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Some Prominent Tech Companies Are Paying Big Money To Kill a California Privacy Initiative (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: As data-sharing scandals continue to mount, a new proposal in California offers a potential solution: the California Consumer Privacy Act would require companies to disclose the types of information they collect, like data used to target ads, and allow the public to opt out of having their information sold. Now, some of tech's most prominent companies are pouring millions of dollars into an effort to to kill the proposal.
In recent weeks, Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber have all made substantial contributions to a group campaigning against the initiative, according to state disclosure records. The $195,000 contributions from Amazon and Microsoft, as well as $50,000 from Uber, are only the latest: Facebook, Google, AT&T, and Verizon have each contributed $200,000 to block the measure, while other telecom and advertising groups have also poured money into the opposition group. After Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on privacy during congressional hearings, Facebook said it would no longer support the group. Google did not back down, and the more recent contributions suggest other companies will continue fighting the measure.
In recent weeks, Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber have all made substantial contributions to a group campaigning against the initiative, according to state disclosure records. The $195,000 contributions from Amazon and Microsoft, as well as $50,000 from Uber, are only the latest: Facebook, Google, AT&T, and Verizon have each contributed $200,000 to block the measure, while other telecom and advertising groups have also poured money into the opposition group. After Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on privacy during congressional hearings, Facebook said it would no longer support the group. Google did not back down, and the more recent contributions suggest other companies will continue fighting the measure.
... always work.
Californians often establish trends that buck the status quo, invoking state's rights.
Those companies would be more effective if they threatened economic sanctions against California.
That kind of money does talk.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
new search engine for penises!
Angry inch techbros poasting about their precious privacy while their employers erase the whole concept.
Just another day in faceless Red State Pedo GOP INCEL traitor Amerikkka... http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/14/convicted-sex-offender-arrested-for-allegedly-possessing-child-pornography.html
Politican wants a beachhouse. Thinks about how to make money. Comes up with a plan. Make a move against big X. Big X brings in the $. Proposals get dismissed.
I doubt that there are enough progressive and/or uncorrupted politicians in California to get this measure passed. Otoh, if it grabs and holds enough media attention and spotlight thanks to Facebooks recent screwups and almost continual unveiling of more scandalous occurrences maybe it actually has a chance.
But we're told that legal bribes don't influence our politicians decision making. So surely their donating millions won't affect our leaders decisions in doing the right thing. Will it?
The greatest return on investment for any company is to buy a politician.
After Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on privacy during congressional hearings
Grilled? That wasn't even close to grilled. It was a farce. A series of softballs that were already public information anyway. It only cost Facebook $27,000 in campaign contributions to the chair of the Energy and Finance committee Greg Walden (R-OR) to make it farce, where nothing interesting was revealed. And it only cost them a fraction of what these other companies are shelling out.
Someone get Trump's ass ready also! He's got a LIFETIME of prison cock to contend with very soon! You're gonna need lots of lube... maybe a few pictures of Ivanka when she was a breastless teenager to get him in the mood?
Be like creimer, simply overshare every single detail of your life going back to childhood, unsolicited, at every opportunity.
Allow to opt out? In Europe we're one step further and got privacy by default. No data collection without explicit consent.
When they were legal, reasoning was that they cannot be made illegal as it would hurt the drug industry.
These days the reasoning is that data collection cannot be made illegal as it would hurt the data collection industry.
See parallels?
The European law's pretty awful. It hurts small companies while leaving a mass of loopholes for the big guys to squirm through. Several games and software products shut down because they weren't set up to be able to delete all the information for a user on a moment's notice and didn't want to risk the crazy fines (which don't scale).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I want privacy from the government and privacy from companies. That isn't too much to ask and if you think it is, too bad.
I hate fat people.
It's obvious why Facebook and Google would oppose this. They're making most of their money from advertising, which probably wouldn't be worthwhile without gathering user data. They don't charge the users for the services, so they have to make money somehow. It also makes sense for Amazon and Microsoft, since they have some services where they get some money from advertising, even if it isn't their primary source of revenue.
I would be far more concerned about companies like Uber, Verizon, and AT&T opposing this. They charge for people to use their services, so they can't use the excuse that they need advertisers to pay in order to keep the services free for users.
Do not trust corporations to do what is in your best interest, ever. They are required by law to provide the maximum return for their shareholders, and sometimes that means paying off politicians, polluting, stealing, and in some cases, weighing the cost of lawsuits against the potential profits if they kill you.
Even the most rabid small government zealot needs to admit that we need our elected officials to protect us from unscrupulous people.
[ _ ] Click to agree that we collect all possible data all the time.
[ _ ] Click to agree that we do whatever we please with the data.
From the article
Microsoft believes privacy is a fundamental human right
This is a company that puts in telemetry in its OS, forces the OS to be installed on computers without user's consent, having some buttons that make it look like the telemetry features can be disabled but if you monitor traffic via wireshark, the calling home still happens regularly even if you switch them off. This is a company whose Internet Explorer browser calls home to Microsoft. This is a company nullifies any host file configurations that block traffic that's sent back to Micosoft in their latest OS.
I'd like to set up a company that supports the initiative, then solicits the companies for money to quiet down ... get them to pay me for doing nothing!!
They don't charge the users for the services, so they have to make money somehow.
Would sure be nice to have a Pay option to opt out of the spying.
I understand your frustration, but this isn't helpful. Please instead direct your energy to joining a local organization working for positive change in our broken system.
This is my local organization, and I'm ridding it of Republican traitors one INCEL at a time. They deserve this and worse. I'm sorry if it's disruptive, as soon as America fixes the traitor (but good) I'll certainly stop. Any day now.
I'm pretty sure freedom of speech doesn't apply to a blog like slashdot. Your posts can be modded down and there is nothing you can do about it, but unfortunately the way slashdot works, you can just keep posting stupid shit all day every day, and we can continue to ignore it.
If you wanted to set up your own anti-trump site, you're free to do so.
But... but they're TOTALLY not like they used to be! Really! This is a completely new Microsoft, under new leadership! Satya Nadella is a good guy! We have nothing to fear from them! Everybody under the age of 30 has been saying so, so it must be true! There's no way they'd do this, right? RIGHT?!
Like, the FBI saying, "We'll make sure Hillary wins".
That wasn't the FBI. That was only a few agents that were investigating her.
He's guilty. Get over it: he will be in prison.
you'll get neither you little twat
Buy direct from vendors and skip Amazon
Use Linux instead of Windows
Drive yourself instead of using Uber (or at least use Lyft FFS)
Delete your Facebook account
Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google
Drop AT&T and Verizon for some other company
Vote for the privacy measure.
Thanks for helping keep California BLUE, by the way.
Also, apropos of nothing: Jeff Sessions is a goddamned motherfucking Nazi.
Time for Apple to support this California privacy initiative so that people stop putting them in the same lot as Google and Facebook.
#DeleteFacebook
When you grow up, you might come to appreciate things like privacy/security, kid.
I didn't say nobody could mod posts, nor did I say slashdot enforced the 1st Amendment, I said it's too bad Republican INCEL faggots don't like what I'm saying because they will never stop me.
When Trump dies in prison I might get bored of the topic, perhaps, if I feel that way in a couple years. We'll see! This IS my anti-Trump site though, sorry if that offends anyone who isn't a treason-supporting faggot by mistake.
I voted Trump and I'm voluntarily celibate because I believe all heterosexual intercourse is rape. Where is your candidate now?
No, seriously, where is she? She hasn't whined about losing the election in a couple of hours. We're starting to get worried.
I hope some 3-letter agency sees your diarrhea writing and puts you in Guantanamo.
Like, the FBI saying, "We'll make sure Hillary wins".
That wasn't the FBI. That was only a few agents that were investigating her.
One of whom was the head of the FBI.
Nothing to see here, folks, nevermind the man behind the curtain...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Nothing to see here, folks, nevermind the man behind the curtain...
That's right, there isn't. So says the year+ long investigation.
Mr. Horowitz repeatedly said he found no evidence that the F.B.I. rigged the outcome. “Our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed,” the report said.
Of course, this doesn't fit your narrative. Lock her up right? That's what you were told to think.
I hope some RL friends see them doing their crapflooding and break their fingers.
and what if those private companies get hacked because they don't give a F about your privacy? Seems you assume all companies control their data you give them and use it for the purposes outlined in their charter.
If you could reason with Trump supporters, there wouldn’t be any.
I notice American politics is full of buzzwords. Here's another rich corporation promising to save Americans in the name of jobs/immigration, families/children, patriotism/terrorism, capitalism/guns.
I suspect this will be like Hollywood declaring that piracy affects hundreds of industries.
I wonder if Eric Schmidt left because of:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
This guy works for Trump. It's a viral PR campaign to make all Democrat party advocates look like deranged, petulant imbeciles.
The companies opposed to privacy rights are mostly parastatal corporations. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wi...
And Pastor Peen is a parasitical person, what's your point?
Like, the FBI saying, "We'll make sure Hillary wins".
Which is why that agent leaked the news that the manchurian candidate was currently under investigation for conspiring with Russia.
Oh wait, he didn't leak that? Seems like he didn't really try to make sure Hillary won, did he?
Conspiracy Theory Logic: The Derp State is super-powerful, totally corrupt and completely feckless.
i've always known it : if you spell youble backwards it reads "do no good" it always has .. o wait ... o wait ye it does
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I want privacy from the government and privacy from companies. That isn't too much to ask and if you think it is, too bad.
The right to privacy is clearly one of the rights arising in US law under the 9th Amendment (rights retained by the people) and the 10th Amendment (rights reserved to the people). Nothing in the Bill of Rights limits the application of such rights to government: these rights can limit third party private entities as well.
Rights such as the right to ethical practice law, the right to privacy, and the right to long term oversight over business are all fundamental rights that can be asserted against private entities - and there are doubtless many others.
Infringement of fundamental rights "under the colour of law" is already a criminal offence under US federal law, as well as grounds for civil suit.
In short, the current abuses of privacy are ALREADY a violation of the law. So why aren't all those corporate lawyers who have sworn oaths to uphold the law as a precondition for being allowed to practice law telling their clients they can't do this stuff? If they didn't want to abide by the highest law in this land, why didn't they just move to another country and practice law there?
The answer: they aren't doing this because the majority of the US legal profession is unethical - and has been for a long time - and as a result, they think they can get away this.
Economists estimate that at least half the income of the US legal profession comes from rent-seeking and other legal ethics problems - problems that have been getting worse over the years. Government at law levels in the USA is now violating the Bill of Rights on a daily basis - but, strangely enough, not in a way that really harms the interests of the legal profession or the super-rich. If these folks take a penalty, it's no bigger than a rounding error in their overall income - and they can usually find a way to profit off the second order consequences of government decisions. Both Blue and Red are complicit. A bodyguard of lies created by the unethical members of the legal profession protects everything being done.
This is exactly why people need to care about the legal ethics problem in US law. The rich might get their rights, but ordinary people won't -- until the public wakes up and decides to do something about this problem.
Well ... it's ok if you want it. When all the apps on my phone make me read their really awesome privacy policy, I think about how I didn't download their app looking for a privacy policy. It's like, "Download our app and we promise not to murder you." Great, please don't murder me. I don't want to be murdered, but really I'm looking for more in an app than to not be murdered.
I want privacy, but I'm not sure what the danger of having a company have your data is.
Of course, this doesn't fit your narrative. Lock her up right? That's what you were told to think.
This assumption about my motives completely denigrates your position, and nothing you've said defies my statement.
Partisan crybabies are partisan crybabies, regardless of which party they choose to be slaves to. James Comey absolutely told Congress that yes, Clinton did commit multiple felonies, but he was choosing to not pursue charges (even though that wasn't his call to make) because, according to his testimony, she didn't intend to commit said felonies. If you're unwilling to accept this absolute, verifiable fact, then you are the one living in a fantasy world, not me.
Prosecute 'em all, I say.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This assumption about my motives completely denigrates your position
The only thing I assumed was that you were putting this into the context of the investigation into Hilary. Which you were, since you freaking quoted it yourself in your own post, to which I responded. Go ahead and press pgup and check it out for yourself.