Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

gpdp.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 614 posts

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#211

Post by jollybean »

Noughmad wrote: post #173
majormajor wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How far does "separating corporate interests from governmental ones" go? Can the government purchase a car? Hire a private corporation to build a road? Hire a consulting company to check the security of their (now-free-and-without-a-support-contract FOSS?) computer setup?

It's actually quite simple. The government can buy things services from specific providers, but it cannot force you to buy services from specific providers. In other words, it can buy BMWs for government use, but it cannot say "you have to buy a BMW to enter the municipal office". The same applies to websites. If a government website uses Google analytics, it is essentially requiring you to do business with a specifi…

This analogy does not apply.

The gov. is using some service and therefore some citizen data is subject to the T&C's and that's it.

If Google were a German or UK company it would be the same thing - everyone subject to those T&C's.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#212

Post by whimsicalism »

leephillips wrote: post #24

Good. US citizens should be, at least, disappointed that their government is so bad at protecting their privacy, that US law is so far behind the times. To those companies and people who find these EU decisions baffling or inconvenient: tough. If you had had respect for your users this would not be an issue. You would already not be spying on them. To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking p…

An equivalent regulation to the one banning GA in the US would not ban GA because the data centers are in the US.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#214

Post by adamrezich »

clairity wrote: post #192
adamrezich wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones I don't think you comprehend the scope of what you're suggesting. I work for a school district and I'm currently migrating our system from using one commercial bus routing service to another... using Windows, SQL Server, Teams, etc. from Microsoft... using a laptop, dock, three monitors, keyboard, an…

it's not really aimed at governments, so much as corporations that feel entitled to sneak in ancillary interests into their products, like surveilling the public. basically, it's to force companies like microsoft to remove all that other shit and provide just the core software, if they want access to government largess. this has beneficial externalities for us, the residents of said governments.

sure, and like I said, I agree completely. but you can't just say "i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones", unless you're proposing that all corporations should be state-owned and -operated, and that's not really a viable solution, plus it introduces a whole host of other problems.

but even if you just mean to say "government should not share citizens' data with corporations", well, there are presently two (until our license with one is up at the end of summer) separate corporations that both know where every kid in my school district lives, what their special ed needs are, what their parents names are, what their parents' contact information is, if they live between multiple households, and so forth, because that is the explicit purchase of their business, and that why we purchased their software. the same goes for another piece of SaaS we recently purchased a license to involving food service management for the school system. when designing the data export we opted to not follow the part of the schema that wants SSNs for the students (because why would they need that?!), but that might not be the case for other districts using the same software.

my point is there are a lot more interconnected corporate software services sharing citizen data at play in contemporary government systems than you probably think, and, once again, even though I agree with your position with regards to sharing citizen data with corporations... I think that ship might've pretty much sailed sometime in the past few decades.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#215

Post by jakubp »

minsc_and_boo wrote: post #204
solar-ice wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At present, there is no legal basis for a company covered by the GDPR to send personal data to the US or a US-owned company. The US needs to repeal the CLOUD Act, and maybe one or two other things, in order to make this situation work again.

Is that for US- or Italian-based users? What if this is an Italian company running a global website with data from non-GDPR country users?

GDPR covers EU citizens. I don't think it says anything about non-EU citizens.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#216

Post by alsetmusic »

abarwick wrote: post #123
clairity wrote: post #117

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of government. it’s literally as important as the separation of church and state. in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones, in all facets of civic life (e.g., campaign finance).

This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, and more expensive to the tax payer. There’s a lot of good these products can provide, granted they are properly audited and have high security requirements.

I didn’t read it as government can’t use commercial products. Just that the corps couldn’t influence politics. But I’m not the OP, so I can’t speak to what was intended.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#217

Post by gnuj3 »

plandis wrote: post #213

The US should economically retaliate. GDPR and these other regulations in the EU exist because EU cannot stomach the fact that they got beat on tech and instead of innovating they are regulating to try and even the playing field.

Hmmm, or maybe they exist because EU has a little bit more respect for privacy of its citizens than US?

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#218

Post by tannhaeuser »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #190
ronsor wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an American, but I occasionally use an EU VPN. I don't understand how EU residents can tolerate the number of cookie/privacy/GDPR/whatever popups every site has, even on the sites of EU companies.

We Europeans are generally used to do whatever the government tell us. We don't have the same culture as Americans. Don't get me wrong, you had a pretty bad deal as well: without much fanfare, your government grew up so much in the last 200 years that it became the largest employer in the world. You pay loads of taxes (even more than several EU countries) and get very little benefits. And yet, I'm sure that if we wil…

Err, just to avoid further misunderstanding: I'm pro-GDPR ;) and think it's right to confront users with the hydra behind the crap on the web. What I think has destroyed the web is attention economy, monopolies, the race to the bottom, and lack of incentive for quality content.

Agree though that Europeans could do with more libertarianism and less trust in state; it's something that's been a big issue for me since at least CoVid hysteria.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#220

Post by stjohnswarts »

whimsicalism wrote: post #212
leephillips wrote: post #24

Good. US citizens should be, at least, disappointed that their government is so bad at protecting their privacy, that US law is so far behind the times. To those companies and people who find these EU decisions baffling or inconvenient: tough. If you had had respect for your users this would not be an issue. You would already not be spying on them. To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking p…

An equivalent regulation to the one banning GA in the US would not ban GA because the data centers are in the US.

No one is asking for exactly the same law, just the same results: more privacy.
Post reply on HN