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Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

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Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#421

Post by jltsiren »

WanderPanda wrote: post #293
wiz21c wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As said in the article, we already share our data with the supermarket, google, etc and whatever other systems that binds all of them together. In that situation, I'm happy that government has access to the same data because it gives it a way to balance the private sector power. Now what is needed is the ability to opt out.

Wow people really forgot that privacy is all about privacy with respect to the government because they are the ones with the monopoly on violence. It is tragic that people think private firms could ever be as evil as governments

That attitude makes sense if you come from a low-trust society where the state apparatus thinks it's running an empire. Especially if the country is large and actively trying to reshape the world.

Things look different in a small high-trust country with multiple political parties. Because the country is too weak and insignificant to change the world, the government tends to focus on administering the country. Because there is a lot of trust in the society, the people who want to serve in the government are usually ideologically motivated to serve the best interests of the public. It's not a particularly lucrative or high-status career, so people with other motivations tend to go elsewhere. And while people may disagree on what exactly are the best interests of the public, there are many viable political parties to choose from.

Private firms are allowed to be evil in the sense that they can put their private interests ahead of public interests. Most of them are. And because they are private, the public has only limited means to regulate them when they misbehave blatantly. They can't, for example, vote the directors and shareholders out and replace them with people who promise to serve public interests.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#422

Post by ModernMech »

WanderPanda wrote: post #293
wiz21c wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As said in the article, we already share our data with the supermarket, google, etc and whatever other systems that binds all of them together. In that situation, I'm happy that government has access to the same data because it gives it a way to balance the private sector power. Now what is needed is the ability to opt out.

Wow people really forgot that privacy is all about privacy with respect to the government because they are the ones with the monopoly on violence. It is tragic that people think private firms could ever be as evil as governments

Maybe people forgot because in recent times, corporate malfeasance has been a far bigger problem in people's lives than government overreach.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#423

Post by greatgib »

What is very scary, is the normalization of the surveillance society with crazy things like that being accepted/ignored by most citizens.

It is getting worse and worse all the time. Curiously, 20 or 30 years ago people would have being angry and governments would have had to resign as even suggesting such privacy killer things would be offensive. Now most people would not even care...

Just to let you imagine the future, in France, with the current 'ecological bullshit', some idiots suggested that households could have a quota of consumption of everything to save the planet: that much water, electricity, food...

That will be more easy with shops transmitting all your shopping info directly to the gov...

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#424

Post by axg11 »

mdmglr wrote: post #225
axg11 wrote: post #81

There's a general reaction that big government is bad, more tracking is bad. Norway ranks highly in most metrics of development and quality of life. Perhaps in a high trust society this type of data collection is a positive.

What do you mean by “high trust society”? The people trust the government agencies? I agree data collection can be positive. I think next they should start collecting any tweet, comment, or text file citizens write so they can see how good the public education system is doing. Actually the state should run an SSO service. Every computer, phone, tv and device must use the states SSO so that the person behind the devic…

High trust society, as in: there is a high degree of trust between any two random people that they are likely to act in each other’s benefit when it comes to societal issues. That is fundamentally how I view taxes. We’re contributing to a common fund for common good.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#425

Post by rglullis »

guerrilla wrote: post #419
rglullis wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies are illegal if established through improper conduct and anti-competitive practices. The exceptions would be for State-owned or State-granted monopolies... Amazon is neither of those. > States fall for many reasons, but primarily causes are war and revolution So, the way to get rid of Amazon would be to get the Government to simply start a judicial process against a company. The way to get rid of the Govern…

> Monopolies are illegal if You're moving the goalpost and still wrong [1]. I don't know why you want to talk about this so badly if you don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, as I said, it's discretionary regulation and power comes in many forms. > The way to get rid of the Government would require bloodshed. You don't need to get rid of "the government" if you control the state and everyone's minds via lobby…

You are the one that brought the thing about monopolies, and you still haven't brought up any strong argument that Amazon has a de facto monopoly. And you also are going to have an even harder time to make a case that Amazon should be convicted for anti-competitive practices.

(Also, let's not get into the fact that the news are about changes in Denmark and you are using an wikipedia link to argue about US Antitrust Law. The world does not spin around D.C)

So, yeah, we can drop the talk about monopolies.

> power comes in many forms.

I'm not arguing about power by itself. I'm arguing about how dangerous an institution can be if they abuse the power they do have. You and I might dislike all the data collecting from Amazon (and Google et caterva), but none of them can put me in jail. The Government can. And since you want to think of terms of American politics: think of all the abuses that were made in the name of "The War on Terror" and "The War of Drugs". Don't forget the Obama administration getting the IRS to go after Tea Party organizations.

Mind you, this is no way a defense of the corporations, and I already have an idea of how I would like to see people fighting the concentration of power [0]. But I find weird seeing people who understand how bad it can be when power gets too concentrated in the hands of a few, and yet they just want to put it all in the hands of the government, the one entity they have no recourse against. To me, those wishing to give the government more power than it already has shows a case of naivety at best and a serious authoritarian inclination at worst.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#426

Post by drekk »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #331
rsolva wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I have started to think we shouldn't sell any type of hard drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, in grocery stores. Why not sell these products in separate specialized stores, like we already do with Vinmonopolet?

> any type of hard drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, in grocery stores. I volunteered at an addiction and methadone clinic for awhile. I recommend you try it then come talk about what “hard drugs” are.

Alcohol kills more people than "harder" drugs and is much more acceptable within polite society. Same situation with tobacco, which also happens to be one of the most difficult substances to quit that we know of. Your average patient suffering from substance abuse will have an easier time quitting most drugs in comparison to nicotine. Given intravenously, nicotine is 5-10x more potent in producing a euphoric effect than cocaine.

Heroin, meth, etc. might kill you quicker and be more unpleasant to administer with more noticeable withdrawals, but if we're talking about ultimate cost to society they're not the worst offenders.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#427

Post by Barrin92 »

giantg2 wrote: post #14

"SSB claims they want a less time-consuming way of collecting and analysing household consumption statistics in order to inform tax policy, social assistance and child allowance." Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can create policies to control your behavior to our liking.

that's the point of any policy by definition. All policies do is create either negative or positive incentives that deter or encourage behavior respectively, I don't see why you ought to do it on the basis of bad data rather than good data.

When you get child tax credits or pay a carbon tax very explicitly the point is to control what you do, that's not new, secret or particularly sinister.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#428

Post by mejutoco »

WanderPanda wrote: post #293
wiz21c wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As said in the article, we already share our data with the supermarket, google, etc and whatever other systems that binds all of them together. In that situation, I'm happy that government has access to the same data because it gives it a way to balance the private sector power. Now what is needed is the ability to opt out.

Wow people really forgot that privacy is all about privacy with respect to the government because they are the ones with the monopoly on violence. It is tragic that people think private firms could ever be as evil as governments

I do not understand the tragic aspect. Private firms have had similar powers in specific contexts, and may partner with the government, so they seem to have the same potential consequences.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#429

Post by pjlegato »

jltsiren wrote: post #421
WanderPanda wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow people really forgot that privacy is all about privacy with respect to the government because they are the ones with the monopoly on violence. It is tragic that people think private firms could ever be as evil as governments

That attitude makes sense if you come from a low-trust society where the state apparatus thinks it's running an empire. Especially if the country is large and actively trying to reshape the world. Things look different in a small high-trust country with multiple political parties. Because the country is too weak and insignificant to change the world, the government tends to focus on administering the country. Because…

Even if one happens to approve of the conditions under which personal data is being managed _right now_, even if one happens to approve of the current administrators and thinks they're entirely benevolent, there is no way to know who will be in charge of that data in the future, or what ends it will be used for. Once it's out there, it's out there forever.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#430

Post by peoplefromibiza »

amenghra wrote: post #404
nostromo95 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invasive to whom ? I'm certainly not going to be feeling outraged by medical records disclosure when I'm dead. Do with me what you will when I'm gone--I care more about my experience when I'm alive.

Hypothetical situation: how would you feel if your medical records and used to calculate health risks for your children/other family members and refuse specific insurances (or make them more expensive)?

Non hypothetically, if your parents have a genetic condition that can be passed onto their offspring, in my country you are checked against them to try prevent them or catch them in the early stages.

For free (payed by the taxes)

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