6 ms·

Yeah, this already happens to some extent with American and Asian sites blocking Europe and the UK because they don't want to deal with GPDR.

sterlind 4y ago
If this UK bill passes, I'd simply return HTTP 451 with a note that although the UK is blocked from my site, VPNs are not.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Promoting VPN usage could be construed by the UK courts as an attempt to commit subterfuge or dodge jurisdiction. They will not take kindly to this. You really want to make it perfectly clear that you want nothing to do with Britain as long as they have crazy laws on the books. Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR, blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law applies on the basis of citizenship, not territory. If an EU citizen accesses your website in America, that's still within GDPR scope. If you have EU business assets, ship things to the EU, or have any other ties to the EU, then they still have jurisdiction and you certainly still have to comply with GDPR.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    > because the law applies on the basis of citizenship, No it doesn't. depends on location only. A US, or any other, citizen is protected by GDPR when they access the web from within the EU
  - jacooper 4y ago
    However, the GDPR doesn't really apply if you don't intend to target Europeans(2) And the GDPR is a way way more sensible law than whatever the UK is trying to do here, nobody will comply and no body will care, its only going to Hurt UK citizens and The UK's economy. I care about privacy and really like what the EU has passed with the GDPR and DSA, but unfortunately we will have countries that does stupid things like this. Hopefully they aren't that important so no one complies. 2. https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/ https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/
  - whakim 4y ago
    > If an EU citizen accesses your website in America, that's still within GDPR scope. No, that's not correct. You have to be clearly intending to (not just incidentally happening to) offer goods or services to an EU data subject. > ship things to the EU This wouldn't be enough to make the GDPR applicable. You'd have to be specifically targeting EU customers in some way, such as allowing users to pay in euros - not just incidentally selling some stuff to folks who live in the EU. Your other examples (such as having EU business assets) hold because they would make you an EU entity.
    - tzs 4y ago
      Targeting EU data subjects with goods and services is just one of two ways GDPR asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction. The other is when you are processing personal data of EU data subjects that is related to "the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union". There's a recital that adds: > In order to determine whether a processing activity can be considered to monitor the behaviour of data subjects, it should be ascertained whether natural persons are tracked on the internet including potential subsequent use of personal data processing techniques which consist of profiling a natural person, particularly in order to take decisions concerning her or him or for analysing or predicting her or his personal preferences, behaviours and attitudes. Unlike the recital that explains the goods and services case, which talks about it only applying if you envisage offering goods and services in the Union as opposed to your site merely being accessible from the Union, the monitoring case doesn't seem to have any requirement that you are intending to monitor EU data subjects. That's pretty broad as written. From what the recital says it even applies if you are gathering data the could be used for profiling even if you are not actually currently profiling. As noted in the article at gdpr.eu that a parallel commenter cited: > If your organization uses web tools that allow you to track cookies or the IP addresses of people who visit your website from EU countries, then you fall under the scope of the GDPR. Practically speaking, it’s unclear how strictly this provision will be interpreted or how brazenly it will be enforced. Suppose you run a golf course in Manitoba focused exclusively on your local area, but sometimes people in France stumble across your site. Would you find yourself in the crosshairs of European regulators? It’s not likely. But technically you could be held accountable for tracking these data.
  - M2Ys4U 4y ago
    >Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR, blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law applies on the basis of citizenship, not territory. Argh, why won't this misinformation die? You are completely, utterly, 100% wrong. The GDPR applies if either the data controller is established in the EU or the data subject is physically in the EU. Article 3 (territorial scope) is incredibly short, read it: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2016.119.01.0001.01.ENG#d1e1455-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
    - mitjam 4y ago
      Yes and this may be a UK citizen on a trip to Paris
shadowgovt 4y ago
As an American visiting the UK and the EU, I got to see what the GDPR has done to the online experience over there for the first time. Wow, does that suck. I see about 20% of the "cookie track consent" popups Stateside that I saw browsing from the EU.
- pasc1878 4y ago
  So you prefer being tracked without you knowing rather than being asked and easily opt out?
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Personally, yes. I think most of what the GDPR intended to accomplish could have been accomplished more easily by public education campaigns and broad cultural adoption of no-track plugins. That would have done a lot less damage to the user experience than naively assuming that if one pushed the educational burden onto sites, the sites would cease to do the tracking that triggered the educational burden rather than just bother their users forever with government-mandated information placards. Especially given that what constituted "tracking" was so broad that a lot of sites took the "better safe than sorry" approach because it was cheaper than a full audit of their tracking and a lawyer to interpret whether, say, Apache logs that show IP address constitute "tracking."
- jacooper 4y ago
  Well that's the websites problem, no body told them to include 50 trackers. And there are many filters to kill cookies banners. Also AFAIK now there is an enforced Reject All button.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It's also the user's problem because there aren't websites to go to that aren't showing those banners. Well, except the big, commonly-used ones where you've already consented (or not). Facebook, for instance. It's like this law was hand-tuned to consolidate users into only visiting a few commonly-accessed sites to save themselves the UX annoyance at the cost of the broader Internet's discoverability.

sterlind 4y ago

If this UK bill passes, I'd simply return HTTP 451 with a note that although the UK is blocked from my site, VPNs are not.

kmeisthax 4y ago
Promoting VPN usage could be construed by the UK courts as an attempt to commit subterfuge or dodge jurisdiction. They will not take kindly to this. You really want to make it perfectly clear that you want nothing to do with Britain as long as they have crazy laws on the books. Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR, blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law applies on the basis of citizenship, not territory. If an EU citizen accesses your website in America, that's still within GDPR scope. If you have EU business assets, ship things to the EU, or have any other ties to the EU, then they still have jurisdiction and you certainly still have to comply with GDPR.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  > because the law applies on the basis of citizenship, No it doesn't. depends on location only. A US, or any other, citizen is protected by GDPR when they access the web from within the EU
- jacooper 4y ago
  However, the GDPR doesn't really apply if you don't intend to target Europeans(2) And the GDPR is a way way more sensible law than whatever the UK is trying to do here, nobody will comply and no body will care, its only going to Hurt UK citizens and The UK's economy. I care about privacy and really like what the EU has passed with the GDPR and DSA, but unfortunately we will have countries that does stupid things like this. Hopefully they aren't that important so no one complies. 2. https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/ https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/
- whakim 4y ago
  > If an EU citizen accesses your website in America, that's still within GDPR scope. No, that's not correct. You have to be clearly intending to (not just incidentally happening to) offer goods or services to an EU data subject. > ship things to the EU This wouldn't be enough to make the GDPR applicable. You'd have to be specifically targeting EU customers in some way, such as allowing users to pay in euros - not just incidentally selling some stuff to folks who live in the EU. Your other examples (such as having EU business assets) hold because they would make you an EU entity.
  - tzs 4y ago
    Targeting EU data subjects with goods and services is just one of two ways GDPR asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction. The other is when you are processing personal data of EU data subjects that is related to "the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union". There's a recital that adds: > In order to determine whether a processing activity can be considered to monitor the behaviour of data subjects, it should be ascertained whether natural persons are tracked on the internet including potential subsequent use of personal data processing techniques which consist of profiling a natural person, particularly in order to take decisions concerning her or him or for analysing or predicting her or his personal preferences, behaviours and attitudes. Unlike the recital that explains the goods and services case, which talks about it only applying if you envisage offering goods and services in the Union as opposed to your site merely being accessible from the Union, the monitoring case doesn't seem to have any requirement that you are intending to monitor EU data subjects. That's pretty broad as written. From what the recital says it even applies if you are gathering data the could be used for profiling even if you are not actually currently profiling. As noted in the article at gdpr.eu that a parallel commenter cited: > If your organization uses web tools that allow you to track cookies or the IP addresses of people who visit your website from EU countries, then you fall under the scope of the GDPR. Practically speaking, it’s unclear how strictly this provision will be interpreted or how brazenly it will be enforced. Suppose you run a golf course in Manitoba focused exclusively on your local area, but sometimes people in France stumble across your site. Would you find yourself in the crosshairs of European regulators? It’s not likely. But technically you could be held accountable for tracking these data.
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  >Related point: if you're intending to get out of GDPR, blocking the EU doesn't really help, because the law applies on the basis of citizenship, not territory. Argh, why won't this misinformation die? You are completely, utterly, 100% wrong. The GDPR applies if either the data controller is established in the EU or the data subject is physically in the EU. Article 3 (territorial scope) is incredibly short, read it: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2016.119.01.0001.01.ENG#d1e1455-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...
  - mitjam 4y ago
    Yes and this may be a UK citizen on a trip to Paris

shadowgovt 4y ago

As an American visiting the UK and the EU, I got to see what the GDPR has done to the online experience over there for the first time. Wow, does that suck. I see about 20% of the "cookie track consent" popups Stateside that I saw browsing from the EU.

pasc1878 4y ago
So you prefer being tracked without you knowing rather than being asked and easily opt out?
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Personally, yes. I think most of what the GDPR intended to accomplish could have been accomplished more easily by public education campaigns and broad cultural adoption of no-track plugins. That would have done a lot less damage to the user experience than naively assuming that if one pushed the educational burden onto sites, the sites would cease to do the tracking that triggered the educational burden rather than just bother their users forever with government-mandated information placards. Especially given that what constituted "tracking" was so broad that a lot of sites took the "better safe than sorry" approach because it was cheaper than a full audit of their tracking and a lawyer to interpret whether, say, Apache logs that show IP address constitute "tracking."
jacooper 4y ago
Well that's the websites problem, no body told them to include 50 trackers. And there are many filters to kill cookies banners. Also AFAIK now there is an enforced Reject All button.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's also the user's problem because there aren't websites to go to that aren't showing those banners. Well, except the big, commonly-used ones where you've already consented (or not). Facebook, for instance. It's like this law was hand-tuned to consolidate users into only visiting a few commonly-accessed sites to save themselves the UX annoyance at the cost of the broader Internet's discoverability.