11 ms·

The lower court ordered the bank to spell the name correctly. The court of appeal upheld this judgement. Source (Dutch): https://www.gegevensbeschermingsautori

by Luc 5y ago

The lower court ordered the bank to spell the name correctly. The court of appeal upheld this judgement. Source (Dutch): https://www.gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit.be/publications/arrest-van-9-oktober-2019-van-het-marktenhof.pdf https://www.gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit.be/publications/a... This tweet says it was ING Bank: https://twitter.com/simonhania/status/1270812210584043521 https://twitter.com/simonhania/status/1270812210584043521

Deukhoofd 5y ago
> De geschillenkamer van de GBA heeft deze uitleg als niet afdoende aangezien. Dat een bankinstelling anno 2018 niet bij machte zou zijn om een naam van een klant correct te schrijven onder uitleg dat zij nog gebruik maakt van een informaticasysteem van 1995, werd niet afdoende beschouwd. Ouch. Basically "That you're not able to write a customers name correctly in 2018 because you use a system from 1995 is not an excuse".
- jerf 5y ago
  The court does have a point in this case. There's a huge number of systems in the world that existed in some form in 1995 and were correctly handling names in 2018. It's not like that's some sort of weird case that nobody else has encountered.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    Indeed: Iso 8859-1: 1985 Unicode: 1991 Utf-8: 1992 There is even IBM277 for an ebcdic version.
- toyg 5y ago
  That's absolutely fair. The law is the law, and GDPR has been adopted for 5 years at this point (enforced for 3), there has been ample time to replace noncompliant systems. If a car manufacturer gave you a new car without seatbelts "because the production chain was built in 1995", you would obviously sue them.
  - trasz 5y ago
    In 1995 EBCDIC, just like mainframes in general, were already quite obsolete.
    - cgrealy 5y ago
      Depends on what you mean by “obsolete”. Were they superseded by more modern solutions? Absolutely. Were they nonfunctional? Hell no. I worked on several systems in the early 2000s that still had a big old mainframe at the back end. I’m pretty sure most airlines and banks still run them.
      - bcrl 5y ago
        A previous employer had to implement EBCDIC support to interoperate with mainframes just 5 or 6 years ago. Yes, banks are still adding features and new code that runs on their mainframes. IBM still seems to be cranking out new generations of mainframes every few years, so somebody must be paying for this.
  - akersten 5y ago
    > ample time to replace noncompliant systems. I think the point here is this is completely out of left field as far as what anyone has insisted would be non-compliant with GDPR... If you had done a compliance audit the day GDPR passed, I highly doubt this shortcoming would have even made the footnotes. "Overly broad and interpretable law with rabid defenders is stretched to painful limits just as critics predicted" is the real story.
    - toyg 5y ago
      When two courts decide in the same way at the first chance, the interpretation is hardly stretched or painful. To me the story with GDPR has consistently looked like "IT companies unable and/or unwilling to comply with (or even read) laws when they feel they go against their established practices, no matter how bad such practices might be".
qiqitori 5y ago
Great, stupid lawsuits, exactly what the world needs. The bank's lawyers took the wrong approach, IMO. The law (as quoted in the article) says: > The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller without undue delay the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning him or her. This doesn't have that much to do with how a certain name is displayed anywhere. Can I get an airline to change their systems if they abbreviated my name on my boarding ticket? Yeah, I don't think so. The airline could say "well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > This doesn't have that much to do with how a certain name is displayed anywhere. Indeed it doesn't, so no thanks to you for muddling the issue by mixing that in. > Can I get an airline to change their systems if they abbreviated my name on my boarding ticket? Well, since they're the ones insisting that it look exactly like on your ID, if it looks different because they mangled it and then they don't let you board because of their own cock-up, then I'd imagine even you would be slightly miffed...? So yes, you should be able to expect them to fix their systems so that doesn't happen, shouldn't you? > The airline could say "well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank. No they can't, because they don't: The point here was that this wasn't just some printing or other display function, but how the name was stored; as far as this bank was concerned, this customer's name was something it actually wasn't. How one can claim this isn't in contravention of a law that states personally identifying data stored about people should be correct is frankly incomprehensible; our names are among the most personal things about us and our main identifyer. All in all, your whole screed comes off as yet another piece of typical reflexive-but-unreflected pro-corporate (usually American) Libertarian dri^H^H^H propaganda.
- toyg 5y ago
  > well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank. I expect this is how they will eventually solve the issue - the customer-visible parts will be insulated from the old system with stuff that can handle Unicode. Chances are they currently don't have such insulation, producing documents with the wrong names, hence the complaint (bank statements are often used as proof of ID). Btw this is not a stupid law. Accents are important parts of languages, the tech to handle them has been around for decades now, there is no excuse for willful illiteracy.

by Luc 5y ago

Deukhoofd 5y ago

> De geschillenkamer van de GBA heeft deze uitleg als niet afdoende aangezien. Dat een bankinstelling anno 2018 niet bij machte zou zijn om een naam van een klant correct te schrijven onder uitleg dat zij nog gebruik maakt van een informaticasysteem van 1995, werd niet afdoende beschouwd. Ouch. Basically "That you're not able to write a customers name correctly in 2018 because you use a system from 1995 is not an excuse".

jerf 5y ago
The court does have a point in this case. There's a huge number of systems in the world that existed in some form in 1995 and were correctly handling names in 2018. It's not like that's some sort of weird case that nobody else has encountered.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Indeed: Iso 8859-1: 1985 Unicode: 1991 Utf-8: 1992 There is even IBM277 for an ebcdic version.
toyg 5y ago
That's absolutely fair. The law is the law, and GDPR has been adopted for 5 years at this point (enforced for 3), there has been ample time to replace noncompliant systems. If a car manufacturer gave you a new car without seatbelts "because the production chain was built in 1995", you would obviously sue them.
- trasz 5y ago
  In 1995 EBCDIC, just like mainframes in general, were already quite obsolete.
  - cgrealy 5y ago
    Depends on what you mean by “obsolete”. Were they superseded by more modern solutions? Absolutely. Were they nonfunctional? Hell no. I worked on several systems in the early 2000s that still had a big old mainframe at the back end. I’m pretty sure most airlines and banks still run them.
    - bcrl 5y ago
      A previous employer had to implement EBCDIC support to interoperate with mainframes just 5 or 6 years ago. Yes, banks are still adding features and new code that runs on their mainframes. IBM still seems to be cranking out new generations of mainframes every few years, so somebody must be paying for this.
- akersten 5y ago
  > ample time to replace noncompliant systems. I think the point here is this is completely out of left field as far as what anyone has insisted would be non-compliant with GDPR... If you had done a compliance audit the day GDPR passed, I highly doubt this shortcoming would have even made the footnotes. "Overly broad and interpretable law with rabid defenders is stretched to painful limits just as critics predicted" is the real story.
  - toyg 5y ago
    When two courts decide in the same way at the first chance, the interpretation is hardly stretched or painful. To me the story with GDPR has consistently looked like "IT companies unable and/or unwilling to comply with (or even read) laws when they feel they go against their established practices, no matter how bad such practices might be".

qiqitori 5y ago

Great, stupid lawsuits, exactly what the world needs. The bank's lawyers took the wrong approach, IMO. The law (as quoted in the article) says: > The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller without undue delay the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning him or her. This doesn't have that much to do with how a certain name is displayed anywhere. Can I get an airline to change their systems if they abbreviated my name on my boarding ticket? Yeah, I don't think so. The airline could say "well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank.

CRConrad 5y ago
> This doesn't have that much to do with how a certain name is displayed anywhere. Indeed it doesn't, so no thanks to you for muddling the issue by mixing that in. > Can I get an airline to change their systems if they abbreviated my name on my boarding ticket? Well, since they're the ones insisting that it look exactly like on your ID, if it looks different because they mangled it and then they don't let you board because of their own cock-up, then I'd imagine even you would be slightly miffed...? So yes, you should be able to expect them to fix their systems so that doesn't happen, shouldn't you? > The airline could say "well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank. No they can't, because they don't: The point here was that this wasn't just some printing or other display function, but how the name was stored; as far as this bank was concerned, this customer's name was something it actually wasn't. How one can claim this isn't in contravention of a law that states personally identifying data stored about people should be correct is frankly incomprehensible; our names are among the most personal things about us and our main identifyer. All in all, your whole screed comes off as yet another piece of typical reflexive-but-unreflected pro-corporate (usually American) Libertarian dri^H^H^H propaganda.
toyg 5y ago
> well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank. I expect this is how they will eventually solve the issue - the customer-visible parts will be insulated from the old system with stuff that can handle Unicode. Chances are they currently don't have such insulation, producing documents with the wrong names, hence the complaint (bank statements are often used as proof of ID). Btw this is not a stupid law. Accents are important parts of languages, the tech to handle them has been around for decades now, there is no excuse for willful illiteracy.