Silicon Valley Firms Want To Nix Calif. Internet Privacy Bill 110
An anonymous reader writes "Silicon Valley tech firms, banks and other powerful industries are mounting a quiet but forceful campaign to kill an Internet privacy bill that would give California consumers the right to know how their personal information is being used. A recent letter signed by 15 companies and trade groups — including TechAmerica, which represents Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other technology companies — demanded that the measure's author, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, drop her bill. They complain it would open up businesses to an avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits."
Cry, cry. (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news, the great and good of the world are demanding continued immunity from a hithertoo largely alien phenomenon referred to as 'consequences', widely believed to be some sort of communicable disease popular among people who don't matter. Important People warn of vaguely defined, but catastrophic, outcomes should these 'consequences' be allowed to spread from the squalid and undeserving sectors where they currently breed and into high value portions of society.
not true (Score:5, Interesting)
As a former employee of a business that tracks a huge amount of personal information, I can tell you that most of these companies are already required to keep these records because of EU privacy records. Our databases were literally divided domestic and foreign for this reason.
So while it would take some effort in moving data and changing internal procedures, the bulk of the work is already done for most of these companies.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. If they're afraid of costly lawsuits then they have no business in the tech industry. Nor any other industry.
The avalanche will be a problem at the start. Once business practices become transparent enough, people will have no need to request the information that is already available (automatically).
Or they could of course bicker and whine like little kids, finally get the bill nixed and go on their merry way screwing costumers/users over in a business as usual model.
Hypocrite (Score:5, Interesting)
LOL. Google with the same Eric Schmidt who wants Drones banned because he's worried about the invasion of privacy when they fly over your mansion estate?
""You're having a dispute with your neighbour," he hypothesised. "How would you feel if your neighbour went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"
Gee I don't know Eric. About the same way I feel when you run your fingers through my hair. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/21/drones-google-eric-schmidt [guardian.co.uk]
Re:Yeah, just let the lawyers flood in (Score:3, Interesting)
(Just to clarify the above, and perhaps to explain why I've always found the 'right wing' and 'libertarian' hatred of tort lawyers so curious, aside from the ones who are trivially shills for corporations and people who simply wish to be tortious with impunity, whose motives are at least transparent).
With criminal law, and the criminal justice system, the idea that some sort of restitution is the objective, or the notion that money made by functionaries is being gouged right out of the mouths of victims, doesn't really enter the picture: Cops, DAs, Prosecutors, prisons, etc. are all cost centers, your tax dollars at work, that exist to (in various combinations, depending on who you ask) visit retribution on malefactors, prevent malefactors from future criminal activity, or to deter others from taking up crime. There are some, more or less ad-hoc, victim-assistance programs; but the idea that "the criminal justice system is such a scam! they tried the guy and the victim's family got like $3 worth of weregild after they'd finished paying the cops, lawyers, and jury! WTF?" simply never enters the picture.
In civil law, civil actions between (rough) equals can actually involve establishment of damages to Party A and extraction of compensation from Party B. However, in more asymmetric cases, 'civil' law really resembles nothing so much as a privatized version of criminal law, essentially a flavor of bounty hunting. Instead of having an actually-remotely-adequate regulatory apparatus(because the idea of our doing that is...unrealistic...), we leave the field open: See somebody do something tortious to a person or persons who can't fight back on their own behalf? Prove it in court and get your cut of the damages! This arrangement isn't much better than criminal proceedings at getting restitution routed to the actual injured parties; but it creates an incentive for independent private actors to hunt down and punish malefactors, analogous to the one you would see if the criminal justice system were built on bounties rather than a class of civil servants who get a salary for the purpose.
While I'd obviously prefer to see more damages make it to the damaged(and the Principle-Agent problem inherent in having a lawyer representing your interests, or worse the diffuse interests of hundreds or thousands of people is an obvious one to keep watch on), I'm always a bit surprised by, not to say a trifle suspicious of the motives of, people who seem more offended by the idea that somebody else got paid for working on the case than they are by the fact that the case had to come to court in the first place. In criminal contexts, we might disagree over exactly what a cop or DA's salary should be; but it is downright uncontroversial that such people get paid to discourage malefactors. In order to handle crime, we allocate some amount of money to the in-no-way-directly-productive task of apprehending and punishing criminals. As a long term, society wide, investment it may be a net gain; but it's a cost center in the near term. The people who handle civil lawsuits are essentially the same thing, just on contingency rather than salary.
Unsurprisingly, though, none of the 'tort reformers' ever seems to propose replacing those wicked trial lawyers with state regulators who have actual teeth, nor do they celebrate the fact that so much regulation is simply left undone on the state side, with for-profit private actors going into the business of taking up the slack... You'd think that, among people who dislike state regulatory power, 'trial lawyers' would be the private-sector heroes of justice, doing well by doing good, and discouraging malfeasance so that the dead, bureaucratic, hand of regulatory entities like the FTC, FDA, etc. don't have to. This is not, however, a position much seen in the wild...
Re:News or old hat? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's because Europeans and Americans have a fundamentally different way of looking at politics.
The U.S. was founded on certain principles that were ironically considered extremely liberal at the time, but now would be classified as extremely conservative according to a European mentality.
An admittedly over-simplified way of looking at is this: European politics is based on the idea that the government should promote the welfare of the citizens. American politics is based on the idea that the government should get out of the way and let the citizens promote their own welfare.
Neither is absolutely right in all cases. As an American, I tend to favor the latter, but I'll admit that it has its drawbacks.
That said, you can understand the lack of privacy protections if you think like an American. The idea is this: If two entities choose to do business with each other, that's their business, not the government's. You can choose to give whatever information you want to the other party, just like they can choose what to do with that information. If you don't want them using that information, don't give it to them. It's your choice. The government should not get involved.
In other words, a "right to privacy" is not really a right at all. It doesn't allow you to do anything that you couldn't do if it didn't exist; it just limits what others can do.
Note that I don't necessarily agree with the idea, just that I can understand it.
This is why I refuse to tie in social services (Score:4, Interesting)
with my business and website. I have dropped my Google+ page which showed in the search results and will not be using Facebook/Twitter and etc... Also deicde to either go with Vimeo $200 per year or pay OVH $59 for a server to host my product/how to videos instead of Youtube.
I have the products that my constomers want and I don't want ME my BUSINESS and my CUSTOMERS to be someone elses PRODUCT.
When citizens do it,... (Score:2, Interesting)
...it is called stalking, and is a crime. When corporations do it, it is called a business model. If corporations are people, they are committing the crime of stalking and should be held accountable for it.