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This is the furthest thing from true, like almost every single question about this terrible law. Vague law + faceless bureaucracies + universal application + cr

This is the furthest thing from true, like almost every single question about this terrible law. Vague law + faceless bureaucracies + universal application + crippling penalties...sounds like a brilliant combo to destroy people’s lives.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
riffraff 8y ago
as usual, the rebuttal is: there have been this kind of laws in Europe for a decade. For example, if you're operating in Italy and don't provide 2 separate checkboxes for managing personal data directly and indirectly at sign up time you're in breach of the law. Do you remember many people's lifes crippled by this?
- tripletao 8y ago
  It's certainly true that even before the GDPR, almost any nontrivial business could reasonably be argued to be violating some mostly-unenforced law. I don't see that as a reason to shrug, and make the problem one step worse. Selective enforcement of commercial law is a routine tool of unfree states--look at something like the tax charges against The Cambodia Daily. To trust in regulatory discretion is to trust that no government in the EU--a continent that within living memory hosted Francisco Franco, Giorgios Papadopoulos, and much worse--will ever be run by people you disagree with. In the extreme, a dictator can always ignore or rewrite the law; but somewhere in the slide from our present democracy to that, I don't think it's unimaginable that the GDPR could be abused. I support privacy regulation. I don't see why it requires us to abandon the rule of law. ETA: Downvote if you trust Viktor Orban, I guess? I'm presuming a strong case of "it can't happen here"....
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    The EU isn’t a continent, and the dictators you mentioned didn’t control EU countries.
    - tripletao 8y ago
      My wording was awkward, but I think the meaning is clear. "...in the EU--the union of countries primarily located in a continent that..." ? And what am I missing? They were dictators of Spain and Greece respectively. There are millions of people who can remember their rule alive in those EU countries today. What changed in the last fifty years to make a recurrence impossible? Turkey narrowly missed joining, and it's basically there now. Hungary seems well on its way.
      - robin_reala 8y ago
        The threat of being suspended from the EU and the (potential) economic damage from that? You can’t be a dictatorship and keep the same rights in the union, as per the Copenhagen criteria and Article 7. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria#Political_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria#Political_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_Eur...
        tripletao 8y ago
        And Russia considers itself to be a democracy. There's a big gray zone between good government and a self-admitted dictatorship. Smart modern authoritarians know that they need to maintain the pretense of democracy (for reasons like the one you note), and they do a passable job--look at something like Cambodia. That's what makes tools to exert personal power while still complying with the law as written so important. Why do you think the GDPR needs to give the government that much power? For a simple example: Why is 20M EUR the right statutory maximum? If the regulators would never enforce it, then why does it need to be so high?
        jacquesm 8y ago
        Because otherwise some companies might conclude that it is cheaper to continue to violate the law and simply to pay the fine. See Volkswagen, which got fined billions for violating the law (and rightly so), and they're still in business and have not withdrawn from the markets where they were fined. But it looks as if they did learn their lesson (for the next 30 years or so, this wasn't the first time they got caught with something like that).
- drdaeman 8y ago
  Wait. So, I've had a site where there was only a single checkbox to create an account. Now, if there was someone from Italy (I don't know, the site's gone for years now, highly unlikely but theoretically possible) does this means I'm a possible law offender and should avoid visiting Italy? Oh, it also had no cookie banners, too... Could be, the reason no one was hurt is that those laws weren't actually enforced any much? If so, I believe GDPR's promised to be different.
  - riffraff 8y ago
    the GDPR will be enforced by the same entity that was enforcing this before, so why would it be different? The truth is that obviously the authorities don't have an incentive to come after a minor player.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

riffraff 8y ago

as usual, the rebuttal is: there have been this kind of laws in Europe for a decade. For example, if you're operating in Italy and don't provide 2 separate checkboxes for managing personal data directly and indirectly at sign up time you're in breach of the law. Do you remember many people's lifes crippled by this?

tripletao 8y ago
It's certainly true that even before the GDPR, almost any nontrivial business could reasonably be argued to be violating some mostly-unenforced law. I don't see that as a reason to shrug, and make the problem one step worse. Selective enforcement of commercial law is a routine tool of unfree states--look at something like the tax charges against The Cambodia Daily. To trust in regulatory discretion is to trust that no government in the EU--a continent that within living memory hosted Francisco Franco, Giorgios Papadopoulos, and much worse--will ever be run by people you disagree with. In the extreme, a dictator can always ignore or rewrite the law; but somewhere in the slide from our present democracy to that, I don't think it's unimaginable that the GDPR could be abused. I support privacy regulation. I don't see why it requires us to abandon the rule of law. ETA: Downvote if you trust Viktor Orban, I guess? I'm presuming a strong case of "it can't happen here"....
- robin_reala 8y ago
  The EU isn’t a continent, and the dictators you mentioned didn’t control EU countries.
  - tripletao 8y ago
    My wording was awkward, but I think the meaning is clear. "...in the EU--the union of countries primarily located in a continent that..." ? And what am I missing? They were dictators of Spain and Greece respectively. There are millions of people who can remember their rule alive in those EU countries today. What changed in the last fifty years to make a recurrence impossible? Turkey narrowly missed joining, and it's basically there now. Hungary seems well on its way.
    - robin_reala 8y ago
      The threat of being suspended from the EU and the (potential) economic damage from that? You can’t be a dictatorship and keep the same rights in the union, as per the Copenhagen criteria and Article 7. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria#Political_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria#Political_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_Eur...
      - tripletao 8y ago
        And Russia considers itself to be a democracy. There's a big gray zone between good government and a self-admitted dictatorship. Smart modern authoritarians know that they need to maintain the pretense of democracy (for reasons like the one you note), and they do a passable job--look at something like Cambodia. That's what makes tools to exert personal power while still complying with the law as written so important. Why do you think the GDPR needs to give the government that much power? For a simple example: Why is 20M EUR the right statutory maximum? If the regulators would never enforce it, then why does it need to be so high?
        jacquesm 8y ago
        Because otherwise some companies might conclude that it is cheaper to continue to violate the law and simply to pay the fine. See Volkswagen, which got fined billions for violating the law (and rightly so), and they're still in business and have not withdrawn from the markets where they were fined. But it looks as if they did learn their lesson (for the next 30 years or so, this wasn't the first time they got caught with something like that).
drdaeman 8y ago
Wait. So, I've had a site where there was only a single checkbox to create an account. Now, if there was someone from Italy (I don't know, the site's gone for years now, highly unlikely but theoretically possible) does this means I'm a possible law offender and should avoid visiting Italy? Oh, it also had no cookie banners, too... Could be, the reason no one was hurt is that those laws weren't actually enforced any much? If so, I believe GDPR's promised to be different.
- riffraff 8y ago
  the GDPR will be enforced by the same entity that was enforcing this before, so why would it be different? The truth is that obviously the authorities don't have an incentive to come after a minor player.