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Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

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Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#121

Post by ilovecaching »

Putting people in jail is the wrong solution. You're going to put CEOs in jail because some angry employee at the company decided to add some backdoors, or someone in middle management made the wrong call. Either way, the CEO and high level execs can't constantly monitor every part of a world scale business. Anyone in technology also knows it's impossible to become invulnerable to breaches.

The people in congress/senate have no idea how technology works, because the younger generations are severely underrepresented, and so are technologists.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#122

Post by paulddraper »

nubbins wrote: post #119
paulddraper wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something doesn't have to be necessarily expressible into a single, unambiguous universal formula to be made illegal. It doesn't have to be expressed with a precise mathematical formula, but it does need to be expressed with a clear legal formula. Otherwise, people cannot know whether or not their actions are legal, and the law becomes a fearsome weapon in the hands of its interpreters. --- EDIT: I'm not claiming i…

Its just not possible in general to know a priori the legality of 100% of your actions. Companies have entire compliance departments to attempt this and still cant always get it right. There are tons of grey areas and edge cases so what actually happens is the relevant authorities and advocates get together after the fact to figure out the legality. I don’t know how anyone would propose to write a legal code that cov…

> Its just not possible in general to know a priori the legality of 100% of your actions.

To the degree that this fact is true, the law is broken.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#123

Post by bsder »

paulddraper wrote: post #113
bsder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this different than taking a picture of someone? The image is owned by the photographer, not the subject(s) according to current laws. The photographer may own the image, but the subject may also need to sign a release for the photographer to monetize. > if I meet someone on the street, and record their name, the conversation we had, and the location where I met them, and their phone number, have I “taken th…

> What is MY recourse? Your first statement would imply that the photographer has some responsibility to gain consent for the picture and its use.

And what about the other 30 people taking selfies whose background I am in.

Those people didn't ask me because they didn't need to. They don't know me; I don't know them; we're not going to interact.

Facebook, however, is coordinating all those pictures, their GPS coordinates, their tags, and working out everybody in them.

I did not give anyone permission for that. Yet I don't have a way to stop it.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#124

Post by simplecomplex »

shaki-dora wrote: post #68
simplecomplex wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn’t “give it away”. Please let’s stick to facts. The news is being extremely dishonest. Apps that you could send FB messages through could see the message (how else would it work?) And it was explicitly opt-in, users had to authorize it. “Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our…

Read that quote again. It only says opt-in was needed to use this „feature“, not for data access. And that does not even include the other parties in those messages.

“Did partners get access to messages? Yes. But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner’s messaging feature,” Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, director of developer platforms and programs at Facebook, wrote in the blog post.

“Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our API provided partners with access to the person’s messages in order to power this type of feature.”

Facebook did not play fast and loose with peoples data or abuse their privacy. They don’t sell or give away user data.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#125

Post by _8j50 »

ilovecaching wrote: post #121

Putting people in jail is the wrong solution. You're going to put CEOs in jail because some angry employee at the company decided to add some backdoors, or someone in middle management made the wrong call. Either way, the CEO and high level execs can't constantly monitor every part of a world scale business. Anyone in technology also knows it's impossible to become invulnerable to breaches. The people in congress/sen…

Laws are usually clear about criminal intent. If it was done without the CEOs knowledge,the CEO would not be liabel.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#126

Post by escape_goat »

ilovecaching wrote: post #121

Putting people in jail is the wrong solution. You're going to put CEOs in jail because some angry employee at the company decided to add some backdoors, or someone in middle management made the wrong call. Either way, the CEO and high level execs can't constantly monitor every part of a world scale business. Anyone in technology also knows it's impossible to become invulnerable to breaches. The people in congress/sen…

Most of the responses so far seem to concern themselves with law and policy rather than technology. It might be a bit more on-point to complain that the people in technology have no idea how laws or legislation works, perhaps because the older generations are severely underrepresented, as are lawyers/legislators.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#127

Post by E_Quivocation »

I was going to laugh at how stupid this sounds, but, then again, It would be cool to see corporate overlords suffering a comparable level of punishment for the equivalent of peer-to-peer MP3 file sharing.

Bonus points if we can write a law for something like genetic profiling, or abuse of facial recognition, or microphone eavesdropping that becomes the corporate equivalent of internet child pornography, and carries the death penalty for C level officers.

Perhaps by way of equivocating that voice, face and gene surveillance endangers the privacy of children because it is indiscriminate like chemical or biological weapons, so life in prison and capital punishment for upper echelon high command at the Nuremburg trials.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#129

Post by solomatov »

Animats wrote: post #32

A tough interpretation of the existing US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which has criminal penalties, could do much of that right now. See the "exceeds authorized access" provisions. Any slip-up in asking for permission could place a company stealing your data in serious legal jeopardy.

I am not a lawyer, but vague laws are unconstitutional, so, your interpretation is highly unlikely to pass scrutiny.

Re: Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data

#130

Post by xkcd-sucks »

tarr11 wrote: post #41

Is personal information really a kind of property, that can be stolen? If it is, aren’t we doing this all the time, any time we perceive anything about anyone? How is this different than taking a picture of someone? The image is owned by the photographer, not the subject(s) according to current laws. if I meet someone on the street, and record their name, the conversation we had, and the location where I met them, an…

If only people all believed that getting photographed steals your soul. Tongue only partially in cheek
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