3 ms·

Its a fair criticism in part; but you are a technologist and so want unfiltered access to play with that data. For the vast majority of people that's meaningle

Its a fair criticism in part; but you are a technologist and so want unfiltered access to play with that data. For the vast majority of people that's meaningless - so to be able to share that data with companies offering new and interesting services (AIS sign up is reasonably lightweight, certainly within trivial reach of any startup) is a big step forward. I think we should be encouraging! (Or in other words; your thinking of the limitations on the micro level and missing the benefits at the macro) FWIW GDPR is more interesting legislation for what your after - you will have the ability to get access to your own data. Unfortunately that legislation didn't push hard enough to promote the idea of digital access - we should level our criticism most harshly there to try and effect change :)

tialaramex 9y ago
Digital access to your data isn't likely to work out generally unless you're happy with "Here's a PDF sent to your email address" in which case, sure, that's going to happen. I look after a system that has loads of PII, as a mix of traditional SQL databases and RDF with a bunch of RESTful service layers keeping it all in neat boxes so it's not a sprawling unmanageable mess. Now, if you ask for Subject Access after our verification team is happy that you're who you say you are I can and will extract the data that's clearly about you from those sources, tart it up and reformat it, and shove that into a PDF you can have. What I can't realistically do, even if they tried to legislate for it, is make say the RDF data structures somehow understandable to the lay person who thinks "graph" means "chart" and "a triple" is when you win three things in a row. OpenBanking works because ultimately the banks are pretty interchangeable when it comes to ordinary personal accounts. Money comes in or out, there's some short half-arsed text saying why, an amount, it's a very regular structure. But imagine trying to build a single "digital access" that works for your Reddit posts, health records, grocery purchases, subscription to Playboy, and MetroCard account... what on Earth would the UX be for that? Google gives us an idea what the best we could hope for is - if you sign in and say you want all your data, Google will ZIP it all up for you. But it's not a coherent system, it's just like somebody's old PC backup, a bunch of unrelated files in different formats in a ZIP file.
- Y_Y 9y ago
  Just because plebs can't understand triples doesnt mean they should have the right to seem (and potentially show them to someone who does). It might even get people to learn or write software to make sense of whatever data structure. In any case it shouldn't be up to the data borrower.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> For the vast majority of people that's meaningless Erm ... WTF?! I'm not sure how explain this as it just seems so obvious, but ... you can, like, use software that other people write on your own computer!? There is no need to have any clue whatsoever of software development nor to share your data with any third party in order to profit from open APIs. People can use Thunderbird to read and write email without any need to be able to write software because there are open POP3, IMAP, and SMTP specs and you can have POP3, IMAP, and SMTP credentials for your email provider ... how is that meaningless to the vast majority of people?! > I think we should be encouraging! Encouraging of what? More centralization of data processing? Less control for the consumer? > FWIW GDPR is more interesting legislation for what your after Not at all. That is about data protection, not about machine readable interfaces. First of all, being able to access my data does not in any way allow me to initiate transactions, which is a ciritical part of banking functionality. But also, being able to access data does not at all mean being able to process it using a computer. I can have access to all the data companies store about me now, and most of them will simply send a letter with a printout to fulfill their legal obligations.
- ErrantX 9y ago
  Thats what I mean; PSD2 has always been about B2B. GDPR is business to consumer and we should critique it to press for digital solutions that are meaningful for consumers. As to the desktop app business; well sure but my hope is we build to this sort of thing. No harm is starting somewhere!
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > Thats what I mean; PSD2 has always been about B2B. Which is precisely why it is bad?! > GDPR is business to consumer and we should critique it to press for digital solutions that are meaningful for consumers. No, GDPR simply does not have anything to do with this. GDPR is about human rights, not about technological development. Machine readable access might still be a worthwhile goal in that area, but extending data protection to encompass the right to submit transactions to your bank via a machine readable standardized interface certainly would be a stretch. > As to the desktop app business; well sure but my hope is we build to this sort of thing. No harm is starting somewhere! But are we starting anywhere? Say I want to write free banking software for people who care about their privacy ... are we even the slightest bit closer to being able to do that? Or isn't this rather a step in the opposite direction in that it further cements the idea of having monks do all the reading and writing for your?

tialaramex 9y ago

Digital access to your data isn't likely to work out generally unless you're happy with "Here's a PDF sent to your email address" in which case, sure, that's going to happen. I look after a system that has loads of PII, as a mix of traditional SQL databases and RDF with a bunch of RESTful service layers keeping it all in neat boxes so it's not a sprawling unmanageable mess. Now, if you ask for Subject Access after our verification team is happy that you're who you say you are I can and will extract the data that's clearly about you from those sources, tart it up and reformat it, and shove that into a PDF you can have. What I can't realistically do, even if they tried to legislate for it, is make say the RDF data structures somehow understandable to the lay person who thinks "graph" means "chart" and "a triple" is when you win three things in a row. OpenBanking works because ultimately the banks are pretty interchangeable when it comes to ordinary personal accounts. Money comes in or out, there's some short half-arsed text saying why, an amount, it's a very regular structure. But imagine trying to build a single "digital access" that works for your Reddit posts, health records, grocery purchases, subscription to Playboy, and MetroCard account... what on Earth would the UX be for that? Google gives us an idea what the best we could hope for is - if you sign in and say you want all your data, Google will ZIP it all up for you. But it's not a coherent system, it's just like somebody's old PC backup, a bunch of unrelated files in different formats in a ZIP file.

Y_Y 9y ago
Just because plebs can't understand triples doesnt mean they should have the right to seem (and potentially show them to someone who does). It might even get people to learn or write software to make sense of whatever data structure. In any case it shouldn't be up to the data borrower.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago

> For the vast majority of people that's meaningless Erm ... WTF?! I'm not sure how explain this as it just seems so obvious, but ... you can, like, use software that other people write on your own computer!? There is no need to have any clue whatsoever of software development nor to share your data with any third party in order to profit from open APIs. People can use Thunderbird to read and write email without any need to be able to write software because there are open POP3, IMAP, and SMTP specs and you can have POP3, IMAP, and SMTP credentials for your email provider ... how is that meaningless to the vast majority of people?! > I think we should be encouraging! Encouraging of what? More centralization of data processing? Less control for the consumer? > FWIW GDPR is more interesting legislation for what your after Not at all. That is about data protection, not about machine readable interfaces. First of all, being able to access my data does not in any way allow me to initiate transactions, which is a ciritical part of banking functionality. But also, being able to access data does not at all mean being able to process it using a computer. I can have access to all the data companies store about me now, and most of them will simply send a letter with a printout to fulfill their legal obligations.

ErrantX 9y ago
Thats what I mean; PSD2 has always been about B2B. GDPR is business to consumer and we should critique it to press for digital solutions that are meaningful for consumers. As to the desktop app business; well sure but my hope is we build to this sort of thing. No harm is starting somewhere!
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > Thats what I mean; PSD2 has always been about B2B. Which is precisely why it is bad?! > GDPR is business to consumer and we should critique it to press for digital solutions that are meaningful for consumers. No, GDPR simply does not have anything to do with this. GDPR is about human rights, not about technological development. Machine readable access might still be a worthwhile goal in that area, but extending data protection to encompass the right to submit transactions to your bank via a machine readable standardized interface certainly would be a stretch. > As to the desktop app business; well sure but my hope is we build to this sort of thing. No harm is starting somewhere! But are we starting anywhere? Say I want to write free banking software for people who care about their privacy ... are we even the slightest bit closer to being able to do that? Or isn't this rather a step in the opposite direction in that it further cements the idea of having monks do all the reading and writing for your?