Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers' private data [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by bobthepanda » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 6:30 AM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #206

bobthepanda wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you basically just have a roving class of jobless people stuck at home. We’re not talking about the currently uninsured. We’re talking about a “hot-take” proposal to significantly increase the amount of uninsured people today, people who today can get insurance.

Or we get a stronger political will to no longer force car dependency on everyone when people actually start to understand the real costs of car-centric design. When the stores and restaurants where rich people shop can't get anyone to work there anymore without paying people the full costs of actually driving far away maybe there will be a will to change things. Lots of people around the world can go to work without…

Using our justice system to meter out extreme punishment would mostly impact poor people, and it is not as if the US has historically been very good at listening to the suffering of poor people.

The Bay Area can barely keep service workers in housing and its taken several decades of this problem to get even the slightest bit of progress.

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

#232

Post by akoncius » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 6:34 AM UTC

vel0city wrote: post #206

bobthepanda wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you basically just have a roving class of jobless people stuck at home. We’re not talking about the currently uninsured. We’re talking about a “hot-take” proposal to significantly increase the amount of uninsured people today, people who today can get insurance.

Or we get a stronger political will to no longer force car dependency on everyone when people actually start to understand the real costs of car-centric design. When the stores and restaurants where rich people shop can't get anyone to work there anymore without paying people the full costs of actually driving far away maybe there will be a will to change things. Lots of people around the world can go to work without…

yeah and do you realise what you are suggesting?

your proposed change will take decades to rework cities to move away from car-centric city design, to introduce public transportation, to rework current districts, to move shopping malls/restaurants closer to living districts etc.

all of this just because you wanted to make stricter insurance just to make it more (by how much?) efficient for insurers, so that they would make more profit.

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

#233

Post by 9dev » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 7:03 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #224

kmeisthax wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's trivial to bulldoze a European start-up by having complaints filed in a bunch of jurisdictions alleging this or that nonsense.

You vastly overestimate the responsiveness of data protection authorities. Your complaints will be filed and requests be sent in what, months? Certainly not all at once; and for pretty much all requests, even a small startup will have general answers prepared (or can make them up) they can send out immediately, with clarifications sent later.

Edit: And that's even glossing over the fact that for your bulldozing, you'll have to research how to report your "nonsense" for each individual jurisdiction, in that country's language; and I'd be surprised if they wouldn't want to know which citizen encountered the privacy violation you're trying to report; the people working there aren't stupid, either. All that is to say: I've yet to see such a trivial bulldozing happen.

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

#234

Post by runevault » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 7:41 AM UTC

noselasd wrote: post #34

randcraw wrote: post #18

I can't imagine why this case should succeed if this same practice has long been tolerated by telcos or Facebook -- any company that provides no opt-out to collection and sale of personal info. If Texas had real guts, they'd pass a law that clearly prohibits the collection and sale of personal info without explicit opt-in. But nooooooo...

At least with Facebook you've given them consent to do so.

Except for the fact Facebook created shadow accounts for people without FB accounts to track them anytime they encountered embedded FB content, be it ads or otherwise, across the internet.

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

#235

Post by philwelch » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 7:48 AM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #52

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an efficient market insurance premiums are essentially zero sum. The more that one person pays to offset their own risk, the less everyone else pays. Safe drivers subsidize unsafe drivers and this subsidy can and should be reduced when possible with better predictive information.

Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk. If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no longer fulfilling its social function. Secondly, you seem to be implying that only aggressive drivers are getting flagged by the data. But the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your circ…

> Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk. If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no longer fulfilling its social function.

Not necessarily! If you’re a physician, you have liability insurance against malpractice claims. If the insurer can correctly determine that you are a particularly incompetent physician and your premiums should be so high that you’re effectively just pre-paying the future settlements for your inevitable future malpractice cases, you will not be able to afford those premiums and will be forced to stop practicing medicine. In this scenario, the insurance market has satisfied its social function.

In principle, incompetent and unsafe drivers could similarly be identified and priced out of being able to drive, and the act of doing so would serve a purpose of making the roads safer for everyone else.

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

#236

Post by 0xEF » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 8:06 AM UTC

tacocataco wrote: post #175

subsubzero wrote: post #41

Fun fact, as a owner of a GMC auto I got a innocent looking email about the discontinuation of the Onstar Smart driver service which was the service in question that violated many US laws and sent data to insurance companies without customers authorization. I hope this hits GM really hard as this type of behavior will never cease until massive amounts of money is extracted from the perpetrators(GM etc).

If corporations are people, why doesn't their corporate charter get revoked while they "serve their time"?

Because laws exist to protect the wealthy, sadly.

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

#237

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 8:07 AM UTC

khc wrote: post #195

EvanAnderson wrote: post #140

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.

> I suspect one possible outcome is many people wouldn't want to take the risk to become an executive We will run our it if executives? Oh no, what will we ever do? It’s not like people compete for that job and salary

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

#238

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 8:10 AM UTC

Tempest1981 wrote: post #210

Scaevolus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the amounts involved were absolutely pitiful compared to the reputational damage-- they were being paid on the order of $10/car/year.

Even less... Hyundai: $0.61/car. Honda: $0.26/car. GM: unclear. I believe this is total/car, not per year. They did it for pennies. https://www.pcmag.com/news/senators-your-driving-data-may-ha...

This is insulting and offensive.

If you are gonna sell me down the river, at least get a good price!

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

#239

Post by 0xEF » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 8:11 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #209

stainablesteel wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its not just that i don't want electronics built into cars i don't want data coming from my car i don't need a phone to be built into my car i don't need navigation to be built into my car they need to stay in their lane we need anti-enshittification laws

Too bad new cars are required by law to have a real time internet connection so that the police can track them and execute remote shutdown commands. There's no opting out of government law by selecting a different brand

Hyperbolic comment.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/infrastructure-bill-track-...

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

#240

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 8:18 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #92

jordanb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk. If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no longer fulfilling its social function. Secondly, you seem to be implying that only aggressive drivers are getting flagged by the data. But the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your circ…

> But the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your circumstances require it. Maybe you have to commute to your job in heavy stop-and-go traffic with difficult merges. I would contend that this doesn't matter in terms of risk. It doesn't matter if the risk is caused by the person being a bad driver or if the risk is caused by the commute route that you take…

> In either case, there's risk that is shown by the data

Somebody this there is risk in the data. Big difference.

In any case, you can buy insurance that does this, they install telematics box and sends them data -it’s available, and not popular. So the market has spoken