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Democrats Draft an 'Internet Bill of Rights' To Regulate Big Tech (geekwire.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Democrats in the House of Representatives are promising to push for federal regulation of tech companies if they retake the House in November. Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has drafted an Internet Bill of Rights and shared it with influential tech journalist Kara Swisher. It includes liberties like the right to access and transport personal data collected about you, an opt-in framework for data collection, and net neutrality protections. Rep. Nancy Pelosi charged Khanna with drafting the principles, according to an essay by Swisher published in the New York Times.
The list includes the right to obtain, correct, or delete personal data "where context appropriate and with a fair process." That's not nearly as sweeping as the "right to be forgotten" included in Europe's landmark General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect earlier this year. The Bill of Rights would also require companies that collect personal data to notify users of breaches in "a timely manner" and mandate "reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy." Swisher calls it "an admirable list" but is concerned that codifying the principles "will be like pushing back the ocean." Many big tech companies have business models built entirely on collecting as much user data as possible.
The list includes the right to obtain, correct, or delete personal data "where context appropriate and with a fair process." That's not nearly as sweeping as the "right to be forgotten" included in Europe's landmark General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect earlier this year. The Bill of Rights would also require companies that collect personal data to notify users of breaches in "a timely manner" and mandate "reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy." Swisher calls it "an admirable list" but is concerned that codifying the principles "will be like pushing back the ocean." Many big tech companies have business models built entirely on collecting as much user data as possible.
don't get fooled, they're in it for themselves. Big Tech spent a ton of money getting Dems in office who support anti-work politics (like the H1-B program, tax incentives for offshoring, etc). Ro Khanna is the real deal. An actual populist who refuses corporate PAC money. He doesn't fear Big Tech because he doesn't take their money.
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I don't see anything there about requiring free speech on major platforms that form the de facto public space today. The Democrats not enforcing free speech. I wonder why that might be?
== Jez ==
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the employees goals aren't necessarily aligned with management, and a highly educated workforce generally knows this. That's why CA is in general more liberal. They don't trust their management.
At the end of the day the only thing big enough to stand up to a Mega corp is a central government. Yeah, it's a risk, but without organization we just get picked off by robber barons.
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"enforcing free speech" isn't a thing. Obligatory XKCD comic.
If you want a platform people can post to that has those protections it needs to be government run. Make a gov't competitor to Facebook & Youtube if you want that. But generally people who deride Democrats for something they have no control over are opposed to "Big G'vmt" doing public works projects...
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This tells me that this is a typical campaign promise which will be quickly forgotten once the D's and R's have maintained their duopoly. Can't have any of them outsiders messing things up now, can we?
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
Many criminals have build a career of committing crime. If caught they are expected to be punished. Companies should expect the same - and the punishment should be served by the directors.
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Why hasn't Stallman been in the NYtimes in the past 30 years. It's hard to feel bad for anyone at this point in the these matters.
Republicans are as fed up with, if not more, with Big Tech as Democrats are. This isn't a "elect us and we'll do it" moment, and Republicans can (and, IMO, should) work with them and push it through in a bipartisan fashion.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
The list is a precursor to regulating the Internet. Read the thing, it's overly broad: "unfairly discriminated against based on your personal data" - what is 'fair' discrimination? What is personal data? Does that mean I can't call your unscientific viewpoints out?
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As much as I hate government regulation and big government (something always goes wrong and power gets abused), this is one of those instances where the actors (tech companies) have proved over and over again that they cannot act like grown ups. It is clearly time to risk government intrusion here because there is apparently no other way to fix the train wreck that privacy (or lack of) has become in the US.
That said, you are 100%, without a doubt spot on:
This stuff is perfectly fine to bluster about before the elections. In fact it's good politics to make promises like this.
Look for lots of noise now, but no real action after the election.
For example, both of Obama's successful campaigns (and many successful Democrat campaigns during those years) had lots of big talk about immigration reform. Funny thing is that during the time the Democrats had the Congress and the White House, nothing was done. Of course, the Hispanic vote was (and still is) important to Democrats, so they have to make the "good politics" by promising to do something. But that didn't even result in a meaningful token gesture. It was just a whole bunch of nothing. (No, Obama's executive actions don't count because, as can be seen now with Trump, a previous president's executive actions can be undone by the next president; plus executive orders don't count as reform.)
Republicans did the exact same thing where they all campaigned on fiscal conservatism to get the Tea Party vote. Then Republicans had both houses of Congress during 6 of Obama's 8 years and not a spending cut in sight. In fact, every time the President wanted a debt ceiling increase, the Republicans obliged. Every time he wanted a larger budget deficit, the Republicans again obliged. Sure they made noise about "next time," but the "next time" they just did they same thing they had been doing all along. Even now with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and the White House there still hasn't been a meaningful spending cut.
Conservative pundits love to point out that Obama accumulated more debt/deficit than every president before him combined. While it is a true statement and it is true that Obama bears the responsibility as the one who makes the budget requests, the Republicans were happy to stand by with gas cans and matches and help out.
Interestingly, if you go back to Obama's campaign speeches, especially from his first campaign, he actually talked quite a bit about "reigning in out of control spending in Washington." I don't think he actually even made an attempt in that regard.
... over the last 200 years. The Democrats and republicans are the enemies of the people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(I'm a small web developer, self employed for 25 years and counting, and obviously a general web consumer. )
I think there's a much simpler way to start this mayhem.
I'd be happy with two buttons:
1. show me everything you have on me, one big single-web-page human-readable/printable/migratable dump of information.
2. delete it all. please and thank you.
I think everything else can either be added much later, or will work itself out with market forces. Today, the trouble is that people don't know what's known about them, and can't do anything about it anyway. These two buttons solve the problem.
And with #2 being so readily available, you'd see just how quickly big companies apologize and make-things-right in the hopes of not losing huge swaths of their user data.
Compared to the GDPR (which is phenominal, but also a phenominally big step to take all at once), the above two are relatively easy for almost any company to implement.
(N.B. if you've read the GDPR thoroughly, and I mean the actual document, my #2 is the short-circuit way out of about 95% of the technical requirements that the GDPR puts on businesses.)
You do know that the FBI cleared him? He's now easily the most investigated nominee in US history. The FBI has looked into these allegations - I think this last week was the fifth time - and found them not to be credible.
You know those anti-Kavanaugh protesters? Backed by Soros money. There's an actual paper trail. You can prove it. Apparently Soros couldn't risk not getting the tax write-off for giving money to protesters.
And if his views are legally wrong, you have nothing to worry about. There are eight other judges on the Supreme Court.
If, however, they're right, and the only reason those views were suppressed before was due to judicial activism from the liberal judges - well, then maybe you should be worried. Because for the first time in my life that I can remember, we are finally going to have a Supreme Court that believes in the Constitution. I could not be happier.
These "rights" don't make any sense in a global network. Your "rights" are going to end when the borders of the country proclaiming them end. What this will do is significantly drive up the costs of using these (formerly) free systems.
As examples:
(5) to move all personal data from one network to the next;
This would require both the source, and destination, networks (systems?) to have compatible data export, and import, APIs. Who is going to pay for this, and determine which networks are supported?
(9) not to be unfairly discriminated against or exploited based on your personal data; and
This makes no sense. Who is going to determine what is "fair" and what constitutes "personal data?" I am completely OK with being discriminated against, and/or exploited, because I want to watch a video Amazon decided to charge me to watch, as opposed to one of their free videos.
I can pretty much go through every single one of these "rights" and tell you exactly how they will infringe on someone else's rights, and require substantial development costs to implement.
If this list started with data that our own government collects on our citizens, and an foreigners, I would support it. I think that would be a much better place to start, and would immediately put an end to all of the Federal dragnet data collection that goes on "to fight terrorism." Instead of (1) to have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by companies; why not replace companies with governments. That seems like a good starting point to me.
These kind of rights will require a police force to enforce them, and judges to uphold other laws, as well as whatever legislative body is going to proclaim them. Those are three components of law. I do not want the Federal government to become the internet police. That sounds terrible to me.
an opt-in framework for data collection,
and the way it is now? You sign up for an account and it says, "Your use of this site constitutes your acceptance of our terms and conditions" and the T&C says "we will collect your data". That sounds like 'opt in' to me.
J
Democrats had over eight years to reign in Big Tech and now all of a sudden they see a problem?
Yes, Democrats would be great for regulating Big Tech and enforcing free speech. /s
With a photo: "Google’s Eric Schmidt Wore ‘Staff’ Badge at Hillary Clinton Election Night Party":
https://freebeacon.com/politic...
I think it will sort itself out, like many long ignored ills seem to do. In order to get society to change, you can't politely ask. There has to be upheaval, backlash, and casualties on all sides. People hate to change, and often, it's fear of consequences that forces them to finally do something different.
I think this Me Too overreach is temporary, as we redraw the boundaries of how to act with each other. While I didn't live through the 60s, I'm guessing that the civil rights movement was similarly not pleasant, even if you were white and on the right side of the issue. Boycotts, riots, sit-ins, and marches, there were likely also a lot of financial and social casualties of people who had done nothing wrong. But at the end of the day, we broke segregation, better equalized rights, and made a real leap forward in equality. I see the same thing happening now with Me Too. It's not a pleasant transition for anyone involved, but when we make social adjustments, it never is.
While in some respects it's not fair to be dredging up shit from decades past, at the same time, we can't just say, "tomorrow is when we start holding you accountable for being a shithead, you get a free pass for everything up until then." It sucks, but being afraid that what you've done in the past will catch up with you is a good motivator for being squeaky clean in the future. You know then that if someone comes after you, you can pull on some good character witnesses that can vouch that you're not like that now. And if it makes some men go back and preemptively apologize for their shit, that's awesome.
At the moment, I'm working with about 75% women. At first, I was indeed on a bit of eggshells around them. I didn't really joke, and kept my warped sense of humor to myself. But as we got to know each other better, they opened up, and I did. I payed attention to the signals, the body language, and observed when I was getting a little too close to the boundaries of what they are ok with. Putting in that effort has been worth it. We're damn friendly, go out for drinks sometimes, and I've gotten shitfaced with a couple of them in strange cities after work hours.
They're sort-of bros, but there are clear lines that I don't cross. When I made a joke that if one of their kids didn't get better that they could just make another one, and she pointed out that her husband was fixed, I did not push that joke further. I said, "Well, I guess you really need to take him to the doctor then.", and let it go. Because that's where I'm pretty sure the line is with her. Yes, that takes more mental energy than plowing forward until people are uncomfortable, but that's part and parcel of being a decent human being.
For a damn long time being a man got you a pass on being a decent human being. The more powerful you were, the more of a pass you got. My hope isn't that Me Too makes men scared shitless to even talk to women, but that they consider taking the temperature of their relationships and when they're in doubt, they ask. It's really not that hard to do.
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