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Whether it's good local privacy laws in your country or a good privacy-respecting TOS from a company, both are basically worthless when a bigger entity comes ba
by LarryMullins 4y ago
Whether it's good local privacy laws in your country or a good privacy-respecting TOS from a company, both are basically worthless when a bigger entity comes barging into the picture.
So your government collects biometric data but passes laws promising not to misuse it... you may very well find that those promises are worth less than dirt when a country with leverage over your own starts making demands that your government feels obliged or coerced to obey.
Or you give lots of your personal data to a software company that promises privacy in their TOS. Great.. until that company gets bought out by the likes of Google or Facebook, then those promises evaporate and good luck doing anything about it.
The solution is to never trust any promises of privacy, and don't hand over personal data to anybody unless it's taken from you at gunpoint. It doesn't matter what promises are given, because all promises can be broken with enough leverage.
I recommend that Europeans petition their governments to delete such databases now, so that compliance with American demands simply won't be possible. Delete the databases now so your governments can't fold to pressure later.
- EGreg 4y ago[flagged]
- epolanski 4y agoWhy would we have to give two damns about American demands, I don't see that having any chance.
- hcks 4y agoYeah ahah no chance sure. What are these silly Americans thinking lol we are strong sovereign nations aren’t we ;)
- LarryMullins 4y agoEven if you're certain America today and into the indeterminate future has no leverage over your country, can't subvert your elections, bribe or blackmail your politicians, threaten sanctions or worse, then you still have to worry about American spies simply stealing that data. Such private data should never be collected in the first place. You may as well stack up gold bars in your home, in plain view of street-level windows. Such concentrations of data/wealth are asking for trouble. Get rid of it now and you won't have to worry about keeping it secure in the future, no matter what world events may unfold.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoI live in America and I'm not convinced that America has leverage over my country. The steering wheel on this thing appears to be broken..
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoI live in America and I'm not convinced that America has leverage over my country. The steering wheel on this thing appears to be broken.
- LarryMullins 4y agoUnderstandable position, but I think you should be aware that the US Government is capable of moving fast and decisively in rare but unpredictable circumstances. Only 44 days elapsed between 2001/9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act on 2001/10/25. Things usually don't change that fast, but nobody can truly predict the geopolitical landscape even half a year into the future.
- Aeolun 4y agoI’m fairly certain nobody will be passing a patriot act over something this banal though.
- frankfrankfrank 4y agoI get the sense you do not quite understand how much essentially all of Europe is a vassal state of the group of people that also has a stranglehold on America.
- bee_rider 4y agoLife in Europe looks pretty nice from the outside at least. Could America sign up for self-vassalage or something?
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoJust from the outside
- dzikimarian 4y agoI'm inside and I'm pretty happy comparing to alternatives.
- cscurmudgeon 4y agoHappy to hear that. I am inside the US and have been inside and lived in many countries. As an immigrant from Asia, I am happy most in the US and so are millions of permanent immigrants including tens of thousands from Europe every year :)
- dzikimarian 4y agoGreat it works for you. :-) I spent some time traveling in various parts of the world and EU works best for me.
- pessimizer 4y agoThat's because the US allowed Europe to do social spending instead of military spending in order to keep them from going Communist. And anyway, the result was a monstrously armed US and a defenseless Europe, so it was ultimately a win-win for America.
- xiphias2 4y agoThe whole EU economy depends on the USD-EUR liquidity swap line between the two central banks. Basically EU has to do whatever US wants.
- coob 4y agoHow?
- xiphias2 4y agoIt's quite nicely explained on the official EU site (much better than how I understand): https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/liquidity_lines/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/liquidity_lines/htm... Without a swap line banks couldn't just treat EUR as USD whenever an entity needs to keep USD for import/export purposes.
- monocasa 4y agoThat goes both ways. The US economy is dependent on having markets for consumer goods. Losing the EU as an easy market nukes the US economy as well.
- sofixa 4y agoYeah, one would think post-Brexit and post-pandemic and post-Russian invasion of Ukraine people would in general be more aware of interdependence in trade, finance, manufacturing, etc. but apparently not. (Yes, they did say that before WWI, and today it's a million times more intertwined)
- xiphias2 4y agoIt still matters game theoretically who loses more on not having a trade, and US having the reserve currency means that it has clearly more power over EU than the other way around.
- pkaye 4y ago
- omgomgomgomg 4y agoI am not sure why this is downvoted, the guy is exactly right. I would have thought HN is more on the small government political spectrum, it appears this does not count for foreign policy?
- pc86 4y agoHN is on the small government side only insofar as it relates to tech legislation and adjacent regulations. It's pretty typically left-leaning California-esque politics otherwise.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago[flagged]
- pasquinelli 4y agohn has as much of an identity as reddit
- anigbrowl 4y agoWell it's look how Americans are big on freedom for themselves, but view people in other countries as something like movie extras. The most extreme example of this is the emerging nationalist caucus which has elevated hypocrisy to an art form and has every intention of leveraging similar tactics against its domestic population.
- sfusato 4y agoUhmm, you may want to update your knowledge on the history of the 1945-2022 period tldr: USA is the current world empire; EU are their vassals Homework: (1) find how many European military bases there are on US soil; (2) find how many US military bases there are on European soil;
- epolanski 4y agoWe are nobody's vassals and the EU has no realistic military opponents on its borders. You're ridiculous and watch Fox news too much.
- sfusato 4y ago> We are nobody's vassals History contradicts you. I'm an European myself if that wasn't clear enough, so this wasn't an American telling you, an European, you are our vassals. > EU has no realistic military opponents on its borders Fully agree on this. > You're ridiculous and watch Fox news too much. I might be ridiculous to your eyes, but I certainly don't watch FoxNews.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago> (1) find how many European military bases there are on US soil To do what? Counter the Canadian threat to US American territorial integrity? Prevent war between California and ethnic Nevadans? Monitor unmanaged flows of migrants from unstable regions? Hmm, well maybe that one. But really, one of the great blessings of the US is a lack of any home-front excitement, which makes this comparison pretty silly. Not that that disagrees with the hypotheses that the US is a world empire and the EU's present existence is predicated on US military size and operations.
- 8note 4y agoTo ensure the American government passes EU friendly laws
- sfusato 4y agoRight, so what for are the US military bases on European soil then? (Please spare me the part about protecting Europe from outside threats story). Would they leave if we asked nicely enough? Like Pretty please? Would it really take just that?
- kmeisthax 4y agoBecause sovereignty ends at borders. Europeans want to vacation in the US. The US demands biometric authentication upon crossing the border. So you either give them that data or the US stops letting Europeans in. And I doubt Europe is going to be any better at not demanding biometric data than the US is, because Europe has the same underlying incentives to do so (i.e. a restrictive immigration system, a large portion of the population who want to NIMBY entire races of people, and a large body of laws to enforce).
- mihaaly 4y agoThe US needs relationship with EU citizens just as much as the other way around. Or even more, like in the case of people like me (I rather avoid the US after being there several times and experienced the mentality). The vacations are especially weak argument for sharing highly personal data with an entity that is prone to repeatedly and shamelessly abusing it, misusing it. Will the relationship being more difficult if not yielding to the demands? Ok then. We are not made of cotton candy to melt in a drop of rain that easily when some difficulty comes along, especially if it is a bureaucracy thingy. The vacations will be a bit more difficult - for those attracted by the US instead of beautiful spots elsewhere. Business relations too, of course, but that one has double edge actually.
- petre 4y agoWe already have biometric passports in the EU. Why the need to collect biometric data when I have it on me and in my passport as well? This is worse than PII, it should be covered by data protection laws like the GDPR.
- psychphysic 4y agoI a glass is always nearly empty kind of guy. Have no plans to visit the US still expect my government would fold like napkin if US county police faxed over a request. The US tapped even NATO ally governments if they want fingerprints they'll get them. At any rate don't you have to sign, fingerprint and stand infront of a camera to pass most countries passport control?
- Aeolun 4y agoI don’t think the EU minds the US having access to EU biometric data as long as citizens choose to give it to the US directly. To have them lift it out of our databases without any manual actions seems ridiculous.
- lakomen 4y agoBecause Von der Leyen is deep in America's ass
- arcticbull 4y agoSounds like we can either have nice things and demand better of leadership, or not have nice things and let leadership go fallow. Losing faith in leadership means the whole thing falls apart anyways. I for one think the former is the way to go.
- survirtual 4y agoThis is very correct. However, I would amend your solution: the solution is modern encryption and open source. These two in conjunction allow you to verify trust. ToS is like HR: they both exist to protect only the company.
- ecef9-8c0f-4374 4y agook. now the US government demands not to use modern encryption and open source. And we are back at square one.
- devmunchies 4y agoThat could go to the supreme court, maybe violates the 4th amendment? "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" meaning, I got the right to secure my sh*t.
- survirtual 4y agoIf nothing else, it definitely violates the spirit of the second amendment. My digital self should be as secure and protected as my physical brain under the eyes of law.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- synkarius 4y agoCitizens of other countries have no rights under the US constitution.
- rnk 4y agoIt's more complicated than that. They have many rights inside our border. Outside our border I'm not sure. Web search found https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/constitutional-rights-noncitizens/ https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/constitutional-rig...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mihaaly 4y agoI sense that many people consider organizations and groups of people as a definite thing. A country, the Google, the Facebook, etc, talk about these like if they were a reliably formed predictable object or entity. While those are an ever changing blob composed of ever chaning composition of people with ever changing views, intentions and agenda in an ever changing environment. Any relationships with those are momentarily only. Relying on promises from those? Like building a house on a solid cloud. No such thing. The saying is especially true in case of big entities formed of humans: a promise is like a fart, you hold it while you can.
- CamperBob2 4y agoExactly, and the same is true of the laws themselves. "I'm not breaking the law, so I have nothing to hide," is wrong in so many ways that it's hard to enumerate them all.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- astrange 4y agoGoogle and Facebook are both very good at protecting your personal info. Their business value is based on nobody else having it. Their security teams are much better at their job of protecting it than, say, you are.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> Or you give lots of your personal data to a software company that promises privacy in their TOS. Great.. until that company gets bought out by the likes of Google or Facebook, then those promises evaporate and good luck doing anything about it. Sounds like the contract binds me, but does not protect me. It protects the company, but does not bind it. > Conservatism Consists of Exactly One Proposition, to Wit: There Must Be In-Groups Whom the Law Protects but Does Not Bind, Alongside Out-Groups Whom the Law Binds but Does Not Protect.
- akudha 4y agoThe battle is lost the moment data is collected. It will be leaked, misused, stolen etc. The question is not IF, the question is WHEN. All the laws, promises, good intentions etc are not worth the paper they are written on. If there is data to be stolen, it will be stolen.
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago> I recommend that Europeans petition their governments to delete such databases now, so that compliance with American demands simply won't be possible. Delete the databases now so your governments can't fold to pressure later. LOL dude the EU is one of the driving forcing on making sure there is a complete history of ever person.
- judge2020 4y ago> It doesn't matter what promises are given, because all promises can be broken with enough leverage. This has always been the case. Before, it was the threat of imprisonment for speaking out against your government, and having higher taxes levied. Now, it's simply privacy, since that is the key to the countries/companies gaining without literally stealing from you.