While I'm all for privacy, when much of the rest of the world isn't like that, it makes it significantly harder to do business with other countries.
But, I actually think it wouldn't be a terrible thing if strict laws on privacy were enacted worldwide, as long as they had more benefit to people than annoyance and didn't significantly restrict personal freedom. There is too much data right now.
On the other hand, I'm tired of signing HIPAA forms, and the bureaucracy around it. I just wish that the legal system was more common sense. Maybe an amendment to the U.S. Constitution something to the effect of "Information about a citizen shall not be collected and stored against the will of the citizen." Then get rid of HIPAA, etc. and just let the citizen take businesses to court if they find that the business was responsible for out-of-control personal data collection. But, I'm sure there are valid reasons to get specific.
I know a lot of us want to be rich, but this quote by Eisenhower seems worth remembering:
Now when we go online or go shop in a store, we are partially losing the ability to live privately. Eventually, our government could put cameras everywhere in our home to ensure that we behave, and some could abuse that. To prevent that, we need to solidify that freedom of privacy, rather than continue to consider it a privilege.
I also think that we should allow the government some amount of freedom to protect us. However, there needs to be a line drawn that shouldn't be crossed whether it's Target, the F.B.I., or an individual, and I think we should all be aware of data collection.
When I posted that, I actually saw it the other way around: privacy as a principle, and riches as privilege.
>I also think that we should allow the government some amount of freedom to protect us
I agree. I'm lean a little bit libertarian, but even a staunch libertarian holds this belief. Actually that's kind of the point, that government's main purpose is to protect the people and enforce the rule of law. There's some argument right now that government in America is not upholding that obligation (for example, laws are applied unequally depending on race and income, police overstepping their authority and police brutality, etc.).
I actually don't think that the government will have to do this, because as consumers we do it already for them:
Have a notebook in your house? Nice, your camera may already be watching you and the mic listening to you.
Have a mobile phone? Nice, you are now under surveillance 24 hours a day. The 2 cameras can see, the mic (and now apparently even the speaker) can listen, your location is 100% tracked, the gyro can let hackers know via your current vibration profile if you're in a bus, train or car, etc.
All this could be partially prevented by hardware switches for each sensor. Are we consumers out on the street fighting against this and/or voting with our $$$ to prevent the loss of privacy?
Do you know of anyone besides Bunnie Huang who is working on a project like this or something similar? Bunnie's concept is kind of similar with a hardware intercept on the device.
I don't know of this or any other such projects. Any such project needs to be on HN on a regular basis.
A few easy hacks for best-effort protection without destroying your hardware are a piece of tape over the camera and setting your sound input to something quiet, like Soundflower in macOS or one of these for Windows or Linux: http://alternativeto.net/software/soundflower/
That would be great for data clearing houses. Google would jump at that law. Such an approach places responsibility with the data subject. The individual becomes the defacto privacy officer. I rather see laws that places default limits on collection and use. I shouldn't have to supervise how Google collects and uses data about me. I'd rather them not be allowed to collect it without my permission... which I have no plan to give.
I doubt that it's possible. Law is a bit complicated for a reason: it tries to be as specific, and as general, as possible. It abhors ambiguity, or unintended consequences.
Example:
> "Information about a citizen shall not be collected and stored against the will of the citizen."
Sounds great – and it's pretty much the law in Germany. But – as a business – how do you prove the citizen has agreed to you storing their information? Yeah: a form, or a EU cookie banner -> and we're back at square one.
By having participated in an actual business transaction, which usually leaves an (electronic) paper trail.
Take note that simply visiting a website can not be interpreted as a business transaction. If anything this is accounted for as browsing the displays of a street vendor.
I was going to mention this but add the HIPAA includes other worth while regulations around reporting of breach in security etc.
I'm not 100% sure but I think the repeated signing of HIPPA is less the law and more the Doctor's office covering themselves legally. That is to say legally I think once is enough, but it's easier to just have the front office staff always ask instead of track who has signed one.
> And I'm not talking about social media- it affects basic things like timekeeping software. And German workers expect that level of privacy; they don't think it's excessive.
Time tracking (Stechuhren) is commonplace, so I rather doubt this.
So I would really like to know what services are actually inhibited by these "very strong" privacy laws. The only related example that comes to mind would be Google Street View. Mind you, it wasn't forbidden or anything, Google just didn't feel like providing the necessary opt-out possibilities to residents.
> While I'm all for privacy, when much of the rest of the world isn't like that, it makes it significantly harder to do business with other countries.
And again I ask you to provide actual examples here.
Your post sounds heavily influenced by the public out speak of lobbyists in Germany who mainly work on behalf of data dealers and related companies. Actual industry isn't affected at all.
When trying to rollout a SAAS app in Germany that ties individuals to the time to track workflow and time they spent on individual tasks, it was pushed back on because it was "illegal". It was only used for auditing purposes; if there were a problem, auditing data would indicate who was involved so that we could have a talk with them to ensure the process could be changed if needed to avoid the problem in the future. But, the Germans said that tracking time like this could be used to track employees in a way or for a purpose that would break privacy laws/regulations.
More information about German privacy laws here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesdatenschutzgesetz
Also, the HR software that we are using for time and attendance was not registered in Germany and had to go through several months of certification due to the laws there. I don't know how much of that is specifically due to privacy laws/regulations, though.
I doubt that this was the real reason, project and time management software with the same functionality is widespread. There is likely more to this. (I'm not saying you're not truthful, just that I don't think this was really the reason why it was pushed back by those that did).
It could be, for example, that the application due to it's SaaS nature did not fully comply with some regulations regarding safe harbour. These might have required the SaaS to be hosted in specific countries. Or management decided otherwise, or any other reason.
Probably rightfully so.
By law, every citizen is required to register where they live at the Stadtamt (town hall records office).
Each Bundesland (state) holds its own records. If someone moves between states, the records must be securely and electronically transferred. They cannot be held in two states simultaneously.
A friend of mine works on that system.
Also there was a big blowup on so called "selectors" which were filter parameters given by the NSA to the German secret service. These selectors siphoned off private data to a foreign (US) goverment and when the story leaked people were interested to know what was handed out. The NSA of course is interested in keeping those secret. The new law would make this easier.
Indeed precisely because opposition exists, this would be an incredibly stupid move likely to cause backlash.
That is not a violation of freedom of speech. Lies are not covered by freedom of speech in Germany, they're not covered by freedom of speech in other countries either, even the US. In fact in most countries certain types of lies are illegal and fall under laws against fraud, libel or any number of things. Germany simply also covers incitement of hatred.
Additionally the first article of the German constitution and one of its fundamental principles is that human dignity shall be inviolable and that the state has a duty to respect and protect it. In my opinion ensuring the dignity of the vicitims of the holocaust is protected requires making sure that the state fights those that would deny the holocaust.
For saying this, an elderly woman in her late 80s has been repeatedly imprisoned. Sounds like thoughtcrime to me.
[1]: http://ursula-haverbeck.info/richter-staatsanwalt-und-polizi...
Who is the decider of truth? The state. It is the only source of "truth" and "liars" are excluded from human rights.
Sounds pretty much textbook definition of thought crime laws.
Masking on a demonstration has recently been turned from an Ordnungswidrigkeit ("contravention" according to Wikipedia) to a felony in multiple states. The aim behind this is to be able to prove via video who is responsible in case violence erupts - yet the biggest perpetrators and provocateurs, the police, don't have individual name/number tags, and more often than not they wear masks.
Oh, and it's illegal to bring any kind of arms to demonstrations, most often it's even forbidden to bring glass beer bottles (and violating this can be prosecuted as a felony).
Sometimes I feel that our governments have intentionally disarmed us - mostly after a couple nasty amok runs at schools, but I believe this is rather an excuse. The real issue at hand is that in case the AfD with their fascist world view ever comes to power (hell, they already got 25% in Saxony), the population won't have anything to fight them with.
Additionally you have a constitutional right to fight a government that violates the constitution by any means once legal avenues are exhausted.
Filing complaints against police is pretty much pointless, as evidenced by the numbers (of 2138 cases, only 33 ended up in court, see https://correctiv.org/blog/2016/02/12/polizeigewalt-zahlen-f...) or by the sheer time scale. The poor old man who had his eyes shot out by a water cannon at S21 had to wait SIX YEARS for an offer of compensation (http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/umstrittene-polizeiaktion...).
And even if a state like Berlin requires numbered cops, if there are supporting units from other states these do NOT have to carry numbers. Witnessed this first hand when beaten up in Berlin by cops from Dresden.
I'm pretty sure you are wrong. §17a VersG has been in place since 1985. The maximum sentence is 1 year thus it is a misdemeanour, not a felony.
> Oh, and it's illegal to bring any kind of arms to demonstrations
Doesn't seem unreasonable considering how violent they can sometimes get.
>Sometimes I feel that our governments have intentionally disarmed us
Ignoring the fact that the law is 30 years old: Disarming by not allowing to hide your face?
I'm referring especially to this change in Bavaria: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/versammlungsrecht-vermummu...
> Doesn't seem unreasonable considering how violent they can sometimes get.
So why are fascists allowed basically everything, the cops beat peaceful hippies up and meanwhile the ordinary left-wing activist mustn't even wear tooth protection (classified as "Schutzbewaffnung")? Seeing that multiple people got teeth knocked out during clashes with the police at the recent "Merkel muss weg" fascist march, it's ridiculous that the citizens are commanded to be defensiveless sheeps while the cops abuse them as training ground.
> Ignoring the fact that the law is 30 years old: Disarming by not allowing to hide your face?
They disarmed the citizens in multiple ways. When combining all that happened (beginning with the Radikalenerlass decades ago), there forms a clear picture: the government has a deep-rooted fear of left-wing people, while secretly funding/supporting right-wing terrorists that have killed over 200 people in the last decades.
There is also no law against nazi symbols specifically. Symbols of unconstitutional organizations are illegal, this is one of the aspects of being a militant democracy. The goal here is to prevent a failure of the democracy in the way it did with Hitler. Nazi symbols are illegal because of that but they're not the only ones. Communist, socialist and jihadist organizations are affected by this as well.
> Wer in einer Weise, die geeignet ist, den öffentlichen Frieden zu stören,
Who does one of the following in a way apt to disturb/destroy public peace/harmony
> (1) gegen eine nationale, rassische, religiöse oder durch ihre ethnische Herkunft bestimmte Gruppe, gegen Teile der Bevölkerung oder gegen einen Einzelnen wegen seiner Zugehörigkeit zu einer vorbezeichneten Gruppe oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung zum Hass aufstachelt, zu Gewalt- oder Willkürmaßnahmen auffordert oder
agitate against national/racial/religious or ethnic group, or against parts of the public or against private persons due to their belonging to a recognized group / part of the public, in order to incite hate or violence.
> (2) die Menschenwürde anderer dadurch angreift, dass er eine vorbezeichnete Gruppe, Teile der Bevölkerung oder einen Einzelnen wegen seiner Zugehörigkeit zu einer vorbezeichneten Gruppe oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung beschimpft, böswillig verächtlich macht oder verleumdet,
attacking the human dignity of <the same blob of text as above> or defames or libels.
In other words, to be sentenced for Volksverhetzung the court actually has to prove that you intentionally wanted to incite violence/hate against a defined group of people / person, while intentionally also fulfilling the first condition.
A bit like murder in Germany it is a crime of disposition (killing w/o disposition is Totschlag - or one of the more specific "XY with deadly outcome" crimes - not Mord), unlike murder it is not punishable in absence of disposition.
the oh-so-great industries in europe/germany cannot have legislation limiting their businesses. creating real privacy-focussed product is just too hard for a country where great inventions and innovation once came from.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...
Until the tech sector deals with them as issues, as in, treats them the same way they treat software bugs its really upto the govts of the world to step in and over regulate.
Zuckerberg, Dorsey et al have slowly started recognizing publicly they have to do more. And while they work out the fixes, their platforms can't be allowed to wreck social havoc, of which there is a mounting body of evidence.