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Comment by awk23 | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised of much of the comments here, I'll chalk it up to ignorance, but every start up and company in the world should be wishing for this EU privacy fundamentalism to die. And grandstanding politician to get in grips with reality. Yeah NSA and some other state actors have done fucked up but that law does nothing to curtail government surveillance it instead introduces unreasonable limits and restrictions on innovation and even basic function. Indirectly balkanize data flow and introducing more cookies law style useless notices is the least of it. It's seemingly vindictive against US companies and an miscalculated move to grant an advantage to local ones disguised as reform.

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I live in the EU and I rather we keep our direction on privacy, than you very much. I agree that the law about cookies is not much use, but neither is saying that we should just give up on this. I don't see this as vindictive, I see it as I, and many with me, don't want our private data handled the way most US companies want to do it. So we move our business to companies that do it the way we want it done.

> I agree that the law about cookies is not much use

Have you actually read the law in question? It seems fairly sensible to me, it's the implementation guidance that was ridiculous. The banners we have at the top of every page now are nothing but cargo cult, everyone copying what everyone else is doing without ever applying any critical thinking.

I think it is less cargo-cult and more nobody wants to be sued over something they don't really understand so they choose the (dumbest) option with the least risk that still lets them do what they want.

And how much time and $ has been expended on this pointless make work.

I worked for a large publisher and they wasted a vast amount of time and limited release dates to implement the cookie law - all that could have been far better used in improving their sites.

It it the fact they did not consider how the law would be implemented that made it so bad.

Cookie law is snake oil-grade security, and giving a false sense of security is almost always a bad idea.

Real solution is fixing client software. But, meh, all popular browsers are made by companies that are - one way or another - heavily dependent on advertisement (thus, tracking).

What start ups and companies wish for is not always what is in the best interest of the citizen.

This is not about NSA.

Private companies gather more and more data about us without any control (especially the US-ones), so it's good that EU tries to regulate that.

The 'no restriction on data collection especially in the US' is a myth. There is plenty of evidence of FTC action and lawsuits to dispute your claims.

"Data privacy is not highly legislated or regulated in the U.S.. Although partial regulations exist, there is no all-encompassing law regulating the acquisition, storage, or use of personal data in the U.S. In general terms, in the U.S., whoever can be troubled to key in the data, is deemed to own the right to store and use it, even if the data were collected without permission."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_privacy_law#United_...

>There is plenty of evidence

Then it should be easy to offer some, rather than just saying that it exists.

This 'innovation' for mass surveillance, mass marketing, mass bullshit, etc. is not welcome.

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