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USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

theregister.co.uk

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Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#151

Post by blub »

jimmaswell wrote: post #101
dbasedweeb wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really so hard to believe that people are all out of trust and goodwill at this point? It’s like having a classroom full of toddlers who all play with matches, and every few weeks they burn the whole school down. Finally the teachers makes rule: no one gets to play with matches. A couple of kids say they’re very responsible and never set fire to anything. Nobody cares.

I could say the same thing in reverse about regulations. Every few weeks some regulation ruins the internet even more and finally people are sick of the regulations. Name one way your life was ever negatively impacted, in a concrete way and not just in your head, by companies using your data to create value in the form of targeted ads and such to keep websites free. I'm waiting.

Why do the rest of HN users have to educate you about the abuses perpetrated by various companies?

Facebook famously did an emotion manipulation experiment on 500k randomly selected users.

There's a trial now alleging that Facebook used profile data to discriminate against older programmers in job postings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178565

Many types of abuses are subtle and remain unknown for the victims.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#152

Post by Dylan16807 »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #59
duxup wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what?

When can Congress pass a law requiring newspapers to delete information it has collected about somebody?

I think you're conflating GDPR with other laws. GDPR isn't about editorial content, it's about data you collect on your users.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#153

Post by jrs95 »

donatj wrote: post #107
dbasedweeb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please if you can, give one example of a European government jailing someone for a thought crime. To save us both time and aggravation please keep the actual definition of “thought crime” in mind, and don’t conflate it with something people actually did .

Within the last week the UK arrested and jailed a man for being a known right wing sympathizer in public. His crime? His mere existence might cause disruption.

To me it seems the reason people are being so pedantic about the meaning of “thought crime” is that they’re actually glad this sort of thing happens. I don’t even agree with Tommy Robinson but this sort of thing is incredibly dangerous. We cannot be free if the state has the power to arrest people who disagree with them. Period. This must be an absolute right regardless of your fee-fees being hurt, or the next thing you know the West will be bankrolling the Israelis to genocide the Palestinians and it’ll be illegal for you to say anything about it.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#154

Post by hodgesrm »

Mahn wrote: post #71
Frondo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said the last time this subject came up, fine. That's totally fine. I don't care which incumbents will be okay in a world with better laws around privacy. I want better laws around privacy. If your startup to unseat Salesforce requires doing tricky or infelicitous shit with my personal data, I don't want you to be able to operate, full stop. Your business shouldn't exist, if its existence requires schlepping o…

What if my startup does not require tricky or infelicitous shit with your personal data, but due to strict regulation I now require to hire a full time lawyer just to redact the company terms and keep up with regulations, and since my company does not yet make any revenue and I have no investors that means a lot more risk on my side, which in turns leads me to not start or not go on with that company at all? And what…

Let's take your argument point-by-point. Let's take the US perspective to start.

a.) You start a business in California and plan to do business that involves EU customers. If you plan on making actaul money you'll hire a lawyer for a reasonably small number of hours to incorporate, ensure you have trademarks covered, get your EULA in order, vet your corporate structure, etc. GDPR is just another thing to add to the hopper--it probably adds an hour or two to the whole process since legal procedures are pretty template driven. Most of the cost will be the lawyer briefing you on what to look out for. (Based on my admittedly quick reading of GDPR summaries.)

b.) There's already a net decreasing trend in startups in the US, but it predates the GDPR by many years. [0] If you are looking for culprits in the legal system you are far more likely to find them in US laws (or lack of them) than anything from Europe.

Taking the EU perspective, well, I've run a small tech business in France and GDPR seems like noise level compared to the other regulations you need to deal with there. (Hiring and firing being the biggest but there are others.)

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/economy/startup-...

Edit: add source

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#155

Post by chomp »

donarb wrote: post #142
ufo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, honest companies that respect the user's data cannot compete with companies that try to profit as much as possible from our it. I see this as similar to regulating pollution. Forbidding companies from cutting costs by polluting the air and the rivers allows for innovation and entrepreneurship in cleaner alternatives.

What? Apple's stance on user data privacy is a selling point in the market. They're not really hurting against other companies.

I hate iOS and love Android, the only thing keeping me buying iPhones is my support for Apple's user privacy compared to Google.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#156

Post by DanBC »

donatj wrote: post #107
dbasedweeb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please if you can, give one example of a European government jailing someone for a thought crime. To save us both time and aggravation please keep the actual definition of “thought crime” in mind, and don’t conflate it with something people actually did .

Within the last week the UK arrested and jailed a man for being a known right wing sympathizer in public. His crime? His mere existence might cause disruption.

Last year he livestreamed[1] inside an English court and called the defendents - before they'd been convicted - muslim child rapists. He was attempting to intimidate witnesses. He threatened violence to the defendents and to some witnesses. He was told to stop. He did not stop.

That action put the trial at risk of collapsing.

He was caught, and given a suspended prison sentence for contempt of court. That judgement is available here: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/publications/committal-for-cont...

Here's the judges words:

> The sentence, therefore, that I pass upon you, taking into account all of those matters that have been placed before me and your admissions entered via Mr. Kovalevsky, is one of three months' imprisonment which will be suspended for a period of 18 months. That will be suspended. There will be no conditions that need to be attached to that suspended sentence, but you should be under no illusions that if you commit any further offence of any kind, and that would include, I would have thought a further contempt of court by similar actions, then that sentence of three months would be activated, and that would be on top of anything else that you were given by any other court.

> In short, Mr. Yaxley-Lennon, turn up at another court, refer to people as "Muslim paedophiles, Muslim rapists" and so on and so forth while trials are ongoing and before there has been a finding by a jury that that is what they are, and you will find yourself inside. Do you understand? Thank you very much.

What did he do after beign given this very clear instruction to not interfere with criminal trials? He did exactly the same thing again, and so his suspended sentence was activated, on top of the new sentence.

Note that he only highlights trials of child sexual abuse involving muslims. He kept very quiet when a senior EDL member was similarly prosecuted.

Here's a decent write up: https://thesecretbarrister.com/2018/05/25/what-has-happened-...

Interfering with ongoing trials and making threats of violence is as far from hought crime as you can get.

[1] There's been an element of "this would never happen in the US", so here's a video of someone being tased because they try to take a camera into court. https://youtu.be/A7U5eJN3hLI?t=2m0s

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#157

Post by DanBC »

jrs95 wrote: post #153
donatj wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within the last week the UK arrested and jailed a man for being a known right wing sympathizer in public. His crime? His mere existence might cause disruption.

To me it seems the reason people are being so pedantic about the meaning of “thought crime” is that they’re actually glad this sort of thing happens. I don’t even agree with Tommy Robinson but this sort of thing is incredibly dangerous. We cannot be free if the state has the power to arrest people who disagree with them. Period. This must be an absolute right regardless of your fee-fees being hurt, or the next thing…

Can you tell me which country allows people to threaten witnesses at trial?Which country allows reporters to call a defendent a muslim child rapist before the verdict is reached?

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#158

Post by jimmaswell »

blub wrote: post #151
jimmaswell wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could say the same thing in reverse about regulations. Every few weeks some regulation ruins the internet even more and finally people are sick of the regulations. Name one way your life was ever negatively impacted, in a concrete way and not just in your head, by companies using your data to create value in the form of targeted ads and such to keep websites free. I'm waiting.

Why do the rest of HN users have to educate you about the abuses perpetrated by various companies? Facebook famously did an emotion manipulation experiment on 500k randomly selected users. There's a trial now alleging that Facebook used profile data to discriminate against older programmers in job postings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178565 Many types of abuses are subtle and remain unknown for the victim…

>Why do the rest of HN users have to educate you about the abuses perpetrated by various companies?

Burden of proof lies on the one making the claim.

>Facebook famously did an emotion manipulation experiment on 500k randomly selected users.

I don't really find that abusive or ethically troubling.

>There's a trial now alleging that Facebook used profile data to discriminate against older programmers in job postings:

Maybe this age discrimination, which was already illegal on its own, wouldn't have been possible to commit if the data didn't exist in the first place. That doesn't mean it's the tool's fault or that the tool should be illegal.

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#159

Post by jakelazaroff »

OskarS wrote: post #139
jakelazaroff wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be under the impression that the act of communicating thoughts in some way precludes it from being "thoughtcrime". This is a ridiculously narrow and pedantic definition; we can't read minds. The term as it's generally used means being punished for expressing a particular viewpoint.

It's not a narrow and pedantic difference at all! It's the entire thing! You seem to be under some mistaken impression that you can say whatever you want whenever you want in the United States. You can't. There are many categories of speech that are banned in the US as well: if I think to myself "Tom Smith is a liar and a drunkard and he's cheating on his wife", that's perfectly fine, but if I communicate that to a l…

I'm not under that impression; I've spoken a lot here on HN about the limits of free speech. Legal limitations on freedom of speech almost always stem from pragmatic consequences, e.g. unfair damage to Tom Smith's reputation. When people speak of "thoughtcrime", they refer to cases in which expressing an idea itself is seen as reason for punishment, regardless of whether any consequences occur.

Here's my question: under your definition, how could "thoughtcrime" possibly be detected, let alone punished?

Re: USA needs law 'a lot like GDPR' says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

#160

Post by jrs95 »

OskarS wrote: post #139
jakelazaroff wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be under the impression that the act of communicating thoughts in some way precludes it from being "thoughtcrime". This is a ridiculously narrow and pedantic definition; we can't read minds. The term as it's generally used means being punished for expressing a particular viewpoint.

It's not a narrow and pedantic difference at all! It's the entire thing! You seem to be under some mistaken impression that you can say whatever you want whenever you want in the United States. You can't. There are many categories of speech that are banned in the US as well: if I think to myself "Tom Smith is a liar and a drunkard and he's cheating on his wife", that's perfectly fine, but if I communicate that to a l…

There was no mind reading in 1984, this argument just doesn’t make any sense. As was pointed out above, the French pro-Palestine activists who were jailed didn’t communicate anti-Semitism directly. By simple being anti-Israel it was assumed that they are antisemites and this criminals. Technically this was done by saying their T-shirts were anti-Semitic, but they weren’t in any absolute sense. It all came down to what their thinking was assumed to be.

Comparing this to libel/slander is just absurd. It’s not a slightly different category, it’s such a massive difference that Europe has essentially outlawed aspects of political speech, which is the most important aspect of freedom of speech to begin with.

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