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Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

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Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is based on an assumption that the regulation actually achieved beneficial privacy outcomes. It’s arguable been most successful in Access to Data area, and to some extend Data Erasure. But the Consent and Documentation provisions are a complete joke. Most EU data subjects have no idea who’s holding their data, or how/why they have access to it. The only area it’s been truly successful in has been levying…

>"that the regulation actually achieved beneficial privacy outcomes" Russian regulation against corruption has not achieved the intended outcomes, therefore they should have no regulation against corruption at all?

I won’t comment on Russian corruption laws, since I don’t know anything about them. However I do know that the only factor that the stated purpose of any piece of legislation/regulation will influence is public perception of it. The stated purpose of a law has no influence at all over its practical impact. The impact of the GDPR has largely been to establish trade barriers, and it has had a very minimal impact on privacy.

Given they have largely failed to achieve their stated goal, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to see the EU imposing further regulation on online services/information distribution. However it makes perfect sense when you look at what they actually accomplish. Which is implementing (rather controversial) economic protectionist policies, under the guise of something unrelated and far less controversial.

To answer your reductio ad absurdum more directly, if you’re doing something that doesn’t work, it doesn’t make sense to keep doing it.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#282
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What changes is that the regulation won't be backed by the EU, so perhaps Facebook sees the UK regulator as toothless, or at least less likely to pursue things?

It would be odd to see the Information Commissioner (the UK's data protection regulator) as toothless, given it has so far been among the most severe in penalising large businesses under the much greater powers it acquired under the GDPR. This could be more of a strategic move from Facebook, anticipating the UK government wanting a quick post-Brexit trade deal with the US and having limited practical room to manoeuvr…

> It would be odd to see the Information Commissioner (the UK's data protection regulator) as toothless, given it has so far been among the most severe in penalising large businesses under the much greater powers it acquired under the GDPR.

hahahahahahahaha.

The ICO has about as many teeth as a newborn baby.

They have actual knowledge of criminality by the adtech industry and they refuse to regulate. They say as much in their most recent annual report!

No, what the ICO does is issue press releases and notices of intent and then either does nothing or backs way the fuck down.

Just look at Marriot, BA, or AIQ for examples of the reality of the enforcement issues being nothing like their initial announcements of enforcement.

Denham is completely incompetent, and her office simply can't get its act together.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Snowden? Change in government? Does it really matter? Point is I help elect the UK government, that means I can change it. Does not apply to the US government, so the US government could put full page ads in the Daily Mail talking about how the abuse the data of UK citizens, and there's diddly squat I could do about it.

How do you know which party will do what, once in government? You wait for another Snowden and replace them again? What if your preferred nice politician enters power and is briefed on things that make him realize there are more upsides to the project to combat national security issues, and secretly continues things? It's very hard to have popular control over secret operations where you may only sporadically learn a…

Not really sure why any of that matters. It’s pretty simple, I would rather have my data stored somewhere I have some level of recourse for privacy violations. Even if that recourse is long drawn out and difficult, than somewhere I have no recourse, and never will have any recourse.

I really don’t understand why you’re struggling to understand that. Talking about the relative merits of different governments is completely meaningless, if I can only elect and influence one of them.

Based on your arguments I should just lie down and let every world government and company trample all over my rights, because it’s all hopeless anyway.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#284
post #243
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be possible to store data in a cryptographically decentralized way to stop giving meaning to "where" a data is stored? Or maybe even just XOR it with a random key, put the result in the UK and put the key in the US. That way neither US nor UK has "personal data" -- independently each country just got a pile of white noise -- but the two countries together do have it, and they wouldn't be able to say who "rea…

This issue isn't a case of what is technologically feasible. This is about what's profitable and within legal policies of a country they are operating in. Where data is stored is sometimes an issue of jurisdiction policy (laws). Think of this as a separation between requirements (what) and implementation (how)

I suppose, but law has to be governed by written documents, and part of technology's job is to advance society by identifying and operating in the loopholes of those written documents. What does the written law define as "where data is stored"?

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#285

Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization. All this is is the reining in of a few greedy corporations that offer information-sharing platforms in exchange for exploitation. New communities will pop up, and old ones resurface.

That’s the political pitch. It’s really just the EU trying to challenge the economic dominance of US tech companies. Tariffs and trade barriers are unpopular, and people who implement them are supposedly very bad. But privacy regulation and huge fines for big tech are very popular, and the people who implement them are supposedly very good. When people see the fines given out I think they presume the regulations are…

The EU is either just pretending to do so or doing a very bad job. They've accomplished nothing, except force everyone (not just Big Tech) to put annoying (and increasingly so) cookie banners on their websites and users have to endure them.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they start freely sharing data on UK citizens to others in the Five Eyes alliance. How will you know?

Another Snowden? Change in government? Does it really matter? Point is I help elect the UK government, that means I can change it. Does not apply to the US government, so the US government could put full page ads in the Daily Mail talking about how the abuse the data of UK citizens, and there's diddly squat I could do about it.

And tbh the security services in the have more oversight than the FANGS do

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#287

This is the balkanization of the internet. We've lived through a brief period of free exchange among peoples, but it's soon over. I predict only one viable future for all technology companies, big and small: Pick a single national jurisdiction, keep your employees and servers inside it.

Facebook can absolutely operate in each country following their laws. They just have to change their own company structure and data policies. For example, they may need to physically separate EU data from US data completely and have separate employees with access to each.

I don't see any reason they cannot do that. It will hurt their bottom line for sure, but it's completely reasonable imo.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#288
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can see ads. You just can't process their PII for them. You know, it used to be that ads were targeted by where they were shown, not by who was looking . That's a return to that model.

A tracking ID isn't PII, though?

What is or isn't PII, which is a US legal term, is irrelevant.

What matters is if it's Personal Data.

Personal Data is defined by the GDPR as:

"‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person".

I would say a tracking ID falls under "an identification number [or] online identifier"...

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#289
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not what's happening here though. Facebook absolutely could keep the data within the EU, they just think it's more profitable to move UK user data to California. Now, it's a valid question as to why the UK would allow their constituents most personal data to be transferred out of their jurisdiction, but that's up to the UK government. Facebook exists in hundreds of jurisdictions, it's not rare for…

> why the UK would allow their constituents most personal data to be transferred out of their jurisdiction Are there limitations with using products/doing business outside the UK, from within the UK? As in, is there any authority that they could use to stop people from, willingly(?), using a foreign internet service? It seems that would require some pretty draconian internet policies.

There are, quite rightly, strict rules about how companies handle personal data (and that includes not transferring it to jurisdictions where those rules don't apply). I don't think any of those rules apply to individuals handling their own personal data.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#290
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't have, had they actually obeyed the same laws and regulations. Instead, they offered a nearly identical service (arranged via app rather than hailing streetside) and skirted around all of the regulations that had kept the incumbents entrenched for so long.

Yes, and? This agrees with the statement that small companies are fluid and can find ways to work with regulations. Coming up with ways to avoid is that.

I do not believe that violating the spirit, if not the letter, of laws and regulations is a good strategy for enabling small teams to disrupt large incumbents.

If we want a healthy market where small and large players alike can thrive, enabling regulatory capture and expecting small players to ignore regulations as long as they can is just bad policy.

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