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Comment by int_19h | Hacker News Reader

There's a curious comment on that article from a person in support of that retention law:

"Google can do that [blanket data collection], my Chinese mobile phone manufacturer too, why shouldn't the government be able to do it?"

Something to ponder when we talk about data collection by private parties: like it or not, it does provide justification for governments doing the same.

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You can opt out of using Google or buying Chinese phones more easily than you can opt out of being German. Governments have more unchecked power and should be held to a higher standard accordingly.

In the EU, you can very easily opt out of living in Germany.

That's like saying you can solve a pest infestation problem in your house by blowing it up.

First this made me really laugh. Second I had to really think about it. Third I realised that this is actually completely correct.

Can I opt out of German interference in my country via the EU?

No, it does not – for two reasons:

  - Two wrongs don't make a right: Someone behaving unethical does not excuse unethical behavior from someone else.
  - There is a difference in the power dynamics of the relationships: Consumer and service provider VS citizen and state.

If anything, laws and right should be strengthened to explicitly ban this behavior.

You may disagree with that justification, sure. The point is that there are people who are convinced by it.

Whether people are convinced or not – your claim was that it provided "justification".

My point is that it does no such thing – it doesn't hold up as a valid argument (which really is the bare minimum for something to even be considered as potentially true).

"Justification", like "legitimacy", is a subjective measure.

Governments have a monopoly on (legal) violence, and by default it's not possible to move countries (that is, unless you get a visa or live in a free movement area). I think it's reasonable to hold governments to a qualitatively higher standard than companies.

Because neither Google nor your Chinese mobile phone manufacturer can put you in jail.

> like it or not, it does provide justification for governments doing the same.

No it does not. I can (and mostly do) evade the data slurping of private players, at least in theory, by not using and blocking Google, Meta and the likes. I cannot reasonably evade the data crimes that the government does.

It works the other way too: If a politician objects to FAANG privacy violations, they should not introduce laws that allow such violations themselves.

Of course they can. It makes sense for the government to be able to arrest people, but I absolutely don't want to give corporations that right (especially not FAANG - judicial systems a bad enough as is, but Google's customer support is still a downgrade).

The government and the private sector are very different and what one of them can and can't do is not necessarily related to whether the other should or shouldn't be able to.

Google and others are also not allowed to do blanket data collection by law, they are restricted in how and who's data they can collect with stuff like the GDPR.

You can debate how effective it is, but they are not allowed to do it, and nobody should be allowed to either.

look no further then all the data cloudflare collects on us all.

did you ever see a cloudflare gdpr consent popup?

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