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The EU hasn’t shaken off their roots in monarchy. Using the power of the state to go after a single private entity since they have a blood feud with said entity

The EU hasn’t shaken off their roots in monarchy. Using the power of the state to go after a single private entity since they have a blood feud with said entity and are now finding all sorts of excuses to hit them economically. I’ve been following the cases with regard to privacy in the EU and it’s a complete joke. You have all these onerous rules against any web technology making it near impossible for startups to function without an army of lawyers. Think I’m exaggerating? Look up the provisions under GDPR for any business, big or small, to set up a website and then process a single user request for their data even without sign in. The UK is sick and tired of this and has recently begun moving to ignore these onerous rules. All power to them.

tgv 4y ago
You may be looking at this through a very narrow, heavily politicized lens. First: GDPR is a compromise, so it's a bit uneven. That's partly due to lobbying by google and friends. Second, privacy very much needs protection. Even if you are perfectly fine giving up your privacy, other people aren't. Third: you can actually process user requests. Depending on how you do it, you don't even have to show a banner. Is that really too intrusive?
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago
  I mean, before accusing someone of looking at this politically, please read the comment fully. You’re taking pains to explain why GDPR is a compromise? Why? If it’s bad law, it’s bad law. Nothing you said invalidates the assertions I’ve made. Unless you’ve directly experienced the onerous system of regulations in places like Germany, I’d urge you to do more research before the armchair dismissal.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    > If it’s bad law, it’s bad law. Presumably it's your opinion that it's a bad law. The majority of Europeans think it's a good law - possibly the best regulation the EU has ever promulgated.
    - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
      Bad law for the reasons above. Ie, onerous toward regular businesses Ie, used to greatly expand bureaucracy and overhead Ie, used by unelected bureaucrats to wage battles of personal vendetta against specific companies instead of doing what laws do, which is set unambiguous standards for all
      - denton-scratch 4y ago
        In fact it's not at all onerous, unless you are determined to violate it's provisions. If your business doesn't depend on privacy violations, then the "bureaucracy" that GDPR calls for is trivially easy to implement. There are no licences, and no registration requirements. Provided you aren't playing fast and loose with the personal data of Europeans, you're fine. There's no "personal vendettas" going on; can you substantiate that allegation at all? The GDPR applies to everyone equally. And unlike some laws, it's fairly easy to read; it's meant to be understood. Don't bother reading some biased summary of the Regulation; read the GDPR itself. That's the best guidance on the intent, and the best guidance on how to comply. /me: former data protection officer at a web development outfit.
        DisjointedHunt 4y ago
        "iTs nOt aT aLl oNeRoUs" said the DPO. lol, what a clown. So all these companies scrambling to hire lawyers to document every single aspect of the "legal basis" or whatever nonsense is in the language are just crazy in your books? And that's just ONE sub clause of a hundred or so. The overhead is both in the arbitrary nature of the requirements (Good Laws are objective, not subjective) and the sheer lack of consistency in the enforcement is ridiculous for any European business. Consider the adequacy clause that's taken decades to litigate and is still fucking criminal as of this writing. Answer this simple question: "Can I, as a small business use AWS services that may or may not have a compute instance located in the EU?". You know pretty well what the answer is there, so, basically every small business in the EU is in violation right now. And it's bureaucratic assholery that keeps this deliberately inconsistent so they can choose to enforce it at any point of their choosing (read, a negative PR cycle) - Monarchy, inconsistency, arbitrary and ambiguous rulemaking that has tossed out the interests of businesses. The vendetta against Google is well documented and it's insulting for you to even say otherwise. Look at the most recent example of the CNIL (Frances privacy enforcement body, a part of the executive) choosing arbitrary standards and refusing to even elaborate on concrete standards for recommended analytics solutions that businesses may use. They have gone full psycho with not even wanting to give Google the opportunity to come into compliance with standards that they choose not to reveal and instead openly ask industry to turn Google Analytics off. Its ridiculous and bad for their own economies.
kcartlidge 4y ago
> The EU hasn’t shaken off their roots in monarchy. I know, right. I mean obviously the world's most famous royal family (our British one) isn't really a monarchy so that doesn't count. And they certainly don't get previews and vetos on our laws, or given hundreds of millions from the licence fees for offshore wind farms, or own a notable percentage of the land. As for GDPR, compliance is pretty straightforward provided you aren't being shady to begin with. And the new UK proposals are much worse and if they go through as they stand will be a nightmare for anyone serving UK visitors.
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago
  Do you have a point, asshole? There's more in that comment above than the bait you took.
  - kcartlidge 4y ago
    You are right that my point wasn't clear and I apologise for that. Your comment started by saying that the EU (as a negative) has not shaken off monarchy and ended with a contrast with the UK (a positive comparison). My point was that the UK (I am British) is even more steeped in monarchy/tradition so that can't be the cause. Then I addressed your complaints in the middle paragraph about the GDPR by pointing out that compliance is reasonably simple for sites already having good behaviour. And finally as you started with the EU and ended with the UK I pointed out that the new UK proposals are more onerous than the GDPR ones (thanks to the verification requirement). You're free to disagree, and again I apologise for not being clear enough, but those were my points.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> The UK is sick and tired of this and has recently begun moving to ignore these onerous rules. All power to them. I don't think so; the UK passed the Data Protection Act 2018 just 4 years ago, to bring GDPR into UK law. That is: the DPA is normal statute legislation, unlike the GDPR itself, which is a bureaucrat-made regulation. The DPA was passed by both houses of Parliament. So what are these mysterious moves to ignore the law? The only such moves I'm aware of are some plans to remove the European Court of Human Rights from UK law (ain't gonna happen - the ECHR is written into the Good Friday Agreement), and the UK's decision to ignore the decision of the ICJ concerning the Chagos Islands.
- DisjointedHunt 4y ago
  Are you. . . For real in this thread? Can you please stop commenting about things you seem to have zero context in and zero interest in following even casually? https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/368309/uk-data-reform-bill-waters-down-gdpr https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/3...
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Instead of resorting to abuse and name-calling, let's hear your proposal for the kind of data-protection legislation you favour. Surely you're not advocating the ideas of the terminally-dim Nadine Dorries? The simple fact is that if you allow unrestricted export of personal data from Europe to the USA, then European law can no longer control what use is made of that data, because the US courts won't enforce European restrictions. Are you advocating for Europeans to submit to the wild-west regime in the USA? By the way, if you don't care to read my posts, you can always just not read them; they are all tagged with my handle at the top.
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  >I don't think so; the UK passed the Data Protection Act 2018 just 4 years ago, to bring GDPR into UK law. This is wrong. The Data Protection Act did not bring the GDPR in to UK law, GDPR became part of UK law as soon as it was passed because it's an EU regulation, and regulations have direct effect in all member states (which at the time it was passed included the UK). The GDPR then became "retained EU law" by virtue of Section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and was then modified (turning it in to the UK GDPR) by the The Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. These regulations also amended the Data Protection Act, fwiw.

tgv 4y ago

You may be looking at this through a very narrow, heavily politicized lens. First: GDPR is a compromise, so it's a bit uneven. That's partly due to lobbying by google and friends. Second, privacy very much needs protection. Even if you are perfectly fine giving up your privacy, other people aren't. Third: you can actually process user requests. Depending on how you do it, you don't even have to show a banner. Is that really too intrusive?

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
I mean, before accusing someone of looking at this politically, please read the comment fully. You’re taking pains to explain why GDPR is a compromise? Why? If it’s bad law, it’s bad law. Nothing you said invalidates the assertions I’ve made. Unless you’ve directly experienced the onerous system of regulations in places like Germany, I’d urge you to do more research before the armchair dismissal.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > If it’s bad law, it’s bad law. Presumably it's your opinion that it's a bad law. The majority of Europeans think it's a good law - possibly the best regulation the EU has ever promulgated.
  - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
    Bad law for the reasons above. Ie, onerous toward regular businesses Ie, used to greatly expand bureaucracy and overhead Ie, used by unelected bureaucrats to wage battles of personal vendetta against specific companies instead of doing what laws do, which is set unambiguous standards for all
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      In fact it's not at all onerous, unless you are determined to violate it's provisions. If your business doesn't depend on privacy violations, then the "bureaucracy" that GDPR calls for is trivially easy to implement. There are no licences, and no registration requirements. Provided you aren't playing fast and loose with the personal data of Europeans, you're fine. There's no "personal vendettas" going on; can you substantiate that allegation at all? The GDPR applies to everyone equally. And unlike some laws, it's fairly easy to read; it's meant to be understood. Don't bother reading some biased summary of the Regulation; read the GDPR itself. That's the best guidance on the intent, and the best guidance on how to comply. /me: former data protection officer at a web development outfit.
      - DisjointedHunt 4y ago
        "iTs nOt aT aLl oNeRoUs" said the DPO. lol, what a clown. So all these companies scrambling to hire lawyers to document every single aspect of the "legal basis" or whatever nonsense is in the language are just crazy in your books? And that's just ONE sub clause of a hundred or so. The overhead is both in the arbitrary nature of the requirements (Good Laws are objective, not subjective) and the sheer lack of consistency in the enforcement is ridiculous for any European business. Consider the adequacy clause that's taken decades to litigate and is still fucking criminal as of this writing. Answer this simple question: "Can I, as a small business use AWS services that may or may not have a compute instance located in the EU?". You know pretty well what the answer is there, so, basically every small business in the EU is in violation right now. And it's bureaucratic assholery that keeps this deliberately inconsistent so they can choose to enforce it at any point of their choosing (read, a negative PR cycle) - Monarchy, inconsistency, arbitrary and ambiguous rulemaking that has tossed out the interests of businesses. The vendetta against Google is well documented and it's insulting for you to even say otherwise. Look at the most recent example of the CNIL (Frances privacy enforcement body, a part of the executive) choosing arbitrary standards and refusing to even elaborate on concrete standards for recommended analytics solutions that businesses may use. They have gone full psycho with not even wanting to give Google the opportunity to come into compliance with standards that they choose not to reveal and instead openly ask industry to turn Google Analytics off. Its ridiculous and bad for their own economies.

kcartlidge 4y ago

> The EU hasn’t shaken off their roots in monarchy. I know, right. I mean obviously the world's most famous royal family (our British one) isn't really a monarchy so that doesn't count. And they certainly don't get previews and vetos on our laws, or given hundreds of millions from the licence fees for offshore wind farms, or own a notable percentage of the land. As for GDPR, compliance is pretty straightforward provided you aren't being shady to begin with. And the new UK proposals are much worse and if they go through as they stand will be a nightmare for anyone serving UK visitors.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
Do you have a point, asshole? There's more in that comment above than the bait you took.
- kcartlidge 4y ago
  You are right that my point wasn't clear and I apologise for that. Your comment started by saying that the EU (as a negative) has not shaken off monarchy and ended with a contrast with the UK (a positive comparison). My point was that the UK (I am British) is even more steeped in monarchy/tradition so that can't be the cause. Then I addressed your complaints in the middle paragraph about the GDPR by pointing out that compliance is reasonably simple for sites already having good behaviour. And finally as you started with the EU and ended with the UK I pointed out that the new UK proposals are more onerous than the GDPR ones (thanks to the verification requirement). You're free to disagree, and again I apologise for not being clear enough, but those were my points.

denton-scratch 4y ago

> The UK is sick and tired of this and has recently begun moving to ignore these onerous rules. All power to them. I don't think so; the UK passed the Data Protection Act 2018 just 4 years ago, to bring GDPR into UK law. That is: the DPA is normal statute legislation, unlike the GDPR itself, which is a bureaucrat-made regulation. The DPA was passed by both houses of Parliament. So what are these mysterious moves to ignore the law? The only such moves I'm aware of are some plans to remove the European Court of Human Rights from UK law (ain't gonna happen - the ECHR is written into the Good Friday Agreement), and the UK's decision to ignore the decision of the ICJ concerning the Chagos Islands.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
Are you. . . For real in this thread? Can you please stop commenting about things you seem to have zero context in and zero interest in following even casually? https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/368309/uk-data-reform-bill-waters-down-gdpr https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/3...
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Instead of resorting to abuse and name-calling, let's hear your proposal for the kind of data-protection legislation you favour. Surely you're not advocating the ideas of the terminally-dim Nadine Dorries? The simple fact is that if you allow unrestricted export of personal data from Europe to the USA, then European law can no longer control what use is made of that data, because the US courts won't enforce European restrictions. Are you advocating for Europeans to submit to the wild-west regime in the USA? By the way, if you don't care to read my posts, you can always just not read them; they are all tagged with my handle at the top.
M2Ys4U 4y ago
>I don't think so; the UK passed the Data Protection Act 2018 just 4 years ago, to bring GDPR into UK law. This is wrong. The Data Protection Act did not bring the GDPR in to UK law, GDPR became part of UK law as soon as it was passed because it's an EU regulation, and regulations have direct effect in all member states (which at the time it was passed included the UK). The GDPR then became "retained EU law" by virtue of Section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and was then modified (turning it in to the UK GDPR) by the The Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. These regulations also amended the Data Protection Act, fwiw.