Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#221

Post by JackRabbitSlim » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

bcheung wrote: post #132

nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

Some problematic scenarios: - How do you identify what is customer data? There may be information stored in logs somewhere. Do you now have to write log parsers to extract personal data for everything that previously you just stored for general debugging and security purposes? How do you even know all the permutations of personal data that came be stored in the logs. There are possibly infinite possible ways personal…

ALL of those scenarios are only problematic because the design of these megalithic services didn't even consider things like the basic privacy of their livestock/user base.

Think this law is going to allow me to require 7-11 to delete me from their DVR records? Not part of the business model, it's a matter of security. Nice straw man though.

Their terrible system design can't handle "FROM PornPrefs DELETE SSN,Name,Address WHERE SSN LIKE "999-11-2222"". They brought this on themselves.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#222

Post by mattnewton » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #108

jassmith87 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its intended to fuck over Facebook. If you're charging for a service you can simply offer a discount for allowing data collection after bumping prices for everyone by the same amount, Facebook however isn't charging. Facebook can't offer a discount on free, and they can't just force only users who opt-out to go pay (because that falls afoul of the first quote you put). Basically this puts Facebook in a real tight sit…

They can start charging everyone and offer a "data-share discount" back to free.

They would survive but I imagine that would either cause enourmous sign-up friction, or if they hide it too well, might run afoul of the law?

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#223

Post by matthewmcg » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #172

nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

> - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. This is something I object to. It's just fundamentally stupid and doesn't make sense. The entire premise of free exchange is that I give you my services in exchange for something of value of yours. Making it illegal to withhold services if you don't give up your data is crazy. The only reason…

I think the legislative motivation is a belief that people do not (and perhaps cannot) understand the potential cost of consenting to data sharing. Without that understanding, can you really have a meaningful consent?

In this view, a company offering a discount in exchange for sharing is inherently deceptive.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#224

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #222

StavrosK wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can start charging everyone and offer a "data-share discount" back to free.

They would survive but I imagine that would either cause enourmous sign-up friction, or if they hide it too well, might run afoul of the law?

Yeah, it would not go well for them for sure.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#225

Post by holy_city » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #176

calithrowaway wrote: post #166

How is this not a violation to the first amendment? Does the first amendment not extend as follows: (?) As a citizen don't I have the right to create a business and privately take notes on whatever I'd like to about my customers? If i run a dry cleaners and take notes about my customers, should I be obligated to disclose these notes or even the existence of these notes to my customers? I don't see why extending the d…

>I feel like the state constitution granted right to privacy does not supersede the federally mandated right to freedom of speech Gonna have to stop you there. The First Amendment doesn't mandate a right to free speech. It only prevents Congress from passing laws abridging that right. There's nothing, Constitutionally speaking, preventing states from doing so. Edit: nope, Apparently I'm wrong on this one.

>There's nothing, Constitutionally speaking, preventing states from doing so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitlow_v._New_York

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#226

Post by filoleg » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

mrmuagi wrote: post #201

ashelmire wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. > - Businesses can, however, offer “financial incentives” for being allowed to collect data. This just means your service always costs money, but you can refund the full amount for allowing you to collect data.

Is there a difference between offering, say, $12 monthly opt-out & $10 plan for opt-in vs flat $12 with a $2 discount to opt-in?

Yeah, the latter seems like it would involve more bureaucracy than the former. I don't want to sound fatalistic, but I cannot shake off the feeling that it was almost definitely intended.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#227

Post by chroma » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #57

ohduran wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Imagine if you said the same thing with taxes. "Gee, why do I have to pay taxes differently in every country?" Well, because that's what you have to do if you want to do business there. You're not forced to do anything in here if you don't want to; if the opportunity is worthy, others will take your place. Same with the laws, especially those that remove agency from the users.

The tax problem could be solved by requiring a shipping manifest, including declared value, and applying taxes at the shipping carrier level. This would make more sense anyway since the delivery carriers have to establish a physical presence.

It's absurdly easy to get around these laws. For example: I had a motherboard shipped from China a few months ago. The shipper lied on manifest and claimed he was sending the motherboard back to me after repairing it. Neither the US government nor China got any duties or taxes on that shipment.

Lying on manifests also lets people import quasi-legal things such as cell phone jammers. The manifest will usually say something like "laser pointer" or "wifi repeater".

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#228

Post by behringer » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #142

DaveFr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a hypo or a real example?

As far as I know it's a hypothetical, but it is very much the kind of thing that could happen. Regulations don't always align across political borders, which means there's the possibility there being no way to comply with both.

This is what you call putting the cart before the horse.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#229

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #199

JohnFen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will that be banned as well? I sure hope so. > Many companies, including Google would have to significantly change their pricing model if so Good. It would be even better if they have to change their business model.

I don't understand this mentality. If someone is fine giving a company some information, and the company uses that to give them a better product, where is the harm? And what right do you have to stop those two parties from voluntarily exchanging goods and services?

If I am voluntarily giving information to a company, and have been completely informed of all the purposes that it will be put to (especially which companies it may be transmitted to), then I have no problem with it at all, personally. And I particularly would not be inclined to say that others can't decide this for themselves.

The problem is the rampant data collection that is engaged in without my permission and/or knowledge, and that companies often forward that data to others.

Targeted/behavioral advertising in particular has monetized that abuse. I would be thrilled if that business model dies an agonizing death.

The amount of abuse on that score has been so extreme, and going on for so long, that strong legislation is clearly the only remaining option to at least stem the worst of it.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#230

Post by morganherlocker » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #159

morganherlocker wrote: post #75

Lot's of (mis)information floating around regarding CCPA. I recommend taking the time to read the actual text[1]. The text is not particularly long or dense. There has been a lot of speculation about complex compliance procedures, but the main thrust of the bill is to provide users with information about how their data is collected, who it is shared with, and the rights to prevent certain types of selling or sharing…

> (4) Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise his or her right of free speech, or exercise another right provided for by law. Well, thanks for the link. For example, informing people that a user is located in a dormitory in The Netherlands sounds like free speech to me. So is location tracking information exempt from deletion?

Location data is explicitly called out as sensitive personal information in the text of the bill, so it's definitely not exempt as a category of data.

> (e) Many businesses collect personal information from California consumers. They may know where a consumer lives and how many children a consumer has, how fast a consumer drives, a consumer’s personality, sleep habits, biometric and health information, financial information, precise geolocation information, and social networks, to name a few categories.

As to how this will interact with free speech - in this case, speech of the company - is a bit of an open question. One of the assumptions of the bill though is that selling telemetry data about a consumer is not a form of protected speech, and that adding some restrictions to this practice is reasonable.