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This article is conflating pushes to control and censor data with pushes to provide privacy rights. Those are very different things that just happen, because t

This article is conflating pushes to control and censor data with pushes to provide privacy rights. Those are very different things that just happen, because they are enacted along nation boundaries, to both create these borders. Providing privacy rights is very much not a "nation accelerating efforts to control data", and shame on the NYT for muddling this.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
If a government can create privacy directives (which is not the same as a privacy right; rights cannot be legislated), they can legislate prior restraint at a level way worse than the DMCA.
- throwoutway 4y ago
  “rights cannot be legislated” How so?
  - leveraction 4y ago
    The basic idea is that rights are given by God, as opposed to privileges granted by the legislator. A legislator may grant or revoke privileges at any time. A legislator may not lawfully take away a right which it did not grant in the first place. At least that is the theory. In real life, the water gets pretty muddy. This is a very US perspective of course.
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      The can't be created, but legislation can certainly protect rights.
      - User23 4y ago
        Privileges and immunities are the analog to rights that legislation can create.
    - hyperdimension 4y ago
      It's a tangent, but you can also subdivide rights into two categories: positive and negative freedoms. Positive freedom is a right to do something. (e.g. free speech) Negative freedom is a right to be free of something (e.g. violence) Actually, it just occurred to me that free speech could be categorized as both: positive freedom to engage in speech and negative freedom to be free of government-based silence of that speech. Interesting. Edit: I guess this is saying the same thing as 'User23 with so many words; "privileges and immunities" are probably better terms to use.
    - jltsiren 4y ago
      That's a prescriptive view of what the rights should be. According to a more descriptive view, rights are just social constructs with an effective enforcement mechanism. That mechanism is often regulated by laws, which means the legislator can effectively create new rights and revoke old ones. My pet hypothesis is that the US perspective is prescriptive, because the ability of the state to enforce the rights has not been seriously compromised in a long time. The rest of the world is more familiar with the idea that the guy with a bigger gun may one day show up and take your rights away.
      - actionablefiber 4y ago
        The term is certainly ambiguous - I don't think anyone would argue that the right to legal counsel is 'God-given' and people arguing for universal single-payer healthcare aren't saying that the right to access a national healthcare system is an innate human freedom. And many things we call 'rights', like voting or owning a gun, can be revoked by the government under certain conditions. In practice in the U.S. we pretty much call things 'rights' any time we believe that people should have them by default.
- eqvinox 4y ago
  I don't understand your comment. I think you're trying to argue something along the lines of law vs. policy, but what are you actually arguing?
dirtyid 4y ago
Ultimately this is about many nations pursuing "data sovereignty" in lieu of having ability to completely wrestle domestic platform supremacy from Silicon Valley / US. Whether nations choose to pursue privacy/control is matter of their governing interests. And sometimes they're not even mutually exclusive, i.e. PRC data regulations calibrated to increase privacy from companies but not government. But primarily it's national security considerations like no-US servers / exporting data directly to NSA pipelines.
EnKopVand 4y ago
In the public sector of Denmark we suddenly had to view the risk factor of America not remaining a safe harbour for data in the wake of the 2016 election. I’d like to point out by now that what I’m saying isn’t that we were seriously considering the US falling from democracy the way this may sound. Instead think of it along the lines of very long term planning in a very risk averse sector where you plan a back up for the back up of the back up. The process ended up raising some political concerns that I imagine were also raised by similar processes all over Europe in that what happens if we can no longer trust the American tech platforms with our data? I think there are two sides to this, as you yourself point out, but I also think the concern over data sovereignty is a valid one. Just imagine what would have happened if Russia had relied as heavy on Azure and AWS as the Danish public sector. Now I’m not suggesting that we in Denmark are going to elect a dictator and invade Sweden, but as far as national sovereignty goes, you sort of have to consider a world where we would do something that insane. Then there is the issue of the wider internet moving from a fun playground for geeks to becoming as much a part of our daily lives as crossing the street. Most countries have laws prohibiting you from crossing the street in your birthday suit, even very liberal countries like Denmark don’t allow that. It would be admirable, but perhaps a bit naive, to think the internet would not be affected by legalisation as it’s importance and influence grew. I think the fact that remains as free as it is, is mainly because the current western leadership is quite old. I don’t expect the coming generations of politicians to be as lenient toward the advertising industry that the previous ones have been. What the EU has done and is doing so far is only the beginning, we will se far more legislation on our rights in the future and I wouldn’t expect major advertising companies like Google and Facebook to have much of a future unless they adapt quicker than they are currently doing. With legislation, however, comes complexity and sometimes side effects as you point out. We have a filter to guard against piracy and property rights in Denmark. As so many other countries, and while it was original intended to block the pirate bay, child protection NGOs lobbied and eventually got sites containing child pornography included in the filter. I’m in no way advocating that this was wrong, but maybe it should have been two desperate filters as stealing Independence Day and Coyote Ugly is hardly the same crime as abusing children. Because what followed was that other NGOs and political interest groups added more and more things to the filter. Leaving it a mixed box of things, most of which should very likely be banned, but I think you sort of get my point in that nobody really knows what can or cannot be added to it because it quickly stopped being a “anti-pirate” or “anti-child-abuse” filter and became a “anything the political majority agrees is bad filter”. Or a very good example of exactly what happens when legislators get involved. There are side-effects, but I don’t think you should fault the NYT for also mixing up things in something that is really far more complex, than what I have outlined here. I think data sovereignty, privacy and censorship in general are interesting subjects that I hope established media will take more of an interesting so that we can have a proper public discourse about it that involves non-techies and non-technocrats.
vineyardmike 4y ago
What if it’s both? What if it is muddled? China has famously been aggressive at controlling data. We all know this and no one thinks it’s about privacy. But the EU has been pushing to on-shore their citizens data. They have been pushing it for privacy AND pushing it as a national security issue. The EU has strong privacy laws, but they also have aggressive tech laws generally. Cambridge Analytica proved that privacy could be security and the whole drama around FB and the elections made nations weary of leaving the US laws to manage platforms. Everyone wants more privacy - it’s the sugar to the anti-us tech pill. On-shoring data or requiring local companies own the data (and CX) will help local industries at the expense of Silicon Valley bottom lines. Oh and local companies can be controlled by local government, which makes censorship much easier, a convenient win for power grabbing governments. TLDR Privacy is one of digital “think of the children” phrases that lets governments power grab.
- akie 4y ago
  I like privacy. And I distrust Facebook and other big tech companies. I'm generally very happy that our democratically elected governments makes an effort to protect the citizens that elected it. I trust the government more than I trust the likes of Facebook, so I really don't see the issue here.
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    I don’t. Governments- even the best ones- have enslaved, killed, stolen from, lied to, and tortured millions of people. If you get on the wrong side of a government they’ll lock you in a metal cage for the rest of your life. Facebook, on the other hand, has sold some of my advertising data, and if I piss off Facebook I won’t be able to share memes on a website. There is hardly a comparison.
    - deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
      There’s hardly a point to drawing lines between public and private in corporate state capitalism. The boundaries are becoming less important every day. It’s not like we’ve been at war because citizens were demanding it.

Dracophoenix 4y ago

If a government can create privacy directives (which is not the same as a privacy right; rights cannot be legislated), they can legislate prior restraint at a level way worse than the DMCA.

throwoutway 4y ago
“rights cannot be legislated” How so?
- leveraction 4y ago
  The basic idea is that rights are given by God, as opposed to privileges granted by the legislator. A legislator may grant or revoke privileges at any time. A legislator may not lawfully take away a right which it did not grant in the first place. At least that is the theory. In real life, the water gets pretty muddy. This is a very US perspective of course.
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    The can't be created, but legislation can certainly protect rights.
    - User23 4y ago
      Privileges and immunities are the analog to rights that legislation can create.
  - hyperdimension 4y ago
    It's a tangent, but you can also subdivide rights into two categories: positive and negative freedoms. Positive freedom is a right to do something. (e.g. free speech) Negative freedom is a right to be free of something (e.g. violence) Actually, it just occurred to me that free speech could be categorized as both: positive freedom to engage in speech and negative freedom to be free of government-based silence of that speech. Interesting. Edit: I guess this is saying the same thing as 'User23 with so many words; "privileges and immunities" are probably better terms to use.
  - jltsiren 4y ago
    That's a prescriptive view of what the rights should be. According to a more descriptive view, rights are just social constructs with an effective enforcement mechanism. That mechanism is often regulated by laws, which means the legislator can effectively create new rights and revoke old ones. My pet hypothesis is that the US perspective is prescriptive, because the ability of the state to enforce the rights has not been seriously compromised in a long time. The rest of the world is more familiar with the idea that the guy with a bigger gun may one day show up and take your rights away.
    - actionablefiber 4y ago
      The term is certainly ambiguous - I don't think anyone would argue that the right to legal counsel is 'God-given' and people arguing for universal single-payer healthcare aren't saying that the right to access a national healthcare system is an innate human freedom. And many things we call 'rights', like voting or owning a gun, can be revoked by the government under certain conditions. In practice in the U.S. we pretty much call things 'rights' any time we believe that people should have them by default.
eqvinox 4y ago
I don't understand your comment. I think you're trying to argue something along the lines of law vs. policy, but what are you actually arguing?

dirtyid 4y ago

Ultimately this is about many nations pursuing "data sovereignty" in lieu of having ability to completely wrestle domestic platform supremacy from Silicon Valley / US. Whether nations choose to pursue privacy/control is matter of their governing interests. And sometimes they're not even mutually exclusive, i.e. PRC data regulations calibrated to increase privacy from companies but not government. But primarily it's national security considerations like no-US servers / exporting data directly to NSA pipelines.

EnKopVand 4y ago

In the public sector of Denmark we suddenly had to view the risk factor of America not remaining a safe harbour for data in the wake of the 2016 election. I’d like to point out by now that what I’m saying isn’t that we were seriously considering the US falling from democracy the way this may sound. Instead think of it along the lines of very long term planning in a very risk averse sector where you plan a back up for the back up of the back up. The process ended up raising some political concerns that I imagine were also raised by similar processes all over Europe in that what happens if we can no longer trust the American tech platforms with our data? I think there are two sides to this, as you yourself point out, but I also think the concern over data sovereignty is a valid one. Just imagine what would have happened if Russia had relied as heavy on Azure and AWS as the Danish public sector. Now I’m not suggesting that we in Denmark are going to elect a dictator and invade Sweden, but as far as national sovereignty goes, you sort of have to consider a world where we would do something that insane. Then there is the issue of the wider internet moving from a fun playground for geeks to becoming as much a part of our daily lives as crossing the street. Most countries have laws prohibiting you from crossing the street in your birthday suit, even very liberal countries like Denmark don’t allow that. It would be admirable, but perhaps a bit naive, to think the internet would not be affected by legalisation as it’s importance and influence grew. I think the fact that remains as free as it is, is mainly because the current western leadership is quite old. I don’t expect the coming generations of politicians to be as lenient toward the advertising industry that the previous ones have been. What the EU has done and is doing so far is only the beginning, we will se far more legislation on our rights in the future and I wouldn’t expect major advertising companies like Google and Facebook to have much of a future unless they adapt quicker than they are currently doing. With legislation, however, comes complexity and sometimes side effects as you point out. We have a filter to guard against piracy and property rights in Denmark. As so many other countries, and while it was original intended to block the pirate bay, child protection NGOs lobbied and eventually got sites containing child pornography included in the filter. I’m in no way advocating that this was wrong, but maybe it should have been two desperate filters as stealing Independence Day and Coyote Ugly is hardly the same crime as abusing children. Because what followed was that other NGOs and political interest groups added more and more things to the filter. Leaving it a mixed box of things, most of which should very likely be banned, but I think you sort of get my point in that nobody really knows what can or cannot be added to it because it quickly stopped being a “anti-pirate” or “anti-child-abuse” filter and became a “anything the political majority agrees is bad filter”. Or a very good example of exactly what happens when legislators get involved. There are side-effects, but I don’t think you should fault the NYT for also mixing up things in something that is really far more complex, than what I have outlined here. I think data sovereignty, privacy and censorship in general are interesting subjects that I hope established media will take more of an interesting so that we can have a proper public discourse about it that involves non-techies and non-technocrats.

vineyardmike 4y ago

What if it’s both? What if it is muddled? China has famously been aggressive at controlling data. We all know this and no one thinks it’s about privacy. But the EU has been pushing to on-shore their citizens data. They have been pushing it for privacy AND pushing it as a national security issue. The EU has strong privacy laws, but they also have aggressive tech laws generally. Cambridge Analytica proved that privacy could be security and the whole drama around FB and the elections made nations weary of leaving the US laws to manage platforms. Everyone wants more privacy - it’s the sugar to the anti-us tech pill. On-shoring data or requiring local companies own the data (and CX) will help local industries at the expense of Silicon Valley bottom lines. Oh and local companies can be controlled by local government, which makes censorship much easier, a convenient win for power grabbing governments. TLDR Privacy is one of digital “think of the children” phrases that lets governments power grab.

akie 4y ago
I like privacy. And I distrust Facebook and other big tech companies. I'm generally very happy that our democratically elected governments makes an effort to protect the citizens that elected it. I trust the government more than I trust the likes of Facebook, so I really don't see the issue here.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  I don’t. Governments- even the best ones- have enslaved, killed, stolen from, lied to, and tortured millions of people. If you get on the wrong side of a government they’ll lock you in a metal cage for the rest of your life. Facebook, on the other hand, has sold some of my advertising data, and if I piss off Facebook I won’t be able to share memes on a website. There is hardly a comparison.
  - deepsquirrelnet 4y ago
    There’s hardly a point to drawing lines between public and private in corporate state capitalism. The boundaries are becoming less important every day. It’s not like we’ve been at war because citizens were demanding it.