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Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

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Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#521

Post by keewee7 »

mediascreen wrote: post #412

I think we (in the EU) will soon realise the bizarre consequences of these regulations. European startups will not be able to use standard SaaS or PaaS tools (like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc) if they are based in the US (like most of them are). No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. It will take forever to build up a similar ecosystem in Europe and I think most successful European entrepreneurs…

The activist MEPs in the EU who have pushed for these regulations are overwhelmingly (German) socialists.

I support their work to protect the privacy of EU citizens. But I'm also aware that their goal is to replace Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc. with state-owned European enterprises.

European state enterprises can be surprisingly efficient. However keep the Germans out of it. German government IT is still in the Middle Ages. Let countries like Denmark and Estonia build the future of European IT.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#522

Post by watwut »

mediascreen wrote: post #412

I think we (in the EU) will soon realise the bizarre consequences of these regulations. European startups will not be able to use standard SaaS or PaaS tools (like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc) if they are based in the US (like most of them are). No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. It will take forever to build up a similar ecosystem in Europe and I think most successful European entrepreneurs…

> No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace.

For quite a lot of business data, the "do not export data out of region" thing is nothing new. Which is why it is not actually unusual to be able to select where the servers are located.

That being said, if this made Microsoft Teams impossible to use, it would made a lot of us happy. That thing is crap.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#523

Post by nickpp »

einpoklum wrote: post #479
nickpp wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's CEO has pretty much ZERO powers over me. The USA government is (largely) democratic and (mostly) obeys laws. But my government... is not the one I voted for and I trust it 0%. Because I do not live in the West but in one of the great majority of countries with a corrupt, abusive government. The democratic governments of the West are the exception, not the rule.

> The USA government is (largely) democratic Well, if I may nitpick, it's a federal republic rather than a democracy... More to the point though, there was this study at Princeton U about the correlation between US government policy and popular opinion on a variety of subjects which found that public opinion correlates very poorly with government policy / legislation passed, but opinions among the very-rich correlate…

Still infinitely better than my government though, which was the whole point.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#524

Post by mekkkkkk »

jdrc wrote: post #446
i5heu wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s okay. The EU can build it itself when the US player are not able to not send data to their US data centres.

I don't think it can. Maybe they can buy yandex, but i think europe has drained its talent tothe US. And even if they build it, how will they monetize it?

Europe isn't drained of talent by a long shot. It has surely been tapped to some extent by the bay area exodus, but there's plenty of tech success stories and talented people here still.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#525

Post by chaostheory »

mediascreen wrote: post #496
ballenf wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we fragment and destroy the entire Internet I would call fragmenting these things rebuilding the internet. Not sure how consolidating everyone on a few Mailchimp type services is in anyone's interest.

I already get a lot of "We are sorry, but for legal reasons we are prevented from providing this service where you live" when I'm accessing American websites. Recent European judgements seems to make it illegal to embed content from YouTube or Vimeo for example. I don't see how dividing services up by region will help me anyway. I'd rather be able to choose from a few (I imagine there are more than a few at the momen…

I feel that the whole point of this is to mimic China’s achievement of driving out foreign competition through legislation.

It’s similar to the UK’s pornography laws being more about surveillance and censorship rather than protecting children.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#526

Post by kragen »

judge2020 wrote: post #414
kragen wrote: post #77

Note that Wikimedia has been not using Google Analytics since forever because they're concerned about precisely the same privacy problems as the regulators. This other post has more comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30284820 I love that the plaintiff in this case is the "NOYB Association", as in None Of Your Fucking Business, Google.

It would seem Wikimedia is still violating the law as they keep Analytics data/data of users[0], but haven't yet pulled the Microsoft move of creating a separate EU company that the US-based entity has no control of. 0: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines

It's totally plausible that Wikimedia and the EU have different, mutually incompatible responses to the same problem.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#527

Post by judge2020 »

fprct wrote: post #449
lmkg wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original ruling was nuanced, and this ruling is clarifying some gray area inside of it. The ruling on Schrems II (the court case that struck down Privacy Shield) did not state that SCCs on their own would be sufficient. It said that SCCs + "additional safeguards" would be allowable. There have been several rulings already that SCCs on their own are not sufficient. The "additional safeguards" must include a risk a…

Wait, wouldn't that imply that EU startups can't host their infra on GCP, AWS or Azure? I'm not even talking about analytics - just about simple user email required to login would be problematic now.

Pretty much, it really sounds like Schrems II + this ruling mean that US corporations can't be involved with EU at all besides via licensing software to a completely independent EU corporation (which isn't a given either, though, since the US company could threaten withholding software updates/revoking the software license to pressure the EU corporation to hand over EU citizen data to US Law Enforcement).

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#528

Post by ssijak »

xaedes wrote: post #44
ssijak wrote: post #42

So I can take follow someone in public, take picture of them in public places from some distance, follow them into stores, see what they are spending and what they are using, etc. Store owners can have cameras, track the behaviour of customers, etc But if I use a service which anonymously tracks which pages they opened on a website they voluntarily visited and are exploring, then I'm in trouble?

No, you can't stalk people.

You are not stalking, like doing it all the time. And you are not taking closeup in your face picture but from a distance. All that is not illegal in a lot of countries.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#529

Post by chaxor »

cyral wrote: post #439
doctor_lollipop wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace I'm so looking forward to that.

What is the alternative? We are going to go back to 2005 where we send docs over email? Files end up being too large, nobody knows what the latest copy is, etc.

Or people get fed up with cloud companies like Google (already happening) and people realize self hosting is becoming more and more simple (also happening) to the point where anyone can do it. IPFS and other tooling could push a decent portion of users to this. We can already see some of that effect with things like mastadon.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#530

Post by kergonath »

newaccount74 wrote: post #482
cyral wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? We are going to go back to 2005 where we send docs over email? Files end up being too large, nobody knows what the latest copy is, etc.

The EU is big enough that companies like Microsoft will find a way to offer their services legally, and if they wouldn't, it would be a huge opportunity to EU based competitors. It's not like we don't have any software companies in the EU. Also, there's no reason that collaboration tools must be hosted on a US cloud. Especially Microsoft traditionally provided tools for their customers to host their own infrastructur…

I think you’re right. Microsoft is perfectly able to split its operations. They’re doing it now in China in a much more drastic fashion, and they seem to have been preparing to do it in Europe for a few years now.
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