Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

It is a guaranteed right enshrined in the EU's Constitution[0] (Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union[1]). Specifically Title II Freedoms: privacy, protection of personal data.

That's like claiming the 1st Amendment in the US is just a "magic right."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_...

View on HN

interesting that hardly any eu governments respect that right

See above my comment about practicality. It takes no effort for me to not violate your first amendment rights. It's a negative right, not a positive right.

It takes no effort for you not to violate Title II, just don't ask for other people's personal information.

It takes effort to set up server access log rotation. It takes effort for a non-technical person to make sure their wordpress installation isn't storing cookies or logs.

The GDPR doesn't require any of that. All you need to do is show a legitimate need to store data if challenged, and access logs have a legitimate purpose (diagnostic and abuse monitoring).

Larger businesses (250 employees or more) may need a privacy policy though.

The consensus I've seen has been that you can't keep around server logs, especially not forever, just for abuse monitoring. GDPR considers IPs PII.

A "consensus" reached by a bunch of programmers who haven't even read the law has no merit in this discussion. What's clear is that GDPR prohibits using IP addresses to target content at particular individuals. But we aren't talking about that, we're talking about generic access logs.

For example the law itself says: The processing of personal data strictly necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud also constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned.

The UK's IPO for one example definitely doesn't agree with your assessment of the GDPR and it is their job to help companies adhere to it.

There are plenty of rights that aren't "practical". The right to vote is a HUGE pain in the ass, you have to organize massive elections. Property rights means you have to have huge police forces. The right to protest comes with enormous practical difficulties. The right to education means that you have to have expensive public school systems. The right to an attorney in a criminal trial means that the court has to provide one, at some expense. All of these are "rights", in all modern free countries, and they are all "magical rights created by law". That's what a right IS.

You're making the wrong argument. You're saying "this is not a right that can logically exist", which is nonsensical. Of course it can. What you should be arguing is "this right is far too burdensome on society and should not have been passed". I personally disagree with that, but it's at least a valid argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com