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Comment by alphabettsy | Hacker News Reader

This shouldn’t exist. The fact that some company I’d never do business with can have basically every single data-point about my life without my permission is the stuff of dystopian nightmare novels, but here we are.

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Legislation signed in the late 90s that allowed companies to copyright and sell databases about things they did not own (i.e. Our personal data/habits) was a big death knell for common sense.

What's the name of that legislation? Just curious.

Directive 96/9/EC, perhaps?

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/lexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...

How so? In my country all that data is public information for anyone to access and HN normally sees the very same country as the role model.

I'm trying to understand what you mean. Can you give us some specific examples of information that is public about people in your country? I mean, are any of these things actually public in a government database about an individual:

    * a history of their past addresses?
    * the types and dates of medical treatment or surgery?
    * their grades in high school? 
    * the number of times the person has reported a crime to police? 
    * the cars they have owned?
    * the items they have purchased from a drug store?
    * their favorite type of restaurant?
    * etc

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