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Good. US citizens should be, at least, disappointed that their government is so bad at protecting their privacy, that US law is so far behind the times. To tho
by leephillips 4y ago
Good. US citizens should be, at least, disappointed that their government is so bad at protecting their privacy, that US law is so far behind the times.
To those companies and people who find these EU decisions baffling or inconvenient: tough. If you had had respect for your users this would not be an issue. You would already not be spying on them.
To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking permission to spy on you. If that concerns you, close the tab.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoAmerica is the LTS branch of Democracy.
- nix23 4y agoMore like the bitrotting prototype ;)
- SkinTaco 4y ago
- feet 4y agoI think the support contract ended a while back
- hallway_monitor 4y agoPrivacy improvements will be pulled in along with independent political parties in the next kernel update.
- feet 4y agoYou guys are getting kernel updates? Our supreme court is taking us back to v0.1 from 1800
- baisq 4y agoIf a modern democracy requires an ever-growing government I think I will stick to Democracy Stable.
- mxuribe 4y agoAgreed i'm not interested in "ever-growing"...not for a distro nor a gov...but i am interested in an evolving one for the better - i.e. improve effectiveness, and reduce bloat if it adds nothing of value. ;-)
- feet 4y ago
- baisq 4y agoThinking that the situation of the majority of Europeans is the same as the propaganda that you read is a big, big mistake.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
- tclancy 4y agoHere in NH we have a group of people trying to compile their own. I never thought of them as distro hipsters, but it tracks.
- takethat 4y agoand global wealth.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agomore like the archived repository on Github
- drstewart 4y agoWhat about Australian citizens?
- Forgeties79 4y agoMy buddy is a manager at a chemical plant, and your comment reminds me of a very astute statement he made recently. “I don’t generally like unions. I’ve worked at both union and non-union plants. But anytime someone else complains about unions, I remind them that if they have a union at their plant, they earned it.“
- saas_sam 4y agoWhen union plants are shuttered in favor of non-union plants, did they earn that too? Or does this logic only apply in one direction?
- jrajav 4y agoI think it's fair to say that most unions have been established as a sole result of proportional human effort, while the same cannot be said for the success of most businesses. There are many instances where an existing imbalance in power or resource ownership is a significant factor in a business' success.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoYes? Why wouldn't they?
- Forgeties79 4y agoHis point is having a union established often means the problems were really bad.
- feet 4y agoSounds like a manager's take on unions, at least he sounds somewhat reasonable. Good on him
- Forgeties79 4y agoYeah, even as a very pro-union guy (film background) I couldn’t really take issue with that stance.
- aliasxneo 4y ago> To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking permission to spy on you. If that concerns you, close the tab. There was a recent ACM article on this. They found there was a large number of sites that don't actually ask permission for anything, they are simply informing you of the spying. Not surprisingly, the ones that did allow modifying cookies were all setup in a predatory fashion which discouraged the disabling of tracking. The whole system is broke at the moment.
- Swenrekcah 4y agoIt’s because they’re allowed to use the word “cookies” for it. If they were required to use specific wording, like for instance “injecting surveillance artefacts” people would probably care a bit more.
- gattilorenz 4y agoHardly. It's like the requests for administrative rights in Windows Vista, or the installers with many browser addon bars... Nice idea in theory, but if it's too frequent the awareness will, at some point, just disappear.
- aliasxneo 4y agoNot necessarily. The team that wrote the ACM article did a small user-test using various versions of the "disable cookie" banner. In all cases they concluded that the user was indeed aware of the negative impact of cookies, however, the need to just "get back to the content" often overruled that distaste. Not surprisingly, the most effective banner they found was the one which had a single "disable all cookies" button. It was something like an 80% hit rate. So, people care, but not enough to dig into another prompt to uncheck a bunch of boxes. This is what the ACM writers referred to as predatory (abusing human nature).
- googlryas 4y agoPragmatically, to what extent do you believe the European laws have protected Europeans above and beyond how American laws have protected Americans? Basically, what class of badness are Americans subjected to due to behind-the-times data protection laws, that Europeans are protected from?
- ApolloFortyNine 4y agoIt's possible for a company, which is seemingly providing you a service since you visited the site, to make money off a targeted ad in exchange for free video streaming/content/entertainment. The whole thing has always seemed overblown to me. Websites make much more money off targeted ads, allowing them to do things like allow anyone to upload a video of any length and quality for free. And view other videos people upload. In most cases it seemed to me like a fair trade to make. Yet as people point out all the time, technically a website isn't allowed to deny access to someone who refuses targeted ads (through the cookie pop-up), so they're essentially being forced to provide that user content at a loss. Untargeted ads are often worth 90% less or more than their targeted equivalent. Privacy privacy privacy though, as if someone at Google is manually looking through your history laughing at you.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoGive me the option to pay more if it lets me get more privacy. Otherwise I keep using fake accounts, VPN, antifingerprinting methods, ad blockers, etc.
- trelane 4y agoSome places do. Many German news sites have a "Pur" version you can subscribe to and not get ads.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nerdponx 4y ago> Privacy privacy privacy though, as if someone at Google is manually looking through your history laughing at you. Part of the problem is that it seems more or less impossible to get large companies to keep their data secure. In fact Google stands out as maybe the only big tech company that has not been involved in a major breach. Notwithstanding the legal and political issues that arise when (not if, but when) this data gets into the hands of law enforcement agencies. And yes, there have been individual instances of employees misusing sensitive user data. Privacy is security. Generally I agree that content providers should be allowed to make money somehow, but this way has proven to be untenable and something needs to change.
- mattmcknight 4y ago> To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking permission to spy on you. Or you know...count how many unique visitors they have and how to make the site more useful. Do you avoid using cookies on this site but still manage to log in?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Kovah 4y agoCookies needed to properly provide user authentication, i.e. user session identification, are counted as "technical necessary" cookies and do not need a cookie banner. You only need to ask for cookie consent, if you track visitors with third-party services. And, to counter your unique visitors claim: you don't need cookies, or any third party service, for that. Everything can be done locally without disrespecting user privacy.
- leephillips 4y agoExactly. HN doesn’t need a cookie banner because they’re not spying on their users. No barrier to keeping track of sessions.
- mattmcknight 4y ago> and, to counter your unique visitors claim: you don't need cookies, or any third party service, for that. Everything can be done locally without disrespecting user privacy. how do track unique visitors without cookies, and how is that way less "disrespecting" of user privacy than a cookie?
- Kovah 4y agoIP and User Agent, for example. Goaccess[1], a tool to generate statistics from webserver logs, is capable of calculating unique users. Calculating unique views entirely on your own server without any of that data leaving it, is way more privacy friendly than urging your users into accepting cookies so that Google can harvest their data and send it to their US servers. I wrote "disrespecting" because using GA is exactly this for me. Website owners give a f** about your user privacy just to save them some work, without caring about any of your users' data. [1]: https://goaccess.io https://goaccess.io
- encoderer 4y agoWell I’m not an expert but I think the main issue is that American citizens have protections that non-Americans do not. The government cannot spy on Americans without a court order.
- darknavi 4y agoThe word "spy" is so loose these days. I'd consider the vast swaths of metadata other companies compile on me "spying" to an extent.
- skrtskrt 4y ago> The government cannot spy on Americans without a court order. Have I got news for you. Specifically at least 100 years of news.
- SahAssar 4y agoUnless they have an intelligence sharing agreement with a nation that happens to pick up signals from americans, from who they can request that data. And maybe there exists a network to share the raw data, wouldn't that be convenient? Or you could have a secret court system (FISA) to bypass most of the protections normally granted by due process?
- tick_tock_tick 4y agoIf I thought the EU was doing this to protect privacy I'd be all for it. They really don't give a fuck as seen by ever bit of legislation they are pushing for. Yes I also do understand that the EU in general view privacy from the government as illegal rather then a right.
- SahAssar 4y agoThe EU has both enacted the most promising and some of the most backwards, stupid and regressive privacy laws. I'm guessing that it depends on what representative guides it and forms it through the various processes, and what the courts do with it. Overall I think they have moved the needle towards more privacy. > Yes I also do understand that the EU in general view privacy from the government as illegal rather then a right. That is absolutely not true, at least not by enough people for anyone to be able to make that sort of blanket statement. I'd also wonder what reasons you have for thinking that, it seems to me like all of the 5-eyes used each other to spy on themselves (besides all of the things done by normal police, various levels of federal police, etc.)
- scarface74 4y agoYes “we care about privacy. But we also want a back door to all encrypted communications”. https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/05/11/eu-plans-to-require-backdoor-to-encrypted-messages-for-child-protection https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/05/11/eu-plans-to-requi...
- judge2020 4y ago> You would already not be spying on them. Can you point me to the part of the ban that says it's about protecting users from "spying in general" and not "protecting users from spying by US companies instead of EU companies that EU member states can obtain PII from at any time"?
- mhitza 4y ago> "protecting users from spying by US companies instead of EU companies that EU member states can obtain PII from at any time" I want to quantify this quote. Each EU country can spy on its citizens to similar extent as 3 letter agencies from the US, but in a less analytical/big meta data way (part of it being the US brain draining EU countries for those working in tech). However, if EU country A wants to have access to its citizens user date on website X located in EU country B, is not an easy process; involving a strict judicial system between those countries.
- leephillips 4y agoI think your logic may be a bit muddled, or I misunderstand your question (but, if I take it literally, my answer would be “no”.) Not spying ⇒ not using GA ⇒ this ruling moot.
- whimsicalism 4y agoAn equivalent regulation to the one banning GA in the US would not ban GA because the data centers are in the US.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoNo one is asking for exactly the same law, just the same results: more privacy.
- dmix 4y ago> To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking permission to spy on you. If that concerns you, close the tab. I'd love to see how often people do anything besides click okay anyway (I'd be very surprised if it wasn't 99%+).
- lolinder 4y agoUnless there is a very simple "reject" button, I click okay. Between Firefox's native protections, DNS-level blocking and uBlock, I have a lot more confidence in my own protections than I do in their honesty, and it's not worth it to me to uncheck a bunch of boxes.
- dmix 4y agoYeah clicking anything but okay or reject all (which I rarely ever come across) is usually a maze of options no one has time for except some tiny dedicated minority.
- 29083011397778 4y agoReally? I could have sworn the EU regulation requires dropping all non-essential cookies in 2 clicks or less - and that tracks with nearly every site I interact with that has a cookie banner.
- nerdponx 4y agoSometimes it's easier on mobile to just accept all the garbage cookies and then clear my cookies & site data after I'm done with the page. But they are probably fingerprinting my phone anyway through other means.
- tensor 4y agoIf you feel this way I hope you do research before visiting any website at all, because you might accidentally connect to a server in the US and your IP address will be in the TCIP stack of that server and probably the logs too. US servers that are intended to serve US customers have no obligations to you.
- NaturalPhallacy 4y agoI'm not disappointed I'm infuriated. Because the US uses technology companies to get around the 4th amendment all the time: https://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/government_giving_att_others_secret_immunity_from_wiretap_laws/ https://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/government_giving_att_other... The US isn't "behind" it simply has no intention of moving in that direction, despite the 4th amendment making it really clear they're not allowed: >The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.