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Google said it had successfully ‘slowed down’ European privacy rules
- hulitu 5y agoCorruption is everywhere. The way GDPR is enforced is a joke.
- dninednjwryv 5y agoEverywhere I look in society, another instance of corruption pops out
- rdiddly 5y agoI don't know why, but my reaction today upon reading some of the quotes was along the lines of, jeez who ARE all these sad, scheming paranoiacs? Obviously Google hired them to be just that, but it's a far fuckin cry from "innovation" of the sort that's always being defended and trumpeted. Clearly innovation is a pretense now, maybe always was? Or maybe finding innovative ways of circumventing the public will still counts as innovation?
- gnulinux 5y ago> who ARE all these sad, scheming paranoiacs? Same, it's puzzling to me what is the mechanism that creates people like this.
- Ansil849 5y ago> what is the mechanism that creates people like this. I think it's pretty straightforward: take one part a person who sees an opportunity to earn a sizable income, and one part a person with ethics different than yours. And there you go. It's not complex.
- rdiddly 5y agoI bet they think we're the fools though!
- pizza 5y agoI imagine it's the steady state result of getting promoted a lot of times for bringing home truckloads of money for Google
- echelon 5y agoThe same ones that call privacy advocates the "screeching minority".
- Valakas_ 5y agoTrauma.
- amelius 5y agoThe two people working for the EU's privacy organization must be scratching their heads.
- christkv 5y agoThere should be zero negotiation between the EU and the tech giants when it comes to privacy from my perspective. There should be a no track law that disallows any company to hold private data without an explicit direct customer relationship. Data would have to deleted completely at end of any business relationship with a short grace period. There should also be a digital fast track process to report and receive damages when companies are fast tracked with similar legal penalties to illegally harboring medical information. The acceptance of data trading should end yesterday.
- k8sToGo 5y agoI think consulting tech companies should be something they need to do, otherwise we end up with crap like that cookie banner.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoWhy can't they just hire expert advisors themselves? That way they don't need to consult companies who have conflicts of interest.
- krono 5y agoImagine the number of ex-bigcorp applicants for those positions that coincidentally left their previous employee on exactly the date the job offers went up ;)
- matheusmoreira 5y agoJust exclude anyone with any relation to corporations.
- krono 5y agoFilling corruption-sensitive positions is a really difficult problem. On one hand it's near impossible to trust the purity of anyone with ties to the opponent, whilst on the other it is precisely and pretty much only those people that have expertise, experience, and inside knowledge that one requires to achieve meaningful success. Also, if you were chief evil at bigco, wouldn't you keep some people without any backlink around precisely for situations like these?
- zibzab 5y agoWell, maybe that's what they think. But EU is coming with new security and AI regulations that will change things forever.
- cblconfederate 5y agoFor whom?
- schleck8 5y agoI think they've realized that privacy centrism creates an industry in which the EU can compete well, independently from the US and China. Or at least I hope so.
- indymike 5y agoIt just pours cement on industry~wide invention and replaces it with bureaucratic innovation.
- 3np 5y agoTake it far enough and it will force new innovations in the fields of p2p and distributed networks, homomorphic encryption, etc. It’s still profitable enough with data silos that this is not happening yet
- orwin 5y agoWhich invention/innovation couldn't have come out with better privacy laws? I guess Palantir? Do you have another example? Theranos?
- skohan 5y agoIt's not about what you can and can't do, it's the friction and cost associated with achieving compliance. I'm not against privacy protections, but having released digital products in Europe I can say that the cost of achieving GDPR compliance could very well make the difference between whether some companies can succeed or not.
- hownottowrite 5y agoGeneral question to EU people: do you enjoy trading data privacy for consolidation of goods/services into larger and larger corporations? After all, they are the only ones can afford such expensive relationships. Edit: This question isn’t about compliance. That’s easy. It’s about the downstream impact of “missing” data in the advertising ecosystem. Some posters have pointed out that the EU still has a viable local press and a history of supporting smaller businesses. All true and something that sets it apart from the US. Also, my original question is a admittedly cheeky, but I am interested in how smaller companies actually compete if their options for targeted marketing are limited.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoIn general I feel the EU bureaucracy doesn't understand the problems well enough, so the solutions typically tend to be annoying and expensive without mitigating the problem (and often the problem they attempt to solve sounds like it was formulated 10-15 years ago).
- retrobox 5y agoThe data privacy laws makes people think harder about the collection and usage of data. That’s definitely a good thing. What I don’t want to see is big corporations subvert that
- hownottowrite 5y agoBut how do smaller companies function in such an environment without being subsumed into larger marketplaces?
- hugi 5y ago-
- hownottowrite 5y agoLack of accurate targeting leads to lower ROI. If you’re trying to build a direct sales business that would seem to be a rather large impediment.
- throwawaymanbot 5y agoThe arrogance In The comments is incredible. The gasping fetish for “targeting” and hoarding data and any attempt to put manners on said activities by the EU as making business not worthwhile is really laughable.
- dbernick 5y agoWhat’s been hard recently in regards to EU privacy laws is the impact of SchremsII ruling. We have found multiple EU countries that interpret the guidance of “you can’t use US-owned clouds (Ie all of them)” even with client encryption and data locality enforcement for fear of FISA. That’s not privacy concerns but it piggybacks on privacy concerns via GDPR. https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/23/european_recommendations_on_schrems_ii/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/23/european_recommendati... There’s still a lot to work out for these privacy laws.
- mrweasel 5y agoWe have the same “problem” the AWS team is most helping customers migrate of AWS to on-prem (well our datacenters). Nothing new have been built on public cloud for almost a year. That’s also why I’m currently extremely negative about new SaaS solution presented on HN. We can’t use ANY of them. There’s a huge market for anyone who care to built and ship on-prem software right now. Atlassian for instance just left a massive hole in the EU market, by killing Jira and Confluence server products.
- joshuaissac 5y ago> Atlassian for instance just left a massive hole in the EU market, by killing Jira and Confluence server products. They still provide the Data Center product for those who really want to self-host, but the cost is a lot higher.
- mrweasel 5y agoI know, we use data center edition, but we have perhaps 15 customers who cannot afford the licens, but also can’t use Atlassian Cloud.
- belter 5y agoUhmm...need to dig deeper into this SchremsII rullling. Looking at the comments going on in the Register reference you included and what are the moment recommendations: https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/consultation/edpb_recommendations_202001_supplementarymeasurestransferstools_en.pdf https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/edpb/files/consultation/edpb_re... ...It would look like using GSuite or Office365 would also not be allowed. Although I am strongly in favor all possible privacy measures, the move to onsite solutions is likely to cause an decrease in privacy safety. Most data center and private companies are completely unable to match anything near the SOC controls and internal procedures of most cloud providers.
- kosma 5y agohttps://archive.md/0hb72 https://archive.md/0hb72
- gundmc 5y agoDupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28967575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28967575 which has a lot more information and is not paywalled.
- hash872 5y agoI'd like to see the reaction from libertarian types who always insist that regulation just entrenches large incumbents and makes competitors emerging tougher. (Ben Thompson of Stratechery has been banging this drum forever). If large companies actually want privacy regulation because it slows down emerging rivals- why did Google 'slow down' European privacy rules here? This seems to disprove Thompson's argument
- mountainriver 5y agoBecause it makes them so much money?
- Enginerrrd 5y agoThe narrative here seems not so hard to predict. Large incumbents may still have revenue which is negatively impacted by the regulation at the same time that the regulation raises the barrier to entry for smaller competitors. They're not mutually exclusive concepts.
- hash872 5y agoSure, but this NYT times piece that says Google specifically tried to 'slow down' European privacy rules disproves Thompson's argument that they want privacy to impede competition. It's pretty binary- if they wanted privacy regulations they wouldn't have slowed them down, if they slowed them down then clearly they don't want privacy regulations. I don't see what other conclusion could be drawn
- asvitkine 5y agoOne reason to slow it down could be that the company needed more time for implementation work to get compliant. At Google's scale, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a factor.
- Lord_Baltimore 5y agoYes, a pebble in the shoe of Google but could be a mountain in the way of smaller company.
- emodendroket 5y agoI guess maybe I'm missing the scandal, but this is why they employ people in "policy" positions, isn't it? It's rather open that they're out to alter the law in their favor. e: Another article in the front page suggests this is highlighted because it draws attention to Google's supposed pro-privacy position as a sham. I hadn't realized they had one but OK.
- xg15 5y agoI think the scandal could be in the "successfully slowed down" part. if you employ people to openly state your position on certain issues and represent your interests, that's ok - that has always been the justification for "good" lobbyism. (Though enough people point out that the ability for groups to effectively "represent their interests" differs dramatically between groups) However, the memo sounds as if they didn't simply stated their position - but also used their power to sabotage the lawmaking process itself and undercut all the usual mechanisms of democratic will formation. That's abuse of power and rightly seen as a scandal - even though google is likely far from the only one doing it.
- emodendroket 5y agoI don't understand the distinction you're making. Influencing lawmakers and regulators to change policy in your favor is exactly what lobbying is.
- xg15 5y agoIf someone influenced lawmakers by promising to pay them a lot of money if they voted in their favour, that would be different, would it?
- emodendroket 5y agoWell, legally speaking, yes, that would likely constitute bribery, which is illegal. But in your case you're saying the lobbying is scandalous because it worked, not because someone broke the law.
- gerash 5y agoA good law IMO is: provide quantifiable anonymity metrics and post it visibly on your website somewhere (like nutrition labels). For example your likelihood of being personally identified is 14%). This obviously needs a body of research to come up with these metrics and methods to verify them. Governments can fund that research. Yet right now all I've seen from EU and California regulations have been friction upon friction both for the end user and the service provider: Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). So I'd vote for repealing all these useless laws
- mindslight 5y ago> Every website I visit I need to go adjust cookie settings (enable essential and telemetry and remove targeting). > So I'd vote for repealing all these useless laws This is called malicious compliance, and you're falling right for it. The entire goal of these "settings" is to trick/tire users into accepting fake consent that has not been freely given. They are a priori illegal under most privacy laws as well as common law principles. But enforcement takes time and resources. Meanwhile companies can play dumb, straight up lie about the necessity of such dialogs, and get users to mistakenly assign blame to those pesky laws rather than the malicious companies themselves.
- gerash 5y agoI don't think so. The law can simply ban it but they know it'll break things. So they opt for the most annoying alternative. This reminds me of California prop 65 which is as useless if not more than the cookie law. You see it at every random place with the note that "this product may contain a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer or birth defects ..." People have become fully desensitized to it because it shows up at the parking garage of their work place. If it was a real deal well perhaps it should've been banned. I'd like to repeal both prop 65 and these cookie laws. Either ban something or fine the perpetrators if it's harmful or stfu /rant
- mindslight 5y ago
- DeathArrow 5y agoGoogle motto is "don't be evil".
- rvense 5y agoNope, they scrapped that years ago. And I really, really want to know exactly what happened at that meeting. Did someone sit there and say something like 'Look, I'm not saying we should "be evil"...'? How does that conversation start?
- amelius 5y agoWould you bring your kids to Disney World if its motto was "we won't kill your children"?
- d0gsg0w00f 5y agoYes
- ranguna 5y agoNot sure about that, but I'd definitely take then there if other amusement parks killed children. Better yet, I'd take them there if their motto was "don't be evil". Google's old motto wasn't "we don't kill our users", so I don't really see what you're getting at here...
- amelius 5y ago> Not sure about that, but I'd definitely take then there if other amusement parks killed children. I bet most people would just find other forms of entertainment for their children. > Google's old motto wasn't "we don't kill our users", so I don't really see what you're getting at here... My point is that corporate evil is a concept that is too abstract for most people to understand, therefore I made it more concrete, at the same time showing how nonsensical the motto really is.
- d0gsg0w00f 5y agoI always wondered this too. Would love to have been a fly on the wall in the "let's drop the 'don't be evil' motto" meeting. Maybe at the time it seemed intuitive, not representative of the _positive_ goals of the company, and just something people could point at whenever there was a minor disagreement. In hindsight they may have been able to avoid the dumpster fire that they're in now if they had kept it.
- kapad 5y agoMaybe lobbying should be illegal. But right now, it isn't.