5 ms·

Are there other countries as active as France is concerning the enforcement of user privacy laws and data protection?

by jld89 10y ago

Sylos 10y ago
Switzerland is usually pretty good at it, and Germany tends to also care, because of their Stasi-history, but the recent trend of "Terrorists killed a handful of people, let's throw away the fundamental rights of our population." hasn't left those two unscathed either...
- pilif 10y ago
  Switzerland has horrendous data retention laws that just got even worse. Providers and services are forced to keep all user data for 2 years available for the state to access it So what you gain in privacy vs private entities you lose with regards to the state having complete access to all of your online life.
- CatsoCatsoCatso 10y ago
  >Terrorists killed a handful of people 234 people dying from terror attacks in France in the last 18 months is not a handful. Don't just dismiss their deaths so heartlessly as a "handful". Shame on you.
  - chopin 10y ago
    3788 deaths in France in 2014 by road accidents alone. We're not going to dismiss fundamental rights for those, aren't we? I wish people would put things more into perspective. I personally fear state powers much more than terrorism.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    Realistically it's an average air crash. At the scale of a population like France it is almost meaningless. Drowning kills several orders of magnitude more. I don't see calls for changing the constitution to reduce the number of drownings. Or suicidal airline pilots...
    - leakybit 10y ago
      Typical Liberal broadsided thinking, We can't change the constitution just because terrorists are killing a marginal amount of people but we should change the constitution to ban guns because mass shootings are killing a marginal amount of people.
    - angry-hacker 10y ago
      But it's one airplane crash too many. I don't understand your point. We shouldn't care?
      - EdHominem 10y ago
        Do you ban airplanes? Or the taxis that get people to the airport? Or apps that tell people when flights are scheduled? Right, of course not. It's not that you shouldn't care, it's that you should care in proportion to the seriousness. 234 death is fifteen days of 2014's driving fatalities. Why do you hate the children so much that you don't care to save them except from movie-plot deaths?
      - smhenderson 10y ago
        Not to answer for the parent but IMHO it's not so much we shouldn't care. It's we should be very careful about what rights and freedoms we give up and how much power we give to a state to scrutinize our daily lives when the very thing we are trying to prevent has not had a major impact on our daily lives. Yes, it had a major impact on some people and their families and their pain is not to be dismissed lightly but on the other hand we should not give up our way of life to prevent these things from happening, especially when evidence supports that the new laws that are written after these events seem to do very little to actually further protect us. While a little sensational I think the graphic in this article concerning the TSA in the US does a pretty decent job of summing up exactly what we've gotten from "enhanced" security in the US. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120405/04390118385/tsa-security-theater-described-one-simple-infographic.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120405/04390118385/tsa-s...
      - cm2187 10y ago
        Every homicide or rape is shocking, unacceptable, and one too many. Eliminating crime completely can be achieved at the expense of living in a totalitarian society. So there has to be a balance between the emotion aspect of every crime and keeping society free. Medias usually have this balance in mind when they cover common crime. This balance goes totally out of the door when it is terrorism.
  - akerro 10y ago
    So how many more should be killed by religious extremist to make it handful for you?
    - tunap 10y ago
      Te bus driver was not a zealot. He was a non-practicing, angry individual who found a convenient cause(or was it the 'news' and ISIS, ex post facto?) to justify his sickness/actions. Edit: In addition, feel free to review another popular construct the FBI created soon after 9-11 to fan the flames of 'Fear Theater' by this 'extremist' group... a couple street thugs who had no potency beyond an FBI agent and promises of guns & bombs. How many trials did it take to convict some of them? Fear Theater works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_City_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_City_7
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    if you succumb to the fear of terrorism, then they've already won over you. its manipulation tool to change public into irrational/outright stupid decisions, with impossible promise of more safety in exchange for more control from state. plus in french example, probably motivating some local young unhappy psychopats in muslim communities to help "with the cause" described above. goal? maybe civil war in france? more budget from saudi elites on jihad? don't know here. if you look at all these acts through this logic, they don't look that bad, and they are truly a drop in the ocean of civilization of 7 billion. last year, in africa alone, 400,000 people died just from malaria, which is a lousy way to die just because you are poor. i don't see much emotions about these topics, yet numbers are shocking, every single time.
rihegher 10y ago
Make no mistake, CNIL is only active to reach out big companies such as Facebook, Google or Yahoo so that the medias can speaks about CNIL as active. Apart from that and from rewarding people by getting a well paid job inside it, CNIL is useless since 1978. I remember listening to my law teacher in IT school back in 2000 telling us that CNIL doesn't have the budget nor the will to ensure anything. Well now it's 2016 the commission has a 20M€ budget so they have to justify it by having some existence in the media. for those who reads french: http://www.20minutes.fr/societe/659250-20110126-societe-la-cnil-epinglee-cour-comptes-propos-certaines-derives http://www.20minutes.fr/societe/659250-20110126-societe-la-c... https://www.data.gouv.fr/s/resources/budget-de-la-cnil-1/20160414-180224/OpenCNIL_Budget_depuis_2000_20160414.csv https://www.data.gouv.fr/s/resources/budget-de-la-cnil-1/201...
- Totoradio 10y ago
  This is anectodal evidence, but I personally saw a CNIL inspection at a previous workplace (semi-big company in France, ~2000 employees at the time). 2 inspectors came in unannounced one morning and snatched a DBA to see what personal info was in all of our databases (Dev,Staging and Prod). They also did other inspections regarding our handling of personal data.
NumberCruncher 10y ago
Yes, see Denmark on data protection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12128410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12128410

Are there other countries as active as France is concerning the enforcement of user privacy laws and data protection?

by jld89 10y ago

Are there other countries as active as France is concerning the enforcement of user privacy laws and data protection?

Sylos 10y ago

Switzerland is usually pretty good at it, and Germany tends to also care, because of their Stasi-history, but the recent trend of "Terrorists killed a handful of people, let's throw away the fundamental rights of our population." hasn't left those two unscathed either...

pilif 10y ago
Switzerland has horrendous data retention laws that just got even worse. Providers and services are forced to keep all user data for 2 years available for the state to access it So what you gain in privacy vs private entities you lose with regards to the state having complete access to all of your online life.
CatsoCatsoCatso 10y ago
>Terrorists killed a handful of people 234 people dying from terror attacks in France in the last 18 months is not a handful. Don't just dismiss their deaths so heartlessly as a "handful". Shame on you.
- chopin 10y ago
  3788 deaths in France in 2014 by road accidents alone. We're not going to dismiss fundamental rights for those, aren't we? I wish people would put things more into perspective. I personally fear state powers much more than terrorism.
- cm2187 10y ago
  Realistically it's an average air crash. At the scale of a population like France it is almost meaningless. Drowning kills several orders of magnitude more. I don't see calls for changing the constitution to reduce the number of drownings. Or suicidal airline pilots...
  - leakybit 10y ago
    Typical Liberal broadsided thinking, We can't change the constitution just because terrorists are killing a marginal amount of people but we should change the constitution to ban guns because mass shootings are killing a marginal amount of people.
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    But it's one airplane crash too many. I don't understand your point. We shouldn't care?
    - EdHominem 10y ago
      Do you ban airplanes? Or the taxis that get people to the airport? Or apps that tell people when flights are scheduled? Right, of course not. It's not that you shouldn't care, it's that you should care in proportion to the seriousness. 234 death is fifteen days of 2014's driving fatalities. Why do you hate the children so much that you don't care to save them except from movie-plot deaths?
    - smhenderson 10y ago
      Not to answer for the parent but IMHO it's not so much we shouldn't care. It's we should be very careful about what rights and freedoms we give up and how much power we give to a state to scrutinize our daily lives when the very thing we are trying to prevent has not had a major impact on our daily lives. Yes, it had a major impact on some people and their families and their pain is not to be dismissed lightly but on the other hand we should not give up our way of life to prevent these things from happening, especially when evidence supports that the new laws that are written after these events seem to do very little to actually further protect us. While a little sensational I think the graphic in this article concerning the TSA in the US does a pretty decent job of summing up exactly what we've gotten from "enhanced" security in the US. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120405/04390118385/tsa-security-theater-described-one-simple-infographic.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120405/04390118385/tsa-s...
    - cm2187 10y ago
      Every homicide or rape is shocking, unacceptable, and one too many. Eliminating crime completely can be achieved at the expense of living in a totalitarian society. So there has to be a balance between the emotion aspect of every crime and keeping society free. Medias usually have this balance in mind when they cover common crime. This balance goes totally out of the door when it is terrorism.
- akerro 10y ago
  So how many more should be killed by religious extremist to make it handful for you?
  - tunap 10y ago
    Te bus driver was not a zealot. He was a non-practicing, angry individual who found a convenient cause(or was it the 'news' and ISIS, ex post facto?) to justify his sickness/actions. Edit: In addition, feel free to review another popular construct the FBI created soon after 9-11 to fan the flames of 'Fear Theater' by this 'extremist' group... a couple street thugs who had no potency beyond an FBI agent and promises of guns & bombs. How many trials did it take to convict some of them? Fear Theater works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_City_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_City_7
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  if you succumb to the fear of terrorism, then they've already won over you. its manipulation tool to change public into irrational/outright stupid decisions, with impossible promise of more safety in exchange for more control from state. plus in french example, probably motivating some local young unhappy psychopats in muslim communities to help "with the cause" described above. goal? maybe civil war in france? more budget from saudi elites on jihad? don't know here. if you look at all these acts through this logic, they don't look that bad, and they are truly a drop in the ocean of civilization of 7 billion. last year, in africa alone, 400,000 people died just from malaria, which is a lousy way to die just because you are poor. i don't see much emotions about these topics, yet numbers are shocking, every single time.

rihegher 10y ago

Make no mistake, CNIL is only active to reach out big companies such as Facebook, Google or Yahoo so that the medias can speaks about CNIL as active. Apart from that and from rewarding people by getting a well paid job inside it, CNIL is useless since 1978. I remember listening to my law teacher in IT school back in 2000 telling us that CNIL doesn't have the budget nor the will to ensure anything. Well now it's 2016 the commission has a 20M€ budget so they have to justify it by having some existence in the media. for those who reads french: http://www.20minutes.fr/societe/659250-20110126-societe-la-cnil-epinglee-cour-comptes-propos-certaines-derives http://www.20minutes.fr/societe/659250-20110126-societe-la-c... https://www.data.gouv.fr/s/resources/budget-de-la-cnil-1/20160414-180224/OpenCNIL_Budget_depuis_2000_20160414.csv https://www.data.gouv.fr/s/resources/budget-de-la-cnil-1/201...

Totoradio 10y ago
This is anectodal evidence, but I personally saw a CNIL inspection at a previous workplace (semi-big company in France, ~2000 employees at the time). 2 inspectors came in unannounced one morning and snatched a DBA to see what personal info was in all of our databases (Dev,Staging and Prod). They also did other inspections regarding our handling of personal data.

NumberCruncher 10y ago

Yes, see Denmark on data protection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12128410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12128410