Does anybody know when the story hit Reddit for the first time?
Not quite sure if this wasn't on HN first.
24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
201–210 of 222 posts
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#202I think there’s a few points here and although some replies have very valid points others completely stray from the issues that "Europe vs facebook" is making. 1. Facebook has bases, and operates, in Europe. Thus they MUST abide by our data laws. This means that, under our European laws they MUST supply ALL information they have on people. Currently this is not being done and as such they are breaking the law by not…
While I agree with most of your post, I feel I MUST point out some problems with some of the analogies you are using.
1) The analogy between hacking your phone and reading messages is really NOT the same as Facebook storing data that you supplied to their system.
2) Google did nothing that should be considered illegal regardless of what European courts decided. The data they collected was on OPEN WIFI routers. This is the same as being accused of breaking the law because you listen while having a conversation in a crowded room. Open wifi comes with the implicit idea, that the owner of the router is actively allowing others to use the router.
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#203I think there’s a few points here and although some replies have very valid points others completely stray from the issues that "Europe vs facebook" is making. 1. Facebook has bases, and operates, in Europe. Thus they MUST abide by our data laws. This means that, under our European laws they MUST supply ALL information they have on people. Currently this is not being done and as such they are breaking the law by not…
"Is facebook gather information on people who have no connection to them any different from hacking someone’s phone and listening to their messages?"
Usually any communication has two parties. So, you can collect information with neither party consenting (phone hacking, wiretapping, etc.), one party consenting, or both parties consenting.
I would think that most of the information they collect would count as one party consenting, so it's a step up from phone hacking. But it's still worrying, of course, because the single consenting party often doesn't know they are consenting (whether they should know or not is a different matter).
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Above and beyond that, any non-trivial web architecture is going to involve multiple tiers of data and caching. A given text object will exist in the primary database, in its replicas or clusters, and in backups. If the outfit is at all legitimate, multiple backups representing frequent points in time, stored in multiple locations. A binary object (say an image, video, or audio file) may exist in its originally uploa…
But if you delete something from the primary database, then I would assume it will eventually get deleted from others too. While it might never be intentionally deleted from backups, the backups will be overwritten with newer ones eventually. (I'm talking about facebook here, not about the web in general)
And at a minimum it should not longer be trivially accessible to the company via their 'normal' procedures.
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#205I think there’s a few points here and although some replies have very valid points others completely stray from the issues that "Europe vs facebook" is making. 1. Facebook has bases, and operates, in Europe. Thus they MUST abide by our data laws. This means that, under our European laws they MUST supply ALL information they have on people. Currently this is not being done and as such they are breaking the law by not…
> Facebook has bases, and operates, in Europe. Thus they MUST abide by our data laws.
Why? One might argue that European laws MUST be changed. Pointing to laws is hardly a moral argument, there are tons of terrible laws and facebook might as well be a victim of one of them.
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So there is a way to synchronize data creation and data updates, but not data deletion? Really?
Data creation is possible and easy, especially in append only filesystems. Data updates can be done immutably by doing creates and rewriting the pointer structure, which obviously destroys cache fetch for highwater mark objects but doesn't affect cache marks for global id'd objects.
Have you actually read the Paxos papers and the rest of the literature on this?
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
One might wish to eat one's cake and have it too. Not all wishes are reasonable.
"Expect this company that I'm dealing with to act within the law" is almost always reasonable.
Yes. But it is not reasonable to expect every (legal) service to be offered in every legal/regulatory environment.
This is not to say that Facebook will not or should not offer its services in Europe. Simply that there are possible legal environments where Facebook would be legally allowed to offer its services, but where it would be economically unsustainable for it to do so... and that it is often quite difficult to understand these sorts of effects ahead of time.
Edit: clarification
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I certainly suspect that most people make a distinction between shooting someone, and videotaping someone. This leads me to believe that surreptitious surveillance would be a far more widespread problem than random shootings.
Surreptitious surveillance to what ends? If the use of any of that data -- for profiling, legal process, advertising, contact, etc. -- is prohibited, and the action of performing the surveillance exposes the entity to plausible legal consequences and/or obligations (notification, deletion requests, etc.), then its practice will be limited. Undisclosed phone recording in some states, for example (not admissible in leg…
Undisclosed phone recording in some states, for example (not admissible in legal processes, a violation of law of itself, etc.).
Laws like this are a legacy of a time before it was easier to just record everything that happens to a person or in an area than to make decisions about what to record. We're still in the tail end of that era, but only just.
Much crime is economically motivated (not all, but much).
It's estimated that the average American commits three felonies a day (but if you start thinking about this topic and the people around you, it will escalate sharply, since failure to report a felony you know about is itself a felony...). Given this, I think we can safely say that the vast majority of crime in the US is completely incidental and unknowingly committed. Even if laws about recording other people (like police and audio callers) remain on the books, the ubiquity and silence of continuous recording will mean that it falls into the list of things that people do all the time that the state technically bans.
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#209I think there’s a few points here and although some replies have very valid points others completely stray from the issues that "Europe vs facebook" is making. 1. Facebook has bases, and operates, in Europe. Thus they MUST abide by our data laws. This means that, under our European laws they MUST supply ALL information they have on people. Currently this is not being done and as such they are breaking the law by not…
> Facebook has bases, and operates, in Europe. Thus they MUST abide by our data laws. Why? One might argue that European laws MUST be changed. Pointing to laws is hardly a moral argument, there are tons of terrible laws and facebook might as well be a victim of one of them.
It's not about morals, it's about the law as it is right now. And the truth is that Facebook is breaking our laws and need to be prosecuted for such.
As for your argument, why is that a terrible law? Why is it bad that users have a right to know what companies have on them? To be honest, I think it's a pretty bloody great law.
Facebook is a victim of itself. If it didn't track users in the first place, it wouldn't be in hot water.
Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 friend…
You realize that in no way does this make Facebook registration non-voluntary.
Of course, signing up for Facebook is completely voluntary in a legal sense. No-one can strong-arm you into creating an account.
My point is that social pressure can often make people do things that they don't really want to do. And sadly, many people do not have the courage to stand up to their peers and tell them no.
It's more common in US culture to do that, and largely encouraged by US societal norms, but that isn't always the case in other cultures. This is based on my experience growing up outside of the US (and also spending time in high school and college in the US).