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Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

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Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#41

Post by maximusprime »

dalore wrote: post #40
maximusprime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't pedal this nonsense. The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every day, and deter crime. There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior and again, prevent crime. You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no centralized CCTV program where the…

I never said there is a big central repository. There doesn't have to be for privacy to be invaded. I would say you have a low crime rate due to social reasons, you can't just point and say it's because of CCTVs.

So a ton of shop owners just installed CCTV cameras for the hell of it did they? No correlation with them doing that and shoplifting/other crime going down eh?

I'm sure councils also install CCTV cameras on the streets just for the fun of it, or to spy on people rather than to cut down anti social behavior, muggings, pickpocketing, knife crime etc.

Yes, we have a low crime rate due to our culture. But we have an even lower crime rate due to the private CCTV cameras, and council run CCTV systems.

I don't really understand how your privacy is invaded by shop owners videoing the shop to make sure people aren't stealing stuff. It's not like they make the tapes public or don't erase them after a few days...

How many breaches of trust have you heard of? Have there been cases of shop owners identifying people buying sausages and posting their mugshots online or something?

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#42

Post by rmc »

cstross wrote: post #36
rmc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, unless they have a EU office, then they don't have to do anything. (In the same way Mr. Stross is free to say that Taiwan is not part of China (violate PRC law) or deny the holocaust happened (violate German law)). The reason Facebook is being hounded is because they have an EU incorporated company.

I'd just like to note at this point that I find rmc's analogy personally offensive. (One side of my family tree went missing in 1942: the ones who stayed in Poland after 1939.) A bit more sensitivity about metaphors might be welcome here ... Setting that aside: http://www.out-law.com/page-479 provides some advice on the Brussels Regulation 2001 concerning e-commerce. The B2C provisions in particular seem weighted to…

I'd just like to note at this point that I find rmc's analogy personally offensive.

My apologies, I regret any harm caused.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#43

Post by seabee »

maximusprime wrote: post #41
dalore wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said there is a big central repository. There doesn't have to be for privacy to be invaded. I would say you have a low crime rate due to social reasons, you can't just point and say it's because of CCTVs.

So a ton of shop owners just installed CCTV cameras for the hell of it did they? No correlation with them doing that and shoplifting/other crime going down eh? I'm sure councils also install CCTV cameras on the streets just for the fun of it, or to spy on people rather than to cut down anti social behavior, muggings, pickpocketing, knife crime etc. Yes, we have a low crime rate due to our culture. But we have an even…

> But we have an even lower crime rate due to the private CCTV cameras, and council run CCTV systems.

Don't stretch your assertions too far. From the reports I read (think it might have been a Home Office report) there was no significant change in crime rate, but crimes were less likely to take place where there was a CCTV camera. The criminals move on to unprotected areas, you could say.

n.b. the top comment in the thread is certainly BS. CCTV is installed in public (or quasi-public e.g. shops) areas where nobody has an expectation of privacy. If they made the situation worse, you'd have to define what 'negative privacy' could mean...

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#44

Post by cstross »

rmc wrote: post #42
cstross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd just like to note at this point that I find rmc's analogy personally offensive. (One side of my family tree went missing in 1942: the ones who stayed in Poland after 1939.) A bit more sensitivity about metaphors might be welcome here ... Setting that aside: http://www.out-law.com/page-479 provides some advice on the Brussels Regulation 2001 concerning e-commerce. The B2C provisions in particular seem weighted to…

I'd just like to note at this point that I find rmc's analogy personally offensive. My apologies, I regret any harm caused.

Thanks. I'll chalk it up to "on the internet, nobody knows you're an [X]".

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#45

Post by wmf »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #3

Why does Klout in particular seem to piss off so many people? If the text he cites from the Data Protection law were to be interpreted broadly enough to make Klout illegal in the UK, wouldn't it also cover the information about you that Google and Bing collect and process?

Klout was scoring people without asking them, leading to a lot of people getting low scores (effectively being told "you suck at social media"). When there was no opt-out, people felt like they were being cajoled into playing a game that they don't want to play. (Similar concerns were raised about Get Satisfaction.)

"there are many people who don’t wish to be a part of a non-regulated system, and one that can (rightly or wrongly) be used as a third-party validator for expertise."

http://dannybrown.me/2011/10/25/a-letter-to-joe-fernandez-of...

"People are emotionally attached to their score. It is tied to their ego"

It seems mean to go around telling people they suck, especially when those people never asked Klout's opinion. This is like Zynga-style dark gamification.

"Just as an SAT score is used to judge students and a credit score is used to judge financial standing, Fernandez hopes that the Klout score will become an ingredient in job interviews."

So not only does Klout tell everyone that you suck, but they want to hurt your career, too.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/community/2011/11/03/klout-...

Counterpoint: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/26/nobody-gives-a-damn-about-y...

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#46

Post by dalore »

seabee wrote: post #43
maximusprime wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a ton of shop owners just installed CCTV cameras for the hell of it did they? No correlation with them doing that and shoplifting/other crime going down eh? I'm sure councils also install CCTV cameras on the streets just for the fun of it, or to spy on people rather than to cut down anti social behavior, muggings, pickpocketing, knife crime etc. Yes, we have a low crime rate due to our culture. But we have an even…

> But we have an even lower crime rate due to the private CCTV cameras, and council run CCTV systems. Don't stretch your assertions too far. From the reports I read (think it might have been a Home Office report) there was no significant change in crime rate, but crimes were less likely to take place where there was a CCTV camera. The criminals move on to unprotected areas, you could say. n.b. the top comment in the…

In 2007, the UK watchdog CameraWatch claimed that the majority of CCTV cameras in the UK are operated illegally or are in breach of privacy guidelines.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#47

Post by Wilya »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #3

Why does Klout in particular seem to piss off so many people? If the text he cites from the Data Protection law were to be interpreted broadly enough to make Klout illegal in the UK, wouldn't it also cover the information about you that Google and Bing collect and process?

My understanding is that Klout crosses the line by creating accounts for people without their consent, and making those hard to delete.

They are different from search engines because they try to link data to a real person (which is mostly what privacy laws try to prevent).

And, contrary to most other social networks, they act without having consent from the user.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#48

Post by seabee »

dalore wrote: post #46
seabee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But we have an even lower crime rate due to the private CCTV cameras, and council run CCTV systems. Don't stretch your assertions too far. From the reports I read (think it might have been a Home Office report) there was no significant change in crime rate, but crimes were less likely to take place where there was a CCTV camera. The criminals move on to unprotected areas, you could say. n.b. the top comment in the…

In 2007, the UK watchdog CameraWatch claimed that the majority of CCTV cameras in the UK are operated illegally or are in breach of privacy guidelines.

The 'privacy guidelines' in question being the Data Protection Act, which is fundamentally a set of laws related to data processing. In this case, CCTV tapes could be stolen and the cameras themselves are not always signposted.

As the linked post demonstrates, privacy issues are covered by the Act - but as far as I'm concerned, you have no privacy whether half a dozen strangers are watching you in the street or whether you're being broadcast to the whole world.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#49

Post by peterzakin »

"In the past I've fulminated about various social networking systems. The basic gist is this: the utility of a social network to any given user is proportional to the number of users it has"

This is a bit clumsy. If all of my friends are on a social network, it doesn't much matter who else is on it. The utility of a social network is proportional to the number of users I care about.

Re: Stross: Klout violates UK privacy laws.

#50

Post by dspillett »

maximusprime wrote: post #39
dalore wrote: post #37

> Here in the civilized world we have a fundamental right to privacy. I live in the UK. I thought it was quite funny that he tried to compare the privacy policies by saying the UK is better. Now the UK might be better in some regards but with the amount of CCTVs abound I still say they have problems with privacy.

Please don't pedal this nonsense. The UK has a large amount of privately owned and operated CCTV cameras. Most are operated by private shop owners etc. They solve countless crimes every day, and deter crime. There's also CCTV put in place by local councils, to stop anti social behavior and again, prevent crime. You've been reading reddit too much I expect. There is no conspiracy, no centralized CCTV program where the…

> The UK does have a problem with speed cameras though. It's a way to generate extra revenue from the population.

Slipping off-topic, I can't stand that line. You break the law, you get fined. Keep within the law, you don't get fined. Quite frankly if you want to hand revenue to the government via speeding go ahead. But you don't like the law campaign to have it changed, don't just ignore it then moan about being fined for ignoring it.

My issue with speed cameras is their location. They are predominantly on high-speed roads which with a few exceptions are not overly dangerous. I think we should be concentrating on residential areas particularly near schools and parks (the road past the school I used to live near is officially a 20mph zone, but I don't think many people took it at less than 30 and there was no camera or other such equipment there except on the few occasions when a motorcycle-mounted cop sat near the blind-ish corner with his radar gun).

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