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The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

nytimes.com

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Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#41

Post by einpoklum »

If the US government protected your food, people would not be sold so much crap full of carcinogenic additives or cooked up in chemical vats.

As for cars - the government protects car _manufacturers_, if at all. And that's also in the form of "anti-protection" of public transport...

Finally - how would the US government protect your data if it's intent on getting its hands on a copy of as much of it as it can, then mining it and searching it for various purposes? (Snowden revelations)

PS - The firewall blocks me :-(

Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#42

Post by notacoward »

temac wrote: post #28
jonahx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not to protect our Food What system would you prefer to protect your food?

If you are any good you can afford food taster who work for you and die if the food was not good. If you are not good enough and are forced to work as a food taster, bad for you, but that's just survival of the fittest and will eventually make the human race stronger.

What's scary is that there are plenty of people - especially here - who would say that without meaning it as satire.

Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#43

Post by jakeogh »

Despegar wrote: post #20
djohnston wrote: post #17

These days I can't help but read every NYT piece as a desperate plea to the govt for a rescue operation from its tech usurper. Also, the govt is demonstrably worse at protecting information than any FAANG, and they are all abiding by GDPR which is the right regulation IMO

GDPR is literally the government protecting people's privacy and data. That's what this article is advocating for.

It's gov regulation of what one can remember, with some forced speech thrown in.

Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#44

Post by notacoward »

mbostleman wrote: post #12

Because our food and our cars are something made by someone else that we will buy in the future, at which point the government’s involvement ceases. “Our” data is something that is generated by us, about us, and is ongoing. The last thing some of us want is the government even having access to it much less charged with “protecting” it.

This "directionality" is the first thing I thought of too. Unlike these other things, data originates with the consumer. Also, the transfer between consumer and platform usually does not include a financial component so it's not "commerce" in the usual sense. The issues involved are just as important despite these differences, the need (however great or small) for regulation doesn't change either, but such differences definitely affect what kinds of regulation might be appropriate or how they might be applied.

Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#45

Post by blotter_paper »

temac wrote: post #28
jonahx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not to protect our Food What system would you prefer to protect your food?

If you are any good you can afford food taster who work for you and die if the food was not good. If you are not good enough and are forced to work as a food taster, bad for you, but that's just survival of the fittest and will eventually make the human race stronger.

Lulzy parody. Here's an actual take: I would like to accept the risk of eating a pufferfish if I want to. If somebody wants to sell me a prepared pufferfish, and they haven't been authorized to do so by the government, I would like to make my own decision about whether I trust that person to prepare a pufferfish correctly. If I die from eating that pufferfish, I'm okay with that; I accepted the risk. I want the right to commit suicide on purpose, and I want the right to take risks which might result in my unindented but reasonably likely death. I don't see why a bureaucrat should have anything to do with me making potentially dumb decisions and accepting the consequences for myself.

Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#46

Post by eeZah7Ux »

bognition wrote: post #2

Probably because the threat is relatively new. It took hundreds of thousands of deaths and decades to get us to the current mandated safety standards for cars. It’s going to take a while for tech to catch up.

And yet Churchill saw how Turing's work on Enigma was promising and gave him a lot of support.

There are many other examples.

Politicians are perfectly capable of understanding the social impact of technology... when they need to.

Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#49

Post by mch82 »

Fakira wrote: post #6

Because some of us want our government not to protect our Food and Cars as well. Data is one area where humanity has made the fastest progress compared to Cars and Food.

Is it true regulation slows progress?

History shows regulation speeds technical progress.

    - Manhattan Project
    - Apollo program
    - Public university research
    - ARPANET
    - Aircraft
    - Spacecraft
    ...

Re: The Government Protects Our Food and Cars. Why Not Our Data?

#50

Post by djohnston »

Despegar wrote: post #20
djohnston wrote: post #17

These days I can't help but read every NYT piece as a desperate plea to the govt for a rescue operation from its tech usurper. Also, the govt is demonstrably worse at protecting information than any FAANG, and they are all abiding by GDPR which is the right regulation IMO

GDPR is literally the government protecting people's privacy and data. That's what this article is advocating for.

In practice, aren't FAANG giving same protections to Americans? I know they didn't have to, but I thought they would since it would be easier to maintain in long run
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