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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#231

Post by solar-ice »

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?

You can find the scope of the GDPR in Article 3 of the GDPR: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/

Read these as individual clauses; the Regulation applies if any one of them is met. An Italian company serving customers anywhere in the world is covered by the first clause.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#232

Post by mhitza »

judge2020 wrote: post #197
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…

> You would already not be spying on them. Can you point me to the part of the ban that says it's about protecting users from "spying in general" and not "protecting users from spying by US companies instead of EU companies that EU member states can obtain PII from at any time"?

> "protecting users from spying by US companies instead of EU companies that EU member states can obtain PII from at any time"

I want to quantify this quote. Each EU country can spy on its citizens to similar extent as 3 letter agencies from the US, but in a less analytical/big meta data way (part of it being the US brain draining EU countries for those working in tech).

However, if EU country A wants to have access to its citizens user date on website X located in EU country B, is not an easy process; involving a strict judicial system between those countries.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#233

Post by lovich »

clairity wrote: post #203
mmanfrin wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ah, the ad hominem, never a good sign for the proceeding argument. An ad hominem means using an insult as the basis for rejecting an argument , e.g. 'that is wrong because you are [attack]'. Saying an argument is naive and then explaining why is not an ad hominem.

arguments can have multiple lines of reasoning, one of which can be an ad hominem all by itself.

A car has multiple parts, but it’s still difficult to use if you only use/look at each one separately

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#234

Post by Phrodo_00 »

Arainach wrote: post #206
Noughmad wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the government takes your data and runs an analysis on an old IBM mainframe, are they forcing you to do business with IBM?

Is this a bad faith argument? I can't see how the difference of google having the data vs the government (or whatever entity you interacted directly with) is so easy to miss.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#235

Post by einpoklum »

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.

> are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365

Are they though? Do you know this for a fact? I mean, sure, MS Office is very popular in government settings, but does this really go beyond the possibility of just replacing it with LibreOffice if they so decided?

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#236

Post by daniel-cussen »

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.

Russia has that. Just typewriters and stationary.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#237

Post by SahAssar »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #169
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…

If I thought the EU was doing this to protect privacy I'd be all for it. They really don't give a fuck as seen by ever bit of legislation they are pushing for. Yes I also do understand that the EU in general view privacy from the government as illegal rather then a right.

The EU has both enacted the most promising and some of the most backwards, stupid and regressive privacy laws. I'm guessing that it depends on what representative guides it and forms it through the various processes, and what the courts do with it. Overall I think they have moved the needle towards more privacy.

> Yes I also do understand that the EU in general view privacy from the government as illegal rather then a right.

That is absolutely not true, at least not by enough people for anyone to be able to make that sort of blanket statement. I'd also wonder what reasons you have for thinking that, it seems to me like all of the 5-eyes used each other to spy on themselves (besides all of the things done by normal police, various levels of federal police, etc.)

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#238

Post by killjoywashere »

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…

> cannot force you to buy services from specific providers

But government can impose requirements, like TAA compliance (1) and SHB requirements (2) on its service vendors, forcing those vendors to purchase from a fairly constrained number of hardware providers.

https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/Business%20Docs/ev...

https://www.afcea.org/site/sites/default/files/files/2-ColLi...

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#239

Post by [deleted] »

itronitron wrote: post #229
abarwick wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most developed countries have several offices/agencies that already run 'home built' solutions, they just don't get talked about much.

[deleted]

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#240

Post by mhitza »

Taywee wrote: post #72
guelo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the search term in the Referer header?

Nope. They forward through an in-between that obscures it. They argue that because search results are personalized, being able to see the search terms can give you information about the visitor that can compromise their privacy. Google doesn't want anybody violating user privacy except for Google.

If you get your site setup on Google Webmaster tools you will still have access to the search terms. Definitely not as precise as with GA, but should suffice. Unless you want to do per user funnel tracking starting from their search term. Which is pretty privacy invasive.
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