U.S. lawmakers call for privacy legislation after Reuters report on Amazon

nothing is going to happen, especially considering the complaints are related to Alexa recordings. NSA/DOJ love the idea of having recording devices they can hack/subpoena whenever they want, they are basically opt-in 1984 telescreens. All Amazon has to do is remind Congress behind closed doors that they are an extension of the surveillance state

Re: U.S. lawmakers call for privacy legislation after Reuters report on Amazon

#6

Post by encryptluks2 » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

US lawmakers can't even take on robocallers and spammers, so I don't have much faith in their ability. When they are willing to actually impose harsh criminal liability on companies and employees like they do for citizens, then things like this won't be an issue.

Re: U.S. lawmakers call for privacy legislation after Reuters report on Amazon

#7

Post by maxerickson » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

ancode wrote: post #4

If only they had the power to actually enact legislation

This sort of cynicism is confusing. Bringing attention to an issue is an obvious component of enacting legislation when there are many different topics competing for that attention in the legislature.

If it was a resolution passed by the full house calling on Amazon to be nice guys, well then okay, be as cynical as you want about that.

Re: U.S. lawmakers call for privacy legislation after Reuters report on Amazon

#8

Post by loteck » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

Despite the day to day situation in congress, it seems inevitable that in the short to mid term, the US will have to stand up new privacy legislation in order to maintain participation in the digital economy.

The question will be how they define privacy, and who will write the law.

If activism doesn't interest you and you're looking for a reasonable shortcut, follow the work/proposals of Sen. Ron Wyden. He employs actual expert technologists who advise him on policy, and their expertise frequently shows up in the legislation he proposes.

Re: U.S. lawmakers call for privacy legislation after Reuters report on Amazon

#9

Post by putlake » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

The cartoon playing out in the media once again reminds me of Gell-Mann Amnesia because I used to work at Alexa. The lengths that they go to for preserving consumer privacy actually seemed absurd to me. Alexa engineers and applied scientists' lives would have been much easier if they didn't take customer privacy -- and their right to request and delete their data -- so seriously.

Yes, they are lobbying against regulation. But that's because no business wants to have to deal with 50 different laws in 50 states. They're saying let's have one federal regulation so it's easier to comply. It's not that they don't care about privacy -- they very much do. In fact, all these large companies want regulation because it strengthens their moat. A startup won't have the resources to comply with such regulations on Day 1. They just want it to be reasonable because dealing with different state-level regulations is too much.

Re: U.S. lawmakers call for privacy legislation after Reuters report on Amazon

#10

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #5

> Internal documents reveal how a former aide to Joe Biden helped the tech giant build a lobbying juggernaut that has gutted legislation nothing is going to happen, especially considering the complaints are related to Alexa recordings. NSA/DOJ love the idea of having recording devices they can hack/subpoena whenever they want, they are basically opt-in 1984 telescreens. All Amazon has to do is remind Congress behind…

It's really interesting to see, on the one hand, the claim from the former Alexa engineer that they're not doing this and take privacy seriously, and on the other hand, the claim that they're government surveillance devices.

Because it's possible that they could both be true. The engineers take privacy seriously, think they're preserving it well, and then the man from the government comes in and PRISMs their servers and only he and one other person at the whole company knows about it.

But obviously privacy legislation isn't going to fix that.