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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#341

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

leephillips wrote: post #24

Good. US citizens should be, at least, disappointed that their government is so bad at protecting their privacy, that US law is so far behind the times. To those companies and people who find these EU decisions baffling or inconvenient: tough. If you had had respect for your users this would not be an issue. You would already not be spying on them. To website visitors: if you see a cookie banner, the site is asking p…

I'm not disappointed I'm infuriated. Because the US uses technology companies to get around the 4th amendment all the time: https://www.salon.com/2013/04/24/government_giving_att_other...

The US isn't "behind" it simply has no intention of moving in that direction, despite the 4th amendment making it really clear they're not allowed:

>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#342

Post by strawhatguy »

clairity wrote: post #117

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of government. it’s literally as important as the separation of church and state. in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones, in all facets of civic life (e.g., campaign finance).

I understand the feeling, but that's not possible, and moreover, after reflection, why should it be so?

If government can literally fine/shutdown your business arbitrarily (as they do for lockdowns, permits, etc.), then they should have a voice in the government that could treat them so terribly.

Unless you mean to say that government should be so much smaller that it doesn't impose separate business taxes, import/export controls, require permitting and licensing and follow arbitrary regulations on those businesses, which I could get behind. Ideally, if there's no advantage or penalty to avoid by petitioning government, won't everyone stop paying attention to government? No gaming the game can happen then!

The problem is that we can't have it both ways, can't restrict a group from petitioning and then pose rules they MUST follow, without a say. That's not democracy at all.

Companies are just groups of individuals after all, and should have just as much voice as an activist group does, like ACLU or Americans for Tax Reform or whatever.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#343

Post by PontifexMinimus »

abarwick wrote: post #123
clairity wrote: post #117

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of government. it’s literally as important as the separation of church and state. in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones, in all facets of civic life (e.g., campaign finance).

This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, and more expensive to the tax payer. There’s a lot of good these products can provide, granted they are properly audited and have high security requirements.

> would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure,

I disagree. It would be relatively straightforward to build such systems on Linux and open source.

> and more expensive to the tax payer

As a proportion of Italy's GDP, the cost would be negligible, especially given that this is a matter of national security, something governments tend to be keen to spend money on.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#344

Post by feet »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #70
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is the LTS branch of Democracy.

Privacy improvements will be pulled in along with independent political parties in the next kernel update.

You guys are getting kernel updates? Our supreme court is taking us back to v0.1 from 1800

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#345

Post by wvenable »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #311
wvenable wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google prices Analytics at $0 to prevent any competition from starting up. It's not dumping because, in the absence of any competition, the price hasn't changed. It just turns out the market price for this service is $0.

I would say it has more in common with the Microsoft antitrust case. In that they gave IE away for free. I think you can show Google has monopoly on search and search data and GA is the only analytics allowed to connect with that. Is it dumping? Yes. They don’t intend to raise the price, but they get paid not in cash but in terms of increasing their monopoly by having so much data on us. Now a lot of things are like…

IE is no more but the price for browsers is still free. Most consumers even at the time also did not pay for their browser.

Now these days it would be ridiculous if your device or operating system didn't come with a browser.

> They get paid not in cash but in terms of increasing their monopoly by having so much data on us

Yes, and anyone else can do the same.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#346

Post by PontifexMinimus »

hutzlibu wrote: post #340
quadrifoliate wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run. In fact, I bet you that a major part of the delays in Government are because Tom from IT needs a sign off from three separate people to get a new Office 365 license for Brenda in accounting. With Libre Office you make that a thing of the past.

"Using Libre Office rather than Office 365 is unlikely to be the limiting factor in how fast anything in a government office is going to run." Depends. When odf would be the standard maybe, but it isn't. Standard is microsoft office, and libre office is not 100% compatible. But you will still have to deal with lots of microsoft documents, from all the other agencies, ordinary people, companies, .. Meaning, when Munic…

> Standard is microsoft office

Then change it. By law if need be, and have all government departments go over to Libre Office at the same time.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#347

Post by mensetmanusman »

abarwick wrote: post #333
scarface74 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you going to also train staff to use the new open source software? Where is the open source SalesForce equivalent? Workday? Concur? Device management? Email service? ServiceNow? Time tracking? Photoshop? Are you going to also force every employee to use Linux instead of Mac and Windows? Are you going to tell them to rewrite all of their software and business processes written on top of Oracle and SQL Server? Shou…

Simply training government workers to use open source tools would shut down governments for weeks.

Then this is a good argument to help convince Republicans to get on board.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#348

Post by danielheath »

strawhatguy wrote: post #342
clairity wrote: post #117

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of government. it’s literally as important as the separation of church and state. in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones, in all facets of civic life (e.g., campaign finance).

I understand the feeling, but that's not possible, and moreover, after reflection, why should it be so? If government can literally fine/shutdown your business arbitrarily (as they do for lockdowns, permits, etc.), then they should have a voice in the government that could treat them so terribly. Unless you mean to say that government should be so much smaller that it doesn't impose separate business taxes, import/ex…

The government of Italy makes rules that apply to Italians and those doing business with them.

If you’re Italian, you do have a say, and if you’re doing international business in Italy then you accept the sovereign risk of dealing with a foreign state.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#349

Post by clairity »

strawhatguy wrote: post #342
clairity wrote: post #117

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of government. it’s literally as important as the separation of church and state. in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones, in all facets of civic life (e.g., campaign finance).

I understand the feeling, but that's not possible, and moreover, after reflection, why should it be so? If government can literally fine/shutdown your business arbitrarily (as they do for lockdowns, permits, etc.), then they should have a voice in the government that could treat them so terribly. Unless you mean to say that government should be so much smaller that it doesn't impose separate business taxes, import/ex…

you seem to be arguing from the corporate personhood stance. corporations still have an outsized voice via their rich owners. they shouldn't, however, be privileged with extra voice unaccorded the ordinary citizenry.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#350

Post by IX-103 »

permo-w wrote: post #101
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t predatory pricing mean “we dropped our pricing below profitability in order to kill competitors (and presumably raise our own prices once they’re dead)”? I think you’d have a very good case against Amazon, and probably Uber/Lyft, and I’ve long wondered why no one sued them over it. But in Google’s case, Analytics is profitable for the same reason Youtube is profitable—Google makes money off the data they gath…

I did hear this in about 2014, so it could well have changed, but I thought Youtube wasn't profitable, or at the very most barely profitable

As of 2019, I was still hearing it wasn't profitable. Though that may be starting to change: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/youtube-is-now-build...
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