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24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

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Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#111

Post by anigbrowl »

Jach wrote: post #81
appleflaxen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems strange to call a liberal definition of rights "draconian". There must be a better adjective.

I think taking the discussion to rights is just a bad idea in the first place. Stick with what's in the law, and argue morality without appealing to rights.

The rights are in European law. They're called 'fundamental rights' and are quite explicit. EU citizens have a lot of individual constitutional rights that Americans do not. They're fundamental because they can't be signed or bargained away, and the reason for that is to reduce the inventive of firms or governments to employ trickery to that end.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#112

Post by 0x12 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #108
pyre wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an example, in France it is forbidden to count the > number of people who get in & out of a subway at a given > station. That seems lame. That number is highly anonymous. How does a statement like "between 8am and 9am 250 people boarded the subway, and 130 people exited the subway" affect a person's privacy?

In July 2009, civil society groups opposed the implementation of intelligent advertising LCD screens in a Parisian subway station.[163] These screens not only broadcast messages but can also count the number of people passing by and measure the time spent looking at the screen thanks to a face scanning sensor. Since these actions, the French data protection Authority, the CNIL, has issued a report considering that th…

And that was before large scale facerecognition software that could be employed to determine not only how many people are walking by the device but also who. Now doing this in real time with a large crowd is still not technically feasible but at some point we will probably cross that line.

Good to know there is at least one country where you'll be safe from that.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#113

Post by fl3tch »

bbq wrote: post #30
count wrote: post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

"What is it about this completely voluntary relationship that is so inherently evil?" I'm not going to argue it's inherently evil but, You are right that the service is completely voluntary. However, the opportunity cost associated with not having a Facebook account has been rising by virtue of the network effect and 3rd party services requiring a Facebook account to access functionality. The fear is: as (if) Faceboo…

Duress is not voluntary. If it's impossible to get by without a Facebook account, then that's just a less violent form of duress. Lots of ostensibly voluntary transactions between free agents are actually quite duressed.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#114

Post by [deleted] »

count wrote: post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

[deleted]

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#115

Post by mmaro »

count wrote: post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

Watch Moxie's "New threats to privacy" from BlackHat 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qzldtKV1PY

Essentially, the problem is that these voluntary relationships become not-so-voluntary as the privacy-compromising tools become more necessary to participate in society.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#116

Post by dantheman »

beforebeta wrote: post #9
Permit wrote: post #2

Honest question: Why is Facebook governed, at least in part, by European law? The reason I ask is that the United States has a lot of trouble enforcing its copyright laws abroad (which is good in my opinion), but Facebook and Google seem to bend to European laws regarding privacy and transparency.

The linked video (in german) explains this. Apparently Facebook has a registered HQ in Ireland (presumably - as someone mentioned in another thread - for tax purposes). Since it is a registered business in Ireland, it is subject to all Irish and many applicable European laws (one of which is data privacy). The 24-year-old Individual feels it's against his data privacy rights that Facebook retains deleted messages. Pe…

Watch all the tech companies leave Ireland due draconian European laws.

I don't understand, why all law must be proactive. Let people try and experiment, let norms evolve. Why must we prelegislate things, wait until facebook or someone else starts doing horrible things before passing a law.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#117

Post by Locke1689 »

pyre wrote: post #96
Jach wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misrepresentation is similar to neglect in that it's typically necessary for lawyers to argue and juries to decide. In this actual case, to repeat count's analogy, why aren't filesystem users complaining that their deleted data isn't "really deleted" (ignoring that such FS software is probably a no-warranty thing)? I've had to recover rm'd data a number of times myself. I don't think "deletion" has ever meant an expe…

In a filesystem, the data isn't scrubbed but it's marked as space that can be overwritten. While the completely removal doesn't happen at once, it's slated for complete removal at some undetermined time in the future. In the case of Facebook, they are making a conscious decision that they do not want this data to ever disappear. I doubt very much that there are policies to remove data marked as 'deleted' after a set…

To what extent is this just a property of Paxos that lacking delete synchronicity can cause data unavailability or differing levels of data availability? Moreover, how would affect the Paxos read/write synchronicity? Would you have to disable read caching on the geographic layer?

I'm sorry but this seems like a huge ignorance on the part of you on how DSes are designed. These issues are important.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#118

Post by sixtofour »

count wrote: post #40
AlexMuir wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look beyond the law to what its purpose is - to prevent companies from exploiting your personal information, and to force them to tell you what data they hold. Facebook are exploiting your browser history, without telling you. And are refusing to even own up to it. I don't believe that 99% of Facebook users would tick a box that said 'Please record every webpage I visit and store it for your own future us…

But if you, as a customer of those websites, agree to them knowing you are there, and they chose to share that with others, what right does the government have to prevent that? Why is this not a 'just don't use the service if you don't like it' deal? Credit bureaus are significantly different - you have literally no choice in that manner; Facebook isn't providing data to be used in that type of decision though. If so…

"Why is this not a 'just don't use the service if you don't like it' deal?"

Because that's the law in Europe (according to the complainer). It doesn't matter that you're free to not use the service, the law says that if you do use it you have certain rights.

You're free to not use any service anywhere in the world. But if you do use a service in some jurisdiction, that service is subject to the law in that jurisdiction.

Facebook, being Big Boys (TM), must follow the law of the land. If they do business in Europe, that law (it seems) will be more favorable to consumers than they're used to here. Tough.

Personally, I think they'll get away with it. Corporations are becoming their own law. Facebook may have made that calculation too.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#119

Post by sixtofour »

pyre wrote: post #94
acavailhez wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To respond to the last sentence : Yes, things like that can be illegal. As an example, in France it is forbidden to count the number of people who get in & out of a subway at a given station. I guess it's really a strong difference of culture between Europe and America : laws are made in Europe to make sure that people should not have to make the effort of guessing if a company will mess with their data or not. The c…

> As an example, in France it is forbidden to count the > number of people who get in & out of a subway at a given > station. That seems lame. That number is highly anonymous. How does a statement like "between 8am and 9am 250 people boarded the subway, and 130 people exited the subway" affect a person's privacy?

If it's lame, then someone who wants to count must instead throw up his hands in exasperation as they obey the law and don't count.

Until a few years ago it was illegal to sell liquor on Sunday in Colorado. That was lame, but I never saw a liquor store open on Sunday. If any did, they'd probably get fairly good public support and letters to the editor in favor, but they would still lose their liquor license.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#120

Post by bitops »

Travisism wrote: post #62
sek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit, it is not "completely voluntary". When everyone is using a communication service and there is no alternative. They claim to have a billion users. Short it is a monopoly, they have a lot of power and when you start to abuse it, like forcing users to accept your unfair terms of service, the government comes into play. I never heard that Google doesn't remove stuff when you remove them inside your service. The…

It is 100% completely voluntary. Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook. It is not even remotely close to the only communication service. I don't personally use Facebook and have no problem leading an active social and business life. Sure, a large portion of my friends use Facebook, but they also make phone calls, send text messages, email (through multiple different services), LinkedIn, Flickr, etc etc etc. So how do…

Perhaps true in the US but not so in Europe. My 16-year old cousin in Denmark (the worlds most FB connected country in the world, 3M users out of 5M population) told me that it's basically impossible to have a social life without being on Facebook (at her age).

Facebook also caters very much to US culture. E.g. In middle school and high school you move between different classrooms so you make lots of different friends that way. In Denmark you sit with the same 20-30 kids every day for 10 years. It's a very different type of social conditioning.

So - if you're the outlier in the class who isn't connected and the party invites go out on FB, guess what? You have volunteered to get ostracized.

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