Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#361

Post by stickfigure » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:13 AM UTC

PontifexMinimus wrote: post #343

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.

> would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, I disagree. It would be relatively straightforward to build such systems on Linux and open source. > and more expensive to the tax payer As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible, especially given that this is a matter of national security, something governments tend to be keen to spend money on.

> As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible

After how many failed rewrites that never deliver a working product?

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#362

Post by stickfigure » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

corywatilo wrote: post #18

Italy is the 4th in a string of recent decisions across the EU. (We're tracking these cases on isgoogleanalyticsillegal.com along with details for each.) Note that it's not illegal to use GA entirely, just illegal to use in its default state which transmits PII to the US.

Is it illegal to use my website from Italy? I store PII (and everything else) in the US.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#363

Post by oska » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

abarwick wrote: post #331

einpoklum wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I obviously can’t speak for all, even most, but back in my consulting days I can say the many US federal and state agencies use Azure AD and a litany of AWS services that are core to vital work streams. Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department.

> Enough that having to shut them down would neuter the department.

You've just identified one very good reason that they shouldn't be dependent on a single, proprietary vendor.

Really, I was surprised to find your original comment on Hacker News, especially with you ironically fronting it with calling other people naive.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#364

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:17 AM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #83

Those decisions are good in theory, but in practice they will kill the free web. The only people that have the work power to put equivalent alternatives in place are the big corporations, that will anyway find a loophole. I run my small blog, and I can't spend days or even weeks to setup a subpar analytics solution. I won't even start talking about self-hosting an analytics solution which would probably double my mon…

Honestly, at this stage the "free web" can fuck right off. The "free web" you speak of generates a lot of negative externalities everyone else has to put up with. If your "free" web needs to attack everyone with spyware for it to exist then it's not really "free".

> I run my small blog, and I can't spend days or even weeks to setup a subpar analytics solution.

tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#365

Post by dudus » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #304

minsc_and_boo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it already against Google Analytics' policy to put PII in the platform to begin with? https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6366371?hl=en#zi...

Gdpr uses a more expansive definition of personal data, and it includes the IP address and geolocation data, for example.

And to be clear Google Analytics has a setting to "anonymize" the IP address which deletes the last octet of the address and makes geolocation less accurate.

Then there's an argument that the IP address still reaches Google servers before it's deleted. But that's just splitting hairs at this point. If Google doesn't process the data with IP the IP address I see no harm.

IP addresses are not something that you can choose to not send at all. It's kind of required by the TCP/IP stack. If that was the case users in EU could not access any website in the USA.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#366

Post by zhte415 » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

quadrifoliate wrote: post #335

spoonjim wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any high functioning large companies that use Linux/LibreOffice/Zimbra? I suppose governments rarely aspire to be high functioning.

Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run. In fact, I bet you that a major part of the delays in Government are because Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting. With Libre Office you make that a thing of the past.

> Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting

That's unlikely, and if so I doubt Libre Office would liberate Brenda. It may be the reverse. On-boarding or moving Brenda between functions would mean provisioning her for internal ID, identity, email/communication, security, network/group access and permissioning, physical device(s), etc. Various parts of Microsoft 365 would just be part of the checklist and deployment, an integral part.

Microsoft make the above very smooth. I don't think someone slapping Libre Office on a PC makes any of that a thing of the past. Any realistic alternative needs to be all the way down the stack.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#367

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #156

progman32 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I don't want to give this info. I'm glad the EU is giving folks an avenue to express this preference.

I provide free tutorials and articles like this. If you don't want to provide this info then I don't want to provide you free content.

Then it's not really free content is it? Put your content behind a "paywall" where the payment is whatever information you're (illegally) collecting from GA and see how it goes; at least then the "payment" you're expecting from it will be clear and users can make their own decision.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#368

Post by dudus » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:23 AM UTC

nwellnhof wrote: post #30

What's really puzzling is that Google Analytics never got banned because of antitrust laws. It's the most obvious example of predatory pricing I've ever seen. How is a smaller company supposed to compete against a free product?

Google Analytics has an enterprise paid version and it starts at 6 figures, Adobe has a very competitive product in the same space. So there's definitively room for a paid product in the market.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#369

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:24 AM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #195

iLoveOncall wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I provide free tutorials and articles like this. If you don't want to provide this info then I don't want to provide you free content.

That's the problem with GDPR. A lot of people are fine with this arrangement, but the GDPR is basically making it unlawful. GDPR is basically imposing the preferences of other people (e.g. progman32) on us.

The problem that regulation is trying to solve is that if "personal data" becomes an acceptable form of payment then people won't actually have a choice and companies can force people to provide data by not offering any alternative payment methods.

The GDPR effectively outlaws using personal data as payment which IMO is a good thing because unlike money, personal data is not a one-off transaction (the data can be valid long-term) and can be misused in all kinds of ways we might not even know about yet, thus the risk is too high.

This doesn't necessarily mean advertising is banned - targeted advertising is generally beneficial to the user (if you're going to see ads, you're better seeing something you're interested about) so they could offer the user a way to set their ad preferences manually (and thus sharing personal data freely with no coercion).

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#370

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Jun 24, 2022, 1:27 AM UTC

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.

> the fact that they got beat on tech

What tech is the EU missing out on?

All the recent "tech" I see from the US is all about novel ways to screw & exploit people for profit, at the expense of turning society into a dangerous wasteland full of outrage and saturated by advertising.

No thanks.