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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

How is this not a privacy nightmare? It has name and date of birth in it.

The California version will certainly be used to generate databases that will be fed to marketers.

Well a lot of venues ask to see your ID to verify your age for entry. How is this any different? It's not like it contains any contact information.

I think if every time you went to a venue, they would photocopy your ID, nobody would visit that venue.

The doorman is not remembering/recording every person who came in, thats the difference.

But they are through CCTV

Companies aren’t allowed to keep that data in the EU. I thought California had something similar to GDPR? In any case, it’s the minimum amount of information required for the task, and it’s at least (hopefully) for a limited time.

What's stopping people from robbing you at gunpoint? The law. GDPR is specific about consent and the purpose of collecting data. It's simply illegal to feed the data to marketers.

If somebody robs me at gunpoint, I immediately know it happened. I can report it to the police, who will take the report seriously. If the police catch the guy (which is likely if he's a serial offender), the prosecutor will take it seriously. If convicted, the offender will go to prison for years.

If a company violates privacy laws, I will not immediately know it happened. If I don't know it happened then I can't report it to the police, but even if I did, the police probably won't take it seriously. And prosecutors going after corporations? Even if that happens it will doubtlessly take many years for the court case to reach any conclusion. If convicted, the corporation will receive a fine that is a fraction of what it would take to put them out of business. The executives won't go to prison.

The practical differences between these two scenarios are substantial.

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