Note that they currently do not allow bulk deletes of one contributor's messages, "as that would wreck havoc in the discussion threads".
Basically you can ask nicely to delete some few posts, but if you want to delete all of your contributions you will get a no. This is at odds with the GDPR.
Also things like deletion, takeout and consent/opt-out need to be supported (provided that HN falls under GDPR).
Article 4 states
‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person
Direct identifiers include such material as: name, address, phone number, all kinds of national identifiers, biometrics, device identifiers and clinical trial record numbers.
Indirect (or "quasi-direct", a new word for me) include: gender, date of birth, postal codes or other geographic grouping identifiers, first language at home, marital status, ethnicity, ....
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If you look at the two groups, there's a pretty clear distinction. Anything that would allow to send a highly personalised communication to a person is direct. Anything that allows to target marketing cohorts is indirect.
The indirect ones may not sound important on the surface, but once you start doing group intersections, their combinations can become extremely narrow pointers.
As an example of the opposite state, where this does definitely apply: Tarsnap complies with Canadian law around collecting names/addresses for users who are located in Canada, because Tarsnap is operated as a Canadian business. But if Tarsnap were located in the US, it would not be responsible for collecting that information from Canadian users.
Responsibility is not defined by gut-feelings, but by law. So, with a suited law, Tarsnap could also be bound in Canada's jurisdiction even if it were located in the US.
Do you have an example of precedent for one country's laws being enforced on a company with no business presence in that country, without there being a law or treaty in a country the business does operate in that mandates compliance with the foreign law?
I don't think anyone would dispute that if the US were to make a law requiring US companies to comply with the GDPR for EU users, that law would apply to US companies. My point is that absent some measure by the US government, EU laws are not applicable to companies without business presence in the EU
They are applicable if they say they are applicable. Effective enforceability is optional to applicability.
The case is pretty simple in my eyes.
We have separate, sovereign jurisdictions and governments. They can do about anything they want, if they have the means to do so and aren't bound by some treaty or law. For example, they can take legal or executive measures against anybody in the world, and it is irrelevant if that person agrees or disagrees. In fact, in the first place, it is also irrelevant what position the sovereign of that entity takes.
Now, can each sovereign entity enforce what they have decided? Well, that depends on many factors, but is optional to their decision.
The sovereign we are dealing with here is the EU. They can, within the bounds by their law and international treaties, judge and take measures against entities not residing under their jurisdiction. Who's stopping them?
See for example the sanctions on Russian officials currently imposed by the EU.
The EU has many tools to enforce it's decisions.
I don't see what's the difficulty of understanding this situation, besides not agreeing with it.
Otherwise, it's fair to say that I can personally draft a document saying HN must give me $3.50, and sign it into law for the House Of Akerl. But my law is quite uninteresting to HN, given the low odds of any of the YC folks sending me $3.50.
Can that law be enforced? That depends on whether YC has a representation in the EU, or people from YC plan to visit the EU in the future, or many other things. Maybe the EU gets creative to find other ways of enforceability. I don't intend to give a full assessment of the ways of enforcement.
Either way, it is not a nice thing to have a big jurisdiction going after you.
One can avoid the GDPR by not handling data from or about European citizens or people in the EU, and having no presence there, and actively filtering out affected people.
Or one can implement the GDPR.
Because US and EU have singed agreements to that effect. It's the price US must pay for EU to allow American internet companies to serve EU customers.
It obviously applies to any company with direct business operations in any one of the 28 member states of the EU. But financial transaction is not nessesary for the extended scope of the law to kick in. Collecting personal data from EU citizen is enough.
It came to effect 2016 and replaced the Safe Harbor agreement.
If they don't do that, they have no authority to collect data from EU Citizens (no user accounts or customers from EU).
- If you offer your products in Euros, which is the currency in most of the EU - If you offer payment methods which only exist in the EU or one of its members - Otherwise suggest you target EU citizens
Hacker News exists as a generic website on the internet, but it does not to target any country or region specifically. Therefore HN should be exempt from the legislation.
Also, in the case of HN, YC offers a service. Just like a forum is a service, this discussion and news platform is a service. It's irrelevant if it's paid for or free.
Because HN is now like Reddit, but for techno-snobs. If you don't follow the tightly defined groupthink, you'll get downvoted.
Many years of discussion groups have proven that downvoting has a chilling effect on discussion groups. Allow upvotes, and "spam" flags.
HN is not selling anything
Edit: who are they selling to? Would-be founders... you understand how the VC model works, right?
GDPR affects any org/site that collects personal or sensitive data. Amongst many others IP address and email address are considered PII under GDPR. We use IP address for some high level geolocation data and decided to drop the last octet so it's not tied directly to an individual visitor. The specialists we spoke with had concerns about free form input fields because anyone can write anything they want in them.
In the case of hackernews it seems like email address, ip, profiles, and comments could contain personally identifiable data. I'm also curious how HN similar sites are supposed to comply with GDPR removal requests when it can destroy the usability and functionality of the site.
I understand it applying to companies that are doing business in Europe but beyond that...?
It might suck if the EU started blocking payments to you.
You aren't required to put anything in the profile. If you choose to put information in the profile, you can remove it yourself at any time you so choose.
So while you can remove some of that info yourself, I don't think that can be seen as fulfilling GDPR requirements.
Disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer nor GDPR expert.
In your example you were the one that sent your information to some other 3rd party, so you would be the one responsible for that data transfer and its consequences.
(1) Companies that collect data and "process" it. If you're hosting it with reason, it's no big deal. If you're actively doing something with it, then you can run afoul of the law.
(2) Companies that share their information with third parties. It puts a much larger onus on companies that have your data to use it appropriately and only for intended purposes.
If you read through the wording of the law, it's perfectly possible to have an e-mail service that complies with everything.
I think the crux of this particular argument though is whether or not you "own" the emails you sent. I think at the most if you pushed this issue to the max you could get a company to scramble your email address so that it doesn't identify you anymore... but all of this is more a thought exercise about minute details. The true intent of the law is the major points above.
I would bet on nothing. The GDPR is there to catch the worst offenders, the other 99% of offenders will feel nothing.
No. The danger is that Internet goliaths will use the GDPR to intimidate or even shut down smaller competitors. Think of patent trolls, just worse - because the GDPR has really huge fines attached and is damn easy to get wrong in implementations.
While the GDPR was intended to be beneficial to EU consumers, I fear it will end up being most beneficial to lawyers.
For instance, in the UK the plan appears to be for the ICO to work with companies and fine where there's a major breach and appropriate security wasn't implemented.
Now, perhaps some individuals will band together and complain, but they do not stand to gain from the enforcement in the same way that patent trolls do.
We're going from an era where companies can claim AES encrypted at rest and AES encrypted over the wire whilst running an ancient stack full of vulnerabilities and, above a certain scale, not even worry about it. I personally have high hopes that the GDPR will at least make people running companies like that worry a bit.
Most GDPR chatter started picking up only in the last few months (of course big orgs have been preparing for the May deadline for a while already).
It would be technically trivial for a forum built with the typical MVC architecture with data backed up in a relational database - just change some templates, point the user ID to a global 'deleted' user, and done, or something like that.
But Hacker News is a project site built in a custom Lisp variant that runs on one core, mostly in RAM from what I understand, with all of the data in flat files, and I don't even know if they have a development server. Obviously, they can do it, but it may not be that trivial.
Or maybe they could bang it out in an hour, I don't know. It would be nice if they put up a devlog and talked about some of the issues they have with updating the site and what their future plans with it were. Maybe talk up Arc and Lisp development a little.
The regulation also applies to organisations based outside the EU if they collect or process personal data of individuals located inside the EU. According to the European Commission, "personal data is any information relating to an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a home address, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer’s IP address."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
That fact is rather boring and well-established. What matters is how the other country enforces the punishment.
Admittingly, without cooperation with your jurisdiction, the EU jurisdiction cannot enforce a meassure if you don't have any presence under EU jurisdiction. However, if your jurisdiction cooperates with the EU jurisdiction, or if you eventually have some kind of presence in the EU, like traveling, they can go after you.
If they had assets of some kind in the EU country, they could capture those assets presumably.
But from what I understand with the GDPR at least at the beginning of this, is the EU govt will first try to work with the company to help them comply, before going to such drastic measures as courts and seizing assets.
I imagine the large giants like Facebook, etc will just negotiate through their army of lawyers to minimize the effects of GDPR as much as possible, and delay as long as possible. Before ultimately implementing ~ 1/2 of the best intentions behind the GDPR in about a decade or so.
For example ”Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside.” (https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-c...)
Other example: the “Hague invasion act” which authorizes the US president to invade Europe in order to liberate US citizens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...)
Third example: many countries prosecute their citizens for child pornography, even if the crime happened outside their borders (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...: ”U.S. citizens are subject to the laws of foreign countries. Furthermore, some laws are prosecutable in the United States regardless of local law”)
I can't imagine the US is going to extradite anyone for violating the GDPR, but there is no principle barring it. Kim Dotcom's case is probably of interest here.
If you claim otherwise, I would appreciate an example.
Then move on to what juries are, and what peers are.
In the US we have 3 boxes, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box. It's a beautiful system. I realize it might be hard to understand that we are not chattel, and make our own laws, but that's the way it is.
You are making an extraordinary claim, that a US citizen can be extradited for _not_ breaking a US law, the burden is on you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
If you think "the statue" in "words of the statute" means a foreign law I really cant help you since you gotta start redefining what "the" means at that point.
I said: "Extradition for? Doing something that is legal in my country while in my country?"
You said: "Yes, that is possible."
To extradite someone, you must first arrest them. In the United States, to arrest someone, you must have probable cause that that person violated a US law[0].
In every case you are going to be able to find, the person wanted by the dest country was either:
a. In that country when they broke the law (which is a different subject with plenty of caveats).
b. Violated US law and the foreign law while in the US (also a different subject).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
1. Have probable cause to arrest them.
2. Arrest them.
3. Convict them.
4. Extradite them.
Why don't you just say "how extradition actually works"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_...
Here you go, my friend. I welcome you to find the part of this where it says that someone being extradited has to be found guilty of violating US law or that they have to be convicted before being extradited. As you can see here, the requirements actually have to do with what treaties say and whether there is probable cause (a much lower standard than a conviction).
Also, the first paragraph of the second link says "(other than citizens, nationals or permanent residents of the United States)". Wikipedia is never a source, but it's correct here.
US Citizens, in the US, who have not violated US law, are not subject to the laws of any other country. That's the point of having sovereignty.
Having said that, as a USian, it seems like it's at least possible for EU regulation to have its intended effects (/me glances at uUSB connectors on everything). So, especially because I bear no responsibility for its existence, I'm cautiously optimistic that the GPDR will do some good pushing back against the surveillance industry, rather than simply being yet another tool to strip individuals' freedoms away.
[0] Hey, maybe if it holds up in court, it will spur development and adoption of browser-based nym management!
This will after May 25 be illegal for services offered in the EU, but I kind of think that the same courtesy should apply to non-europeans.
If you contribute to public knowledge/discussion, then taking your ball and going home leaves huge gaps in history, the same way you see [deleted] throughout many Reddit threads.
Is the GDPR that far reaching?
No.
Nobody can reply to posts that are more than a month old anyway. And the edit window is only a few hours.