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To folks who are saying this isn't enough or that we need to put executives in jail: you are all thinking from a systems/framer perspective and not from how the

To folks who are saying this isn't enough or that we need to put executives in jail: you are all thinking from a systems/framer perspective and not from how the law actually works. The law says it actually has to be violated for damages to come into play, and then those damages need to be reliably proven. It's very hard or impossible to show hard, quantifiable economic harm from someone storing your geolocation data on a server. This is why the settlement isn't huge - though to be clear imo this is a fairly large settlement.

bb88 4y ago
If you made $200k/year and then were told you had to pay $20 to settle a lawsuit with the state of Indiana, because of some questionable charge, would you pay it or fight it? That's the scale of this if Google were a person. Because the state of Indiana is so anti-tax that it can no longer fund their own government through taxes alone, lawsuits like this become important sources of revenue.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  As a resident of Indiana, our state is generally in fine financial shape. Looking at Illinois and Michigan to either side, I would 10000% take the financial situation in my state. Illinois is a pension time bomb. Michigan can’t support their infrastructure.
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    As a person who has driven on rt 275 past Lawrenceburg, I'm rather surprised to hear this. That stretch of road is apocalyptic
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      Almost every state has a meme “well this sure beats <my state> roads” Heard it in Illinois. Heard it in Indiana. Heard it in Michigan. Everyone thinks their state roads are terrible. The truth is, some little side roads don’t get much love in all states. We honestly built up too much roads, and it would bankrupt all states to care for all of these roads. The answer is to drop some roads, and covert others to gravel or dirt. But doing this is political suicide, so no one does this… so we just have some little roads and little bridges in real bad shape.
advisedwang 4y ago
You could just have a criminal statue, and then it's not a question of damages.
sofixa 4y ago
> To folks who are saying this isn't enough or that we need to put executives in jail: you are all thinking from a systems/framer perspective and not from how the law actually works And I think they're talking about how the law should work. Obviously currently it doesn't work well enough as a deterrent, and is more of a "costs of doing business". Thankfully laws are mutable and can be updated to be more appropriate.

bb88 4y ago

If you made $200k/year and then were told you had to pay $20 to settle a lawsuit with the state of Indiana, because of some questionable charge, would you pay it or fight it? That's the scale of this if Google were a person. Because the state of Indiana is so anti-tax that it can no longer fund their own government through taxes alone, lawsuits like this become important sources of revenue.

brianwawok 4y ago
As a resident of Indiana, our state is generally in fine financial shape. Looking at Illinois and Michigan to either side, I would 10000% take the financial situation in my state. Illinois is a pension time bomb. Michigan can’t support their infrastructure.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  As a person who has driven on rt 275 past Lawrenceburg, I'm rather surprised to hear this. That stretch of road is apocalyptic
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Almost every state has a meme “well this sure beats <my state> roads” Heard it in Illinois. Heard it in Indiana. Heard it in Michigan. Everyone thinks their state roads are terrible. The truth is, some little side roads don’t get much love in all states. We honestly built up too much roads, and it would bankrupt all states to care for all of these roads. The answer is to drop some roads, and covert others to gravel or dirt. But doing this is political suicide, so no one does this… so we just have some little roads and little bridges in real bad shape.

advisedwang 4y ago

You could just have a criminal statue, and then it's not a question of damages.

sofixa 4y ago

> To folks who are saying this isn't enough or that we need to put executives in jail: you are all thinking from a systems/framer perspective and not from how the law actually works And I think they're talking about how the law should work. Obviously currently it doesn't work well enough as a deterrent, and is more of a "costs of doing business". Thankfully laws are mutable and can be updated to be more appropriate.