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Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

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Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#51
post #41

Is personal information really a kind of property, that can be stolen? If it is, aren’t we doing this all the time, any time we perceive anything about anyone? How is this different than taking a picture of someone? The image is owned by the photographer, not the subject(s) according to current laws. if I meet someone on the street, and record their name, the conversation we had, and the location where I met them, an…

> How is this different than taking a picture of someone? The image is owned by the photographer, not the subject(s) according to current laws.

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public.

Meanwhile, advertisements and depictions of people who have unlicensed but copyrighted images tattoos on their person open up those who distribute media with their likeness to lawsuits by the owners of the copyrighted material.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#52
> There is no reason why any person on Capitol Hill should vote against this.

If I were an elected official, one reason why I would be very cautious about voting for this is that, if we make allowing a data breach a felony punishable by imprisonment, it is likely to have a somewhat chilling effect on the likelihood of engineers to start new companies where they as founders would be potentially prosecutable for such failures.

I share the author's stated frustrations, and agree that jail time for gross data-related negligence would be right at least in some cases, but it's not the simple problem-simple solution issue he's making it out to be.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#53

> There is no reason why any person on Capitol Hill should vote against this. If I were an elected official, one reason why I would be very cautious about voting for this is that, if we make allowing a data breach a felony punishable by imprisonment, it is likely to have a somewhat chilling effect on the likelihood of engineers to start new companies where they as founders would be potentially prosecutable for such f…

> it is likely to have a somewhat chilling effect on the likelihood of engineers to start new companies where they as founders would be potentially prosecutable for such failures

You seem to think that's a bad thing, for some reason.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#54
post #40
post #26

Pitchfork mobs dictating policy, that is why you don't elect an ex state attorney general to the legislative branch: prosecution and grandstanding is all they know. Also the principle concept of "stealing your data" is more ludicrous than "stealing" in the copyright sense; that data is meta data and it's not yours, it was generated by machines you don't own and have no claim over.

I’m really enjoying watching tech transform before my eyes from regulatory optimism to hardened regulatory pessimism.

Yeah let's restrict, ban and kill every new idea in it's crib, that'll surly make the world a better place, I'm happy you're enjoying your time in this entrepreneur community.

Let's also make sure all future gains are made by the lawyers and other middle men so that world peace will finally be at hand.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#55
post #54
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really enjoying watching tech transform before my eyes from regulatory optimism to hardened regulatory pessimism.

Yeah let's restrict, ban and kill every new idea in it's crib, that'll surly make the world a better place, I'm happy you're enjoying your time in this entrepreneur community. Let's also make sure all future gains are made by the lawyers and other middle men so that world peace will finally be at hand.

Considering right now companies like Facebook are very actively making the world a worse place I would say this would be a strong move towards something better.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#56
post #3

“Oops, we didn’t notice, but it’s another to be a company like Facebook that takes your private messages and sells that data. It takes your address, it takes your interest, it takes your browsing history and sells that to people without your permission Wydens.” Does anyone know what context he refers to? I wasn’t aware that Facebook ever directly sold private messages. Same for address, interest...

They don't sell your private messages. What they actually do is just give them away to business partners. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-priva... > Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.

No, they didn’t “give it away”. Please let’s stick to facts. The news is being extremely dishonest. Apps that you could send FB messages through could see the message (how else would it work?) And it was explicitly opt-in, users had to authorize it.

“Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our API provided partners with access to the person’s messages in order to power this type of feature.”

https://www.thewrap.com/members/2018/12/19/facebook-admits-n...

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#57
post #49
post #41

Is personal information really a kind of property, that can be stolen? If it is, aren’t we doing this all the time, any time we perceive anything about anyone? How is this different than taking a picture of someone? The image is owned by the photographer, not the subject(s) according to current laws. if I meet someone on the street, and record their name, the conversation we had, and the location where I met them, an…

> Is personal information really a kind of property, that can be stolen? If it is, aren’t we doing this all the time, any time we perceive anything about anyone? We are flexible and smarter than Vulcans. Something doesn't have to be necessarily expressible into a single, unambiguous universal formula to be made illegal. We can e.g. allow people to perceive things about other people in their brains (or even notebooks)…

Rule of law demands it be clear what is and is not illegal. Make it illegal to film people in public and the guy who made the Rodney King tape is going to jail.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#58
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah let's restrict, ban and kill every new idea in it's crib, that'll surly make the world a better place, I'm happy you're enjoying your time in this entrepreneur community. Let's also make sure all future gains are made by the lawyers and other middle men so that world peace will finally be at hand.

Considering right now companies like Facebook are very actively making the world a worse place I would say this would be a strong move towards something better.

Facebook is people and people suck. Facebook is also a scapegoat and to the contrary of what a resentful media industry would like you to believe the sum of their contributions to the world is overwhelmingly positive

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#59
post #22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don’t know about these issues or don’t care. Also how do you know what company uses your data in bad ways? There are probably plenty of others who do shady stuff you never hear about. We need privacy laws so products that are on the market can be safely used. Otherwise let’s abolish food safety rules and tell people just not to eat at places where food with salmonella gets sold.

I think comparing food safety to data safety is comparing unlike types and levels of safety. No one has ever died from targeted advertising.

>No one has ever died from targeted advertising.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-go...

Targeted advertising can be and is used to target people at their most vulnerable. There almost certainly is a death toll.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#60
post #54
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really enjoying watching tech transform before my eyes from regulatory optimism to hardened regulatory pessimism.

Yeah let's restrict, ban and kill every new idea in it's crib, that'll surly make the world a better place, I'm happy you're enjoying your time in this entrepreneur community. Let's also make sure all future gains are made by the lawyers and other middle men so that world peace will finally be at hand.

Can you elaborate on the sum of facebooks contributions being positive?

Not disagreeing here, I just don’t know what contributions you are referring to.

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