough power and control concentrated in one place to make it worthwhile. It's impossible to corrupt a federal regulatory agency that does not exist, and corrupting fifty or more independent regulatory bodies while remaining unnoticed while each is corrupted in turn is equally impossible in any realistic scenario of a functioning government.
Ironically, the best way for a megacorp to free itself of regulation is to persuade politicians to create a federal regulatory body as that means one-stop-shopping for all their corrupt-bureaucrats-that-wield-power-over-the-whole-country shopping needs.
Any time there is a concentration of government power you will find corruption in proportion to the amount of power in question. It's basic human nature. People suck in general and will abuse power. This goes triple for those who seek power through public office, even if they go in with good intentions.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Laughable pieces from cult rags ignoring Prop 13. Your own link admits why people are actually moving:
How does is compare with the GDPR of the EU?
CNN and Forbes are "cult rags"? WTF are you smoking? The links back up exactly what I stated, clearly reading comprehension is not your strong suit.
Just another day in Paradise