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Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

texasattorneygeneral.gov

221–230 of 366 posts

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#221
Not to alarm you but there are for sale all of the car driving data in the US from that emergency request service that kindly the manufacturers install in every new car they sell.

Just make sure that you also pay the subscription because in an emergency it will not call 911 for you, because who cares about you if are not a revenue stream.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say it with me now: "Transpose EU GDPR into US law yesterday !"

We can learn from GDPR’s mistakes and do better. A single national regime and enforcer. No obligation for every complaint to result in an investigation. Fines based on gains and damages, not revenue. Liability that can be privately enforced. And a trebling of damages where noncompliance is shown to be willful.

Absolutely yes to private right of action and treble damages. Not sure why you want "no obligation for every complaint to result in an investigation" though. That's contradictory to the private right of action.

Disagree on fines based on gains and damages on their own. My understanding is that percentage of global turnover usually is a higher number than gains and damages. I'd prefer it be "the higher of either".

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#223
post #19

Paxton is a crook, but in this case he's fighting the good fight. Texas collected a $1.4B settlement from Meta for its facial-recognition scanning, and in this case the monetary damages to the victims are far worse in terms of higher insurance premiums. https://boingboing.net/2024/07/31/meta-to-pay-1-4bn-for-unau... He should then go after the insurance companies who used this data next, and force them to disgorge th…

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Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can learn from GDPR’s mistakes and do better. A single national regime and enforcer. No obligation for every complaint to result in an investigation. Fines based on gains and damages, not revenue. Liability that can be privately enforced. And a trebling of damages where noncompliance is shown to be willful.

Absolutely yes to private right of action and treble damages. Not sure why you want "no obligation for every complaint to result in an investigation" though. That's contradictory to the private right of action. Disagree on fines based on gains and damages on their own. My understanding is that percentage of global turnover usually is a higher number than gains and damages. I'd prefer it be "the higher of either".

> Not sure why you want "no obligation for every complaint to result in an investigation" though

It's trivial to bulldoze a European start-up by having complaints filed in a bunch of jurisdictions alleging this or that nonsense. It's nonsense, so no fines. But the mandate to investigate means this tiny start-up now has up to twenty-eight national supervisory authorities sending it demands, which can easily overwhelm a small team.

> Disagree on fines based on gains and damages on their own. My understanding is that percentage of global turnover usually is a higher number than gains and damages. I'd prefer it be "the higher of either".

Gains and damages contrates the discussion to the malfeasance at hand. Global-revenue fines are subject to grandstanding. That means lots of headlines and fewer fines actually paid.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#225
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reputational damage? I know it's a number that gets calculated on cybersecurity assessment sheets, but I've never seen it being in any way connected to reality. Best I can tell, the actual reputational damage is almost universally $0. Security breaches are non-actionable oopsies - unless your product is literally preventing such breaches[0], it's going to be seen as a random event that has no bearing on customer…

They don’t exactly have a captive audience. Besides the corvette, their competitors pretty much universally have a drop in replacement. Changing cars is a heck of a lot easier than a corporation ripping out software that they likely have a 3-year contract on, and would require millions in services on top of just eating the cost of the contract itself.

Only if you believe the competition isn't doing the same thing.

My bank isn't a monopoly. They provide with terrible service. (Truely terrible). Trouble is all their competitors are just as bad.

GM gets no blow-back from this. Firstly because "nobody" cares. Second because "I bet you they're all doing it" and thirdly because in 20 minutes I'll be outraged about something else. By the time I buy my next car I can't remember who had this issue, plus all the other complaints about all the other manufacturers.

If I stopped buying from every company that has, or is, behaving badly, every company that had a security breach, or contributed to the wrong politician, or hired a racist, or whatever, I'd never spend a dime.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reputational damage? I know it's a number that gets calculated on cybersecurity assessment sheets, but I've never seen it being in any way connected to reality. Best I can tell, the actual reputational damage is almost universally $0. Security breaches are non-actionable oopsies - unless your product is literally preventing such breaches[0], it's going to be seen as a random event that has no bearing on customer…

Damage: I'm shopping for a new EV, and will now avoid the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Chevy Bolt. Or find some hack to kill cellular.

Firstly, with respect, one purchase is not damage.

Hacking the cellular is not damage to them (you bought the car.)

But mostly, given that you have principles (which I applaud), tell me which brands you would consider. (I'm pretty sure I can Google a bad-news-day for them too.)

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#227
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not just massive. It needs to be an order of magnitude more than they made from those deals. Too many times companies get slapped on the wrist for an amount considerably less than they made from their illicit activities. Which I never understood. Normal people that get caught doing things like selling stolen goods have to pay a fine on top of all money they may have made from selling it. Why aren't companies trea…

Because this isn't Europe -- US government is essentially owned by corporate interests, regardless of party in power.

If we take that as true, then we can ignore that aspect when we make our choice.

While both parties are funded by corporate interests, they still are far enough apart on policy and personality for the choice to have an impact.

Corporates are mostly caring about tax policy and industry regulation. They (mostly) have neutral stances on things like Healthcare, equality, racism, immigration, abortion and so on.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#228
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You want to hurt the company and it's owners No. What you'd really want if you really wanted to fix things is to hurt the top and mid-managers who decided to commit those offenses. Unfortunately it almost never happens.

Don't forget the board. Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth.

No they choose to because of the benefits it gives them. Realistically middle management are the ones who need to start going to jail to cleanup this kind of behavior.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#230
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want to hurt the company and it's owners... The owners of big companies include lots of pension plans, index funds, etc. Hurting those owners, who didn't have any say in the bad decisions, is probably not what we want. Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of illegal activities sounds good to me.

> Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of illegal activities sounds good to me. I suspect one possible outcome is many people wouldn't want to take the risk to become an executive, and the percentage of executives who wouldn't mind taking risks of going to jail will increase, which is not a desirable outcome.

A far more direct consequence of the current situation is that these executives just do whatever the hell they want to maximize their profits at everybody else's expense. Without punishment enough to make it unprofitable, dishonesty only has incentives, on both business and personal level.

I just don't see that twice-removed latent effect having worse consequences for society than the base problem. Not by a long shot.

As a kid, I grew up playing in a marsh that turned out to be the illegal, unmarked, non-access-controlled chemical waste dump for a large specialty chemical plant nearby that had operated there since the late 19th century. Those executives knew what they were doing was wrong— it was the 90s, not the 60s— but spent decades telling bald-faced lies to everyone involved, and when the writing was on the wall for regulatory action, they just dumped the company onto a shell company so the large international parent corporation wouldn't be in the news, and retired happily in huge mansions while the parent company dumped probably 2 years profits into the superfund project to remove the most dangerous stuff and cap/fence of the entire area. I could certainly never know for sure how much that exposure affected my cancer, but the chance of it being zero is pretty slim. Nobody even told me or anyone else around there— I only knew about it because I dug up some old EPA document scans. You're goddamned right they deserve to be in jail and not taking 4 month yacht trips. On a moral level, I think they deserve worse. It was not a sparsely populated area.

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