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Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

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Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#51

Post by Confusion »

shrikant wrote: post #18

I haven't looked too hard at too many privacy policies, but this seems fairly boilerplate to me. I'd suppose if you compare this to [say] Twitter's privacy policy, it would end up reading pretty much the same. They also say (in "Profile Settings"): > Klout only analyzes public data or data that we are given explicit access to. We never share your private information with any third party or brand and you can control t…

I don't understand what you are arguing. If Twitter also break UK law, they are still both breaking UK law. Only Klout also actively creates an account for you and attempts to collect information on every move you make.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#52

Post by Confusion »

dspillett wrote: post #50
maximusprime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't pedal this nonsense. The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every day, and deter crime. There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior and again, prevent crime. You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no centralized CCTV program where the…

> The UK does have a problem with speed cameras though. It's a way to generate extra revenue from the population. Slipping off-topic, I can't stand that line. You break the law, you get fined. Keep within the law, you don't get fined. Quite frankly if you want to hand revenue to the government via speeding go ahead. But you don't like the law campaign to have it changed, don't just ignore it then moan about being fin…

  You break the law, you get fined.
You really, really don't want to live in that country.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#53

Post by maximusprime »

dspillett wrote: post #50
maximusprime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't pedal this nonsense. The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every day, and deter crime. There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior and again, prevent crime. You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no centralized CCTV program where the…

> The UK does have a problem with speed cameras though. It's a way to generate extra revenue from the population. Slipping off-topic, I can't stand that line. You break the law, you get fined. Keep within the law, you don't get fined. Quite frankly if you want to hand revenue to the government via speeding go ahead. But you don't like the law campaign to have it changed, don't just ignore it then moan about being fin…

So you've never broken a stupid law, like ripping a DVD?

Around 90% of the population break the speed limit. If you drive on a motorway, doing only the speed limit, you'll be holding up traffic.

When 90% of people break a law, that's a pretty sure sign that the law is bad and should be changed.

Thankfully, the law is soon to be changed, increasing the speed limit on motorways from 70 to 80. It's a start. Politicians have taken notice, and seen that the current speed laws (Put in place decades ago when cars had crappy brakes etc), are out dated.

The mobile speed cameras I see most often are hidden behind trees in areas that have a stupid speed limit (eg a stretch of road with no houses, pavements or people, but 30mph limit).

I'm not moaning about being fined - I take a lot of care not to be. I'm moaning that firstly, they are there to generate revenue, not save lives, and secondly, they actually make our roads more dangerous, with people paying attention to their speed, rather than real dangers/people/etc.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#54

Post by jnorthrop »

dalore wrote: post #37

> Here in the civilized world we have a fundamental right to privacy. I live in the UK. I thought it was quite funny that he tried to compare the privacy policies by saying the UK is better. Now the UK might be better in some regards but with the amount of CCTVs abound I still say they have problems with privacy.

There is a significant difference between European privacy laws and those in the US. Generally in Europe privacy is treated as a fundamental right; in the US privacy laws are implemented only when it is necessary to protect the citizens from harm by corporations or industry.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#55

Post by shrikant »

Confusion wrote: post #51
shrikant wrote: post #18

I haven't looked too hard at too many privacy policies, but this seems fairly boilerplate to me. I'd suppose if you compare this to [say] Twitter's privacy policy, it would end up reading pretty much the same. They also say (in "Profile Settings"): > Klout only analyzes public data or data that we are given explicit access to. We never share your private information with any third party or brand and you can control t…

I don't understand what you are arguing. If Twitter also break UK law, they are still both breaking UK law. Only Klout also actively creates an account for you and attempts to collect information on every move you make.

Admittedly, I went about it in a ham-handed manner (I blame the Monday), but my core point is this: Klout is doing nothing differently evil with your data, than any other social network. No laws are being broken because [Klout says] no PII is being sold willy-nilly.

There's a comment over on the post that nails exactly what I'm trying to say, and in a much better way: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/11/evil-soc...

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#56

Post by benregenspan »

As far as I can tell, the claim of automatically creating accounts is 100% false. So is that of automatically Tweeting or Facebook sharing.

If you sign in to Klout, you'll get fairly in-your-face pitches to invite friends to it. Should you choose to send such an invite, the friend you sent it to would have to respond to this and manually OAuth their account. Similarly, sharing an action taken on Klout to Facebook or Twitter is a manual process. I don't remember seeing any "dark patterns"* at work at all here - nothing is sent automatically, there's no sneaky small print or prefilled checkbox, etc.

It seems the author is also confusing account creation with the service requesting and storing public data from Twitter. Twitter's own privacy policy (https://twitter.com/privacy) is clear re: content being available to search engines and via API. If people do not want their Tweets to be available to search engines and third-party sites that comply with Twitter's policies, they can set their Twitter profiles to private, or can use a service that does not have such an open ecosystem.

* http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Home

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#57

Post by sp332 »

dspillett wrote: post #50
maximusprime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't pedal this nonsense. The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every day, and deter crime. There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior and again, prevent crime. You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no centralized CCTV program where the…

> The UK does have a problem with speed cameras though. It's a way to generate extra revenue from the population. Slipping off-topic, I can't stand that line. You break the law, you get fined. Keep within the law, you don't get fined. Quite frankly if you want to hand revenue to the government via speeding go ahead. But you don't like the law campaign to have it changed, don't just ignore it then moan about being fin…

Some of the speed cameras are put within a few feet of a speed limit sign, so you don't have time to adjust reasonably to the new speed and they'll ticket you anyway.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#58

Post by sp332 »

maximusprime wrote: post #39
dalore wrote: post #37

> Here in the civilized world we have a fundamental right to privacy. I live in the UK. I thought it was quite funny that he tried to compare the privacy policies by saying the UK is better. Now the UK might be better in some regards but with the amount of CCTVs abound I still say they have problems with privacy.

Please don't pedal this nonsense. The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every day, and deter crime. There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior and again, prevent crime. You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no centralized CCTV program where the…

Really? UK police disagree with you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 CCTVs don't prevent or help solve crimes, and there is an explicit (not even secret!) plan to implement a national CCTV database.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#59

Post by maximusprime »

sp332 wrote: post #58
maximusprime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't pedal this nonsense. The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every day, and deter crime. There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior and again, prevent crime. You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no centralized CCTV program where the…

Really? UK police disagree with you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 CCTVs don't prevent or help solve crimes, and there is an explicit (not even secret!) plan to implement a national CCTV database.

The Guardian as a source? The Guardian is even worse than Reddit in its open bias against government, corporations, etc etc (Also that story is 3 years old. Hardly current).

The Guardian is like The Daily Mail but for the other side of the political spectrum.

The daily mail etc scare the public into thinking that immigrants/the poor/terrorists etc are going to kill them. The guardian scares the public into thinking that the government and corporations are going to kill them.

Obviously neither is true, but both sell newspapers/get readers.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#60

Post by sp332 »

maximusprime wrote: post #59
sp332 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? UK police disagree with you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 CCTVs don't prevent or help solve crimes, and there is an explicit (not even secret!) plan to implement a national CCTV database.

The Guardian as a source? The Guardian is even worse than Reddit in its open bias against government, corporations, etc etc (Also that story is 3 years old. Hardly current). The Guardian is like The Daily Mail but for the other side of the political spectrum. The daily mail etc scare the public into thinking that immigrants/the poor/terrorists etc are going to kill them. The guardian scares the public into thinking t…

OK how about a more recent Guardian article (by Cory Doctorow)? http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/17/why-cctv-do...

Bruce Schneier? https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/cctv_cameras....

The BBC? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8219022.st...

A meta-study on the effectiveness of CCTVs in the UK? http://ipvideomarket.info/report/is_public_cctv_effective

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