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I think part of the issue here is that a plain English reading of the GDPR implies such appalling totalitarian overreach that most people find it hard to believ
by XCabbage 8y ago
I think part of the issue here is that a plain English reading of the GDPR implies such appalling totalitarian overreach that most people find it hard to believe that it can really be what's meant.
I mean, you've just agreed with my reading that the GDPR gives me the power to reach into your personal inbox and censor your records of communications with me. That sort of power for bad actors to carry out historical revisionism on what until now we'd've thought of as someone else's data is unprecedented and - at least to me - a pretty frightening threat to freedom of information and a culture of truth. And meanwhile we've got people running around Hacker News saying "GDPR is all wonderful, it's just common-sense privacy protections, and if your business isn't spying on users without their consent and selling their data you'll be fine".
You're clearly confident that the (to me, somewhat dystopian) interpretations we discussed just above will hold up in court. I'm not, even though they worry me and seem to me to be the most straightforward plain English reading of the bill. That doubt - and associated anger at the failure of the EU to bring greater clarity to these sorts of points before now - seem to me to be reasonable, and not a worthy target for condescension.
- heavyset_go 8y ago> I think part of the issue here is that a plain English reading of the GDPR implies such appalling totalitarian overreach that most people find it hard to believe that it can really be what's meant. Do you think this level of hyperbole is necessary?
- XCabbage 8y agoIn what sense do you think I'm being hyperbolic? I'm pretty sure I mean every word of what I wrote literally. (Though perhaps "authoritarian" would be a better choice of word than "totalitarian"; I mean it only in the broader sense of "infringing unjustly on individual freedom" and not in the stricter sense of "mandating total subservience to the state" that a Google 'define:' search yields as the first result. I thought it was correct to use "totalitarian" in the former sense, but don't have time to confirm; if I'm wrong, and that word choice is what you take issue with, then I'll concede that it was an erroneous word choice and I should've written "authoritarian" instead.)
- rue 8y agoThat's the opposite of totalitarian, btw, if we're interested in words.
- XCabbage 8y agoIn what way is government-mandated censorship and falsification of history "the opposite of totalitarian"?
- rue 8y agoIn that the government isn’t using people as tools. People are using the government as a tool. (Edit: without addressing your questionable definition of what it means to control one’s data.)
- Sir_Substance 8y ago>I mean, you've just agreed with my reading that the GDPR gives me the power to reach into your personal inbox and censor your records of communications with me. That's quite literally the opposite of what recital 18 explicitly says?
- tokyodude 8y agorecital 18 clearified absolutly nothing for me. My plain reading of recital 18 is that it has to do with personal records stored on paper or my own computers. it in no way covered emails I received from you via Gmail and whether or not you can demand Google delete emails you sent to me from my Gmail account.