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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#241

Post by jcelerier »

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.

Idk here in France there are cities and state-wide administrations with free/libre stacks based on Linux, LibreOffice, Zimbra and others and things seem to JustWork™. For instance the french Gendarmerie, the cities of Rennes and Arles...

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#242

Post by robertlagrant »

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.

None of it was ad hominem.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#243

Post by quantum_magpie »

scarface74 wrote: post #171
clairity wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, the ad hominem , never a good sign for the proceeding argument. there are a number of other office suites that are entirely adequate for bureaucratic organizations to build methodical processes around (which is what bureaucracies do). the capabilities of the underlying tools don’t matter much in this regard. also, audits aren’t meant to prove anything (like security), but instead to shift liability.

The average large organization uses over 100 SaaS products https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-s... I would love to see you replace all 100 of those with open source software. Have you ever dealt with large technology migrations?

And if no one does anything, in 5 years it will be a 1000, in 10 years 5000. As it is right now, the only voice governments hear is that of corpos, and corpos want to preserve the influence of corpos. That's why we need to force the ban on corpo influence. I'd rather pay 1% gdp for a one-time migration to open and free software than pay .01% gdp per corp per year.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#244

Post by rapind »

scarface74 wrote: post #171
clairity wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, the ad hominem , never a good sign for the proceeding argument. there are a number of other office suites that are entirely adequate for bureaucratic organizations to build methodical processes around (which is what bureaucracies do). the capabilities of the underlying tools don’t matter much in this regard. also, audits aren’t meant to prove anything (like security), but instead to shift liability.

The average large organization uses over 100 SaaS products https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233538/average-number-s... I would love to see you replace all 100 of those with open source software. Have you ever dealt with large technology migrations?

100 SaaS products in one org sounds like a security and logistics nightmare.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#245

Post by leephillips »

Kovah wrote: post #178
mattmcknight wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking permission to spy on you. Or you know...count how many unique visitors they have and how to make the site more useful. Do you avoid using cookies on this site but still manage to log in?

Cookies needed to properly provide user authentication, i.e. user session identification, are counted as "technical necessary" cookies and do not need a cookie banner. You only need to ask for cookie consent, if you track visitors with third-party services. And, to counter your unique visitors claim: you don't need cookies, or any third party service, for that. Everything can be done locally without disrespecting use…

Exactly. HN doesn’t need a cookie banner because they’re not spying on their users. No barrier to keeping track of sessions.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#246

Post by SahAssar »

encoderer wrote: post #153
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…

Well I’m not an expert but I think the main issue is that American citizens have protections that non-Americans do not. The government cannot spy on Americans without a court order.

Unless they have an intelligence sharing agreement with a nation that happens to pick up signals from americans, from who they can request that data. And maybe there exists a network to share the raw data, wouldn't that be convenient? Or you could have a secret court system (FISA) to bypass most of the protections normally granted by due process?

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#247

Post by saiya-jin »

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).

Not only state... I see absolutely 0 reason for my swiss ebanking in the secured web interface to se google analytics and similar trackers. I can clearly see them being blocked by the likes of ublock origin and ghostery in my firefox. Why the f*k should google know where I go in such private matters (and there are tons more, ie if you are lgbtq+ in one of the many restrictive locations, have some less mainstream political preferences etc.). The data once acquired have no reason to be deleted, ever. Too juicy info, and 7 billion humans is not that large group to aspire to track.

I get why google et al want it for their growth/sales, but they are a private entity not owning internet in any way, extremely foreign to Europe with no clear friendly intentions. One of few times I can say I am proud to be living on old continent.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#248

Post by clairity »

adamrezich wrote: post #214
clairity wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 citize…

i wrote a few sentences on a large civic concept, not a treatise, so let's not jump to ideological conclusions quite yet.

but yes, i'm explicitly against governments sharing private data with corporations, no matter how convenient it might seem to be for workers. governments have run for centuries without those conveniences, so it's not a dichotomous choice of share all the data or not have schools (for instance). a lot of data sharing is driven by the misguided desire to control (that is, to centralize power), whether it be teachers, students, or administrators, not for actual educational outcomes, despite the latter being the nominal impetus.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#249

Post by lovich »

marcosdumay wrote: post #149
googlryas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that not fully legal? Wouldn't the same law prevent Google USA from querying PII data from Google Italia?

Italian laws do not apply to Google USA.

The Italian market doesn’t have to apply to Google USA either.

Companies can always choose to ignore a specific nation’s laws[1], they don’t still get access to that nations markets. At the borders the nation state is the one with the guns and firewalls

[1] unless you piss off a nation that can project global power, lol if you piss off China or America

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#250

Post by mhitza »

stevoski wrote: post #138
tin7in wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard about Plausible but haven't tried it yet. We are using Posthog which is a suite for product analytics.

Plausible et al all are a pale imitation of GA. They all offer a dashboard with some basic filtering. But they offer little in the way of true analytics features, that allow you to slice, dice, and compare data.

I'm working on an web analytics project that gives users more power over the way they slice/dice/compare analytics data. Would you be interested in giving it a try when the project launches in alpha?

Send me a hello email at the address listed on my profile, would be happy to send out an invite when ready.

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