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Comment by thfuran | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of existing laws take intent into consideration so its not unreasonable to suppose that a log that happens to accidentally contain some information that it shouldn't before being destroyed and the bug patched would be quite legally distinct from a log containing the same information but has a business unit processing and profiting from it.

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It is not unreasonable, I agree. However, the privacy laws passed by government are mostly intended to play performative and punitive role, and actual interest of the people in balancing their privacy and usability concerns are tertiary at best. The politicians pass those laws to look good on one side, and to attack the companies on the other. User concerns are mostly ignored.

> User concerns are mostly ignored.

Indeed and I don't see how that changes _structurally_ when people "in the know" are always going to be a tiny minority — they say that about 3% of the population has the profile to work in tech, and I tend to agree anecdotally.

I feel it's comparable to the inception of medicine for instance, and the solution was auto-regulation of the field by itself through the application of a loud (public and transparent) set of deontological rules of practice ("Primum non nocere", etc).

Awareness of society about these issues re. privacy and information sanctity in a democracy will not come naturally, structurally as time goes by. Just like they don't really know how doctors make life-or-death decisions on the spot. Nevertheless, the right principles should eventually exist, be known, and abode to, by those who work in the field. It should be loud and clear that we all have ethics (rules, implementing guiding principles), and which exactly.

A deontology of information technology and its practice in relation to human beings is one big "TODO" of this century, and it should concern anyone even remotely skilled to understand the problem.

>However, the privacy laws passed by government are mostly intended to play performative and punitive role

Yeah, that seems to pretty well describe most all legislature these days.

How much did Google get smacked for for collecting unencrypted packet data while they were building out their SSID-based localization improvements?

...and the national military surveillance operationalizing it.

This isn't just about revenue. People are assassinated by the US government without trial based on metadata.

So what are the chances that a judge cares about “intent” on site that doesn’t conform to their belief system?

You're asking what the odds are that a judge will refrain from flagrant malfeasance. I'd imagine it's pretty high, though surely not 100%.

You trust the legal system far more than I do.

So, what, we shouldn't attempt to have privacy protections because some corrupt judge might fine a company that shouldn't have been fined?

We shouldn’t give the government more power for them to abuse…period.

Better defacto, unelected governments in the form of huge companies with armies of lobbyists and forced arbitration agreements.

Because of how both the electoral college works and gerrymandering, the elected officials don’t represent the majority.

Besides, private companies don’t have the force of law to force people to do anything.

Giving the government more power over your freedom is never the answer.

> Besides, private companies don’t have the force of law to force people to do anything.

As more and more consolidation happens I'm not so sure this is still true. If all grocery stores become zero-human Amazon markets and their AI decides your long forgotten, hobby EC2 instance is past due then can you buy food?

Rent an apartment?

Fly on a plane?

Elections in the US need reformed, no doubt. And governments have a monopoly on legal violence. The answer isn't to keep handing the keys to the government over to whomever/whatever has the most money.

Only 5% of all IT spend is on any cloud provider:

https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud/amazon-shocker-ceo-jas...

The grocery store market is definitely not a monopoly

https://www.statista.com/statistics/818602/online-and-offlin...

And Whole Foods makes up less than 2%

There is definitely not a “tech monopoly” on renting an apartment. On the other hand, the government can and does take away peoples property through both imminent domain and civil forfeiture.

The government already controls who can fly and who can’t via “no fly lists”

https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/grounded-life-...

So no, I have no desire to give government more power.

Should we close down all air traffic control to make sure no air traffic controller ever screws up?

Can air traffic controllers take away my freedom and my rights?

I don't understand. You want rights but don't want the government to have any power to enforce them? What should happen when a company does something that you feel violates your rights?

The government doesn’t “enforce rights”. They take rights away from people. Laws by definition limit what you can do.

A company can only “violate my rights” if I choose to use those services. It’s much easier not to for instance use a phone with an operating system controlled by an adTech company than it is to not have to deal with a government.

Do you really think a government that always pushes the limit on being a surveillance state cares about your “privacy”?

That’s a very interesting example you choose. I wonder if you’d have a choice of mobile phones today had the US government not exercised its anti-monopoly authority with the Kingsbury Commitment and later the break-up of the Bell System.

Prior to 1983, nearly everyone in the US and Canada had to lease their physical telephones (wired and wireless) from Ma Bell, and if you didn’t like the phone Ma Bell gave you, tough luck. Your other choice was to simply not have access to the PSTN.

The government granted AT&T its monopoly before taking it away.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/finance/encyclopedias-almanacs-...

The US government accepted AT&T’s natural monopoly of telephone communications (this is the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913 mentioned in the link you provide) in exchange for their divestment of their control of other forms of telecommunication—namely telegraph communications via their controlling interest in Western Union—which was the other major important telecommunication technology at the time in the early 20th century. I can only imagine what things might be like if AT&T was allowed to keep an unchallenged natural monopoly over all forms of telecommunication and further allowed to hold that monopoly to the present day.

We already know what would happen, landlines would still become irrelevant as cellular took over. There are and were still local “natural monopolies” with phone services.

>The government doesn’t “enforce rights”. They take rights away from people. Laws by definition limit what you can do.

If you want to have rights in any meaningful sense, people's actions must be limited such that they don't violate them overmuch.

>A company can only “violate my rights” if I choose to use those services.

That's complete nonsense. But even if it were true, how do you suppose that would help you if you don't have a handy oracle that provides you perfect information about every company's actions past, present, and future? It's not as if a company is likely to advertise practices they don't want you to know about. And there's nothing (aside from the government) preventing them from deciding the day after you purchase goods from them that, for example, they're not going to honor warranties anymore. And, of course, you don't have to buy from a company for them dump industrial waste on your property.

>It’s much easier not to for instance use a phone with an operating system controlled by an adTech company than it is to not have to deal with a government.

Is it easier to purchase all your goods and services from companies that have no objectionable practices? You probably don't have many choices of ISP and it's increasingly difficult to find a TV without some manner of integrated as tech.

>Do you really think a government that always pushes the limit on being a surveillance state cares about your “privacy”?

"The government" is not a single entity with only a single goal. Do I think that well-written legislation aimed at protecting privacy would, in effect, tend to protect privacy? Of course. Do I think that would stop the NSA from violating citizens' right to privacy? Of course not.

This gets back to the 11 chapter 99 chapter GDPR that all it gave us was shitty cookie banners. Do you think US state governments would do any better?

The last law related to tech that I can think of that was user friendly was phone number portability.

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