from the of-course-it-would-apply-to-the-NSA-too dept.
Commissioners for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) testifying before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday called for a national privacy law.
Such a law would regulate how large tech and social media companies collect, manage, and retain user data.
The lack of a National Privacy Law
keeps the country from parity with the EU and its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)...
...or, for that matter, with the state of California, with its California's Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Several national privacy bills have been introduced in the past 12 months. One, called the Data Care Act (DCA), was introduced by 15 senators and has strong industry support from the likes of Facebook, Apple, Verizon, Google, Twitter, Mozilla and Microsoft. Another was introduced by Washington Senator Suzan Delbene, another by Senator Ron Wyden dubbed the Consumer Data Protection Act, and still another called the American Data Dissemination (ADD) Act by Senator Marco Rubio.
Besides consumer protection, the FTC is looking for more power. Commissioners asked Congress to strengthen the agency's ability to police violations, asking for more resources and greater authority to impose penalties.
The usual concerns attend the bills such as costs to small businesses and startups, compatibility with and effect on existing privacy laws, and resistance to continuing to allow California to dictate in the tech sector.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @01:36PM (6 children)
Last time our local government wanted to protect out privacy we had to give even more data on ourselves for everything as a result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @02:04PM (5 children)
Agreed, this is an educational and technological problem. Whatever these people come up with will just make things worse.
People just aren't comprehending the scale of the datarape they are suffering. Go visit places like palo alto to see how rich these creepy fucks are getting by offering a "free service".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 11 2019, @02:14PM (4 children)
Oh, you could write a good privacy law if you tried. It would go something like "don't sell user info and let folks know what user info you collect and how you use it". But in lawyer speak of course because we can't have laws being written that the folks having to follow them can understand.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RandomFactor on Saturday May 11 2019, @02:30PM (3 children)
DelBene's bill even says no lawyer speak:
...
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @02:51PM (1 child)
Looks like popups with audio.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday May 11 2019, @06:24PM
Script and Ad blocking became my default state back when websites first started abusing the hell out of people with things like that.
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(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:47PM
I wonder how that happened. Maybe he missed a meeting with the lobbyists assigned to him.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Saturday May 11 2019, @02:42PM (8 children)
So, we can tell which bill was introduced to prevent a real privacy bill from passing by checking to see which one FB and Google support, can't we?
You just name the bill that explicitly makes privacy invasion legal, and bars states from protecting privacy the 'privacy protection act'. If anyone proposes a real protection act you run adds saying those people want to take away your privacy, and we already have a privacy protection law. (and in this case, bury the search results for editorials explaining the truth since the companies behind the privacy invasion control that)
Just like the 'affordable care act' promoted to stop profiteering by medical ins companies. Passed, and individual health care costs skyrocketed while ins company profits reached record levels. Any attempt to fix that is labeled 'taking your healthcare away'. It's magic...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @02:55PM (6 children)
The same people who were tricked by "affordable care act" will be tricked by this. The effect of skyrocketing prices was obvious beforehand. There is just no helping some people, which is why there should be some sort of ignorance threshold you need to exceed before voting. Unfortunately it would cut out 75% of the population and the questions would eventually be used to imply vaccines are awesome and climate change is evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:20PM (4 children)
And the same morons that opposed it will oppose this as well because they're too stupid to understand what's going on.
You make it sound like the skyrocketing prices started after the ACA was passed, but the reality is that the rates were previously skyrocketing and they slowed a bit until Trump and the GOP came in and purposefully destabilized the system.
That's not to say that the Democrats didn't fuck it up massively by refusing to include a public option, but blame where blame is due, the GOP, all those lawsuits and refusing to expand medicaid is a big part of the problem.
It's a shame that morons like you still don't get it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:31PM (3 children)
I have no health insurance, and don't want any. The whole thing has been a scam for many years now, the affordable care act just tried to force people to buy into the scam so it could grow even bigger. No surprise there.
Healthcare itself has also been becoming scammier and scammier too. In general, avoid it like the plague and you will be better off on average (not saying you will live forever or anything).
There are specific cases where they can do something useful for you, but the vast majority of it seems to do more harm than good. Or even just be treating the consequences of previous healthcare intervention/advice. The low fat diet and UVB only sunscreen advice alone probably has caused more harm than all the benefit in the last 50 years.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:36PM (2 children)
On average, I agree with you.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:57PM
Just add up how much you could save before the typical healthcare need strikes. Then look at the actual cost of whatever procedure you need not the 2-20x inflated chargemaster prices. People would be far better off saving their money. Perhaps some very low premium, really high deductible, insurance makes sense too.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday May 11 2019, @04:33PM
Well, health insurance is impossible anyway. Insurance can only protect against *financial* loss. Aside from those semantics, what we call "health insurance" is really more like a poorly run buyer's club that carves up the free market into little fiefdoms so it won't function. Of course you don't want to buy that. Neither do I but some sometimes you have to play the game.
What's insane is that the kind of networks you have in health aren't allowed for car insurance here--you have a right to repair your car at any licensed shop, and the insurance company has to pay for it. Labor rates and parts prices are well known.
A bunch of lobbyists actually tried to move car insurance towards the health model, by allowing forced steering to "network shops" here in California, and fortunately we stopped that dead in its tracks.
We literally take care of our cars better than we do our bodies.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:35PM
Climate Change is evil? Hardly. That's like saying the sun is evil, or rain, or...
Regardless, there is something else just as insidious and far less controversial to be concerned with out there.
Even if we survive climate change in the coming decades, this will inexorably destroy everything humanity builds and achieves on this Earth.
We need your help to stop it! [zazzle.com]
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(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:18PM
+1 Healthy Cynicism
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(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday May 12 2019, @03:14AM (3 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Hyperturtle on Sunday May 12 2019, @02:16PM (2 children)
What do you believe is the recourse for a company that I told no information to, yet has developed a profile on be based on what they stole out of the contact information of other people that I did not expect to sell me out in that way when I gave them my contact info before privacy violating applications were developed to automatically pull this information without notifying the user?
Somehow, I doubt the first amendment's free speech clause includes the right to steal information about people and then sell it or leverage its use in ways that the original owner of said information granted permission to do. Or was even aware of, in the case of having not been presented a EULA and consent form to decline.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday May 12 2019, @04:58PM (1 child)
Why? I think you're forgetting something. The right to "Free Speech" is a constitutional right. There is no constitutional right to data privacy.
In general, if I read some information, I am allowed to repeat that information to someone else. If you say "corporation may not read information" you have restricted the First Amendment right to receive information. If you say "corporation may not share information" you have restricted the First Amendment right to share information. Your friends have a First Amendment right to talk about you or any other topic. The First Amendment specifically protects my right to use your information, lawfully obtained, in nearly any way I please.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday May 15 2019, @04:29PM
I was sort of aiming at people not being jerks with the data they end up getting.
I'm not very concerned at 3rd party data brokers entitlements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 12 2019, @02:18PM
I'm old fashioned, but there was a time when the phone company took protecting their client's communication private seriously.
(As in go to jail if you don't, and yes, these days that should include metadata as well.)
The Internet could have the same rules if one had two things:
1) Similar jail time rules for the providers of access and transit.
2) A way to mark packets to be limited to a single jurisdiction.
Without this sort of rules, a national law is going to trickey because the company can always route packets to another jurisdiction.
Given this sort of rules in the basic packet moving structure, one could start to think about what companies can do with it.
Perhaps there is a P2P way to do social media which might provide competition to FB their ilk.
Aside from central control and monetization, I'm not sure there is a technical reason the FB functionality could not be distributed.
Search may not be the same sort of thing.
Even as G works to eliminate it with user specific search results, there is value in going to a single place to look for something over the whole Internet.
Not sure if P2P search at Internet scale is practical?