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Ban the sale of precise geolocation

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Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#191

Post by troupo »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #47
pocksuppet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read it? It's not that bad, unless you're thinking like an adtech programmer trying to find the exact edge case for the maximal amount of tracking you're allowed to do, because such a bright line does not exist and that fact infuriates adtech professionals. It is vague because reality is vague and complex; each specific case of alleged violation has to be interpreted by multiple humans; there is no algorithm…

It is regulation that imagines companies are a government bureaucracy. I have read GDPR and don't work in adtech. It is vague and it is pretty easy to find pathological scenarios that don't make much sense or impose an unusually high burden for no benefit. Every European law firm seems to agree with this assessment despite what proponents assert. Consequently, it forces a lot of expensive defensive activity in practi…

> I have read GDPR and don't work in adtech. It is vague

As laws go, it's crystal clear

> is pretty easy to find pathological scenarios

Laws in general don't try to tell you how to implement every single facet of every single human endeavor. Otherwise no laws would be written, and those that would get written would be incomprehensible monstrosities.

To not repeat myself, I have more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811648

For 99.999% of businesses GDPR is trivial. For 99.999% of the remaining businesses it's either covered by other laws (banking) or is only difficult to implement because they were ised to collecting user data en masse (any social netowrk or streaming service).

There are very, very, very few instances were GDPR cannot be applied using basic common sense.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#192

Post by davebren »

foresto wrote: post #173
davebren wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have legitimate use cases where it's a core functionality of the application to store it, so the user obviously knows it's being collected and agrees by using it.

Storage accessible only to the user is usually not what we mean when we say data collection.

If data is collected and stored on a server, that is what we mean when we say data collection.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#193

Post by breppp »

tdeck wrote: post #184
breppp wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never saw the current US administration shipping people to labor camps with a single winter life expectancy

What is the life expectancy in CECOT?

Let's see, during Stalin's Rule 18 million people went through forced labor camps and roughly 10% died, around 1.8 million

Let's add around 5 million for man made famine, and probably a 2 million for arbitrary executions and deportations, while many estimate the full death count as between 15-20 million

As far I can understand the top range of estimates for CECOT, which is a non American facility, are that 500 died, of around imprisoned 20,000 inmates. So the scale is a bit... different

I think the issue here is that contrary to popular belief, not every wrong thing is the same

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#194

Post by Schiendelman »

treebeard901 wrote: post #125

Once wealthy and powerful people realize how this can be used to track them they will start cracking down. One of many examples for how underrated access to location data is for unauthorized people, it is a primary way that the military locates and kills targets in foreign countries. It is surprising all of the data is so freely available with data brokers. Or in some cases from the app companies themselves, if you'r…

They realize it. But they can exercise enough power to target removal of information that they don't want public.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#195

Post by abustamam »

rockskon wrote: post #179
abustamam wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that even completely anonymous data that conforms to what you just said can easily become de-anonymized when contextualized to other "anonymous" data.

A marketer's definition of anonymized is worthless. It's a fantasy they want everyone else to believe in. If it can be "de-anonymized" then it was never anonymous to begin with. "De-anonymized" is quite literally an oxymoron.

> A marketer's definition of anonymized is worthless. It's a fantasy they want everyone else to believe in.

I'm using your definition.

> Does it map to a single, identifiable person or something close enough that the distinction is meaningless?

Also

> If it can be "de-anonymized" then it was never anonymous to begin with.

Well sure, that's the point I was trying to make in my rhetorical question above. Individual pieces of data may be "anonymous" but put together with other anonymous data that can be traced to a single source and suddenly you can figure out quite easily who this person is. The data itself is still technically anonymous but it can be pieced together.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#196

Post by troupo »

lotu wrote: post #29
troupo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR literally prohibits the sale of user data and tracking without user consent (because yes, you want to give people the possibility to opt in for a variety of reasons). GDPR has literally nothing to do with cookie popups. That was, and is, adtech

My job was building cookie walls in response to GDPR. It might not have been the “intent” but it certainly was the consequence of that law.

> My job was building cookie walls in response to GDPR.

If you're building cookie walls, you are not building them in response to GDPR. You are literally building dark patterns intended to circumvent GDPR and trick users into accepting any and all data collection. You wouldn't need to build cookie walls if people you work for didn't, say, store precise geolocation of everyone for 12 years: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#197

Post by mapt »

breppp wrote: post #193
tdeck wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the life expectancy in CECOT?

Let's see, during Stalin's Rule 18 million people went through forced labor camps and roughly 10% died, around 1.8 million Let's add around 5 million for man made famine, and probably a 2 million for arbitrary executions and deportations, while many estimate the full death count as between 15-20 million As far I can understand the top range of estimates for CECOT, which is a non American facility, are that 500 died,…

Death rates are particularly hard to compare because part of the idea of El Salvador's system is that people are expected to die there - there is no release policy - yet most of them are young healthy men recently detained.

If we just look at incarceration rates:

CECOT is one facility, but around 2% of El Salvador's population has been imprisoned by Bukele's operation.

In 1950 the USSR had a population of around 180 million, and the gulag system was at its height with a population of 2.5 million, very similar.

The US prison system has been around 1% from the peak of the War On Drugs until recent fads in liberalized sentencing, currently holding at 0.7%, one of the highest in the world if you exclude ethnic purges like Xinjiang or Gaza.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#198

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

nlitened wrote: post #182
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only thing better to rule with is a network connected telescreen that monitors and issues orders to the proles.

So Instagram and TikTok?

The party needs a modern alternative to FauxNews to manipulate the youth. They've already sunk their claws into TikTok.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#199

Post by nullc »

Perhaps you saw the news about GM reaching an FTC settlement because they were tracking the locations cars they made at all times and selling the information to LexisNexis. You might have left the articles with a belief that GM agreed to stop.

Their settlement allows them to sell precise locations -- but with 'anonymous ids' instead of names, and also allows them to sell data with name/personal information but only zipcode resolution location information.

Re: Ban the sale of precise geolocation

#200

Post by nacozarina »

drysine wrote: post #180
wafflemaker wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody once said that if Stalin had access to television, he would never have to kill 20+ million ppl. What would he do with all that data? No idea.

I'm no fun of Stalin, but this meme about 20+ million victims needs to be purged. "The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's re…

lol naturally the criminals were obsessed with honestly keeping comprehensive official records of their misdeeds
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