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> I’m European, I trust my government

I think it would help to state your nationality, European governments range widely in trust levels from west to east, and there are a lot of governments in there. I wouldn't trust the greek government for a second.

[An example: the social security number (which is given to every doctor/pharmacy/etc) contains verbatim the date of birth and sex of the citizen, and this has been deemed lawful]

> the social security number [..] contains verbatim the date of birth and sex (and city of birth) of the citizen

Italy does that, as I understand it is meant to be easier to remember and it was created in a time where thing were very different. I agree that it poses issues now, but at least it makes clear that the code is not supposed to be a password.

I'm Norwegian and I also trust the government in most cases.

But I agree there are several European governments I would not trust.

Really? Even after they tried to bring in mass surveillance only a couple of months ago? Even when they want to give double prison sentences to people who live in certain areas?

As a foreigner living there you might be less trusting as well. They are constantly changing the rules to make it harder for legal residents to settle.

Yep, UK here, and I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them.

Guessing Denmark, since OP mentioned NemID.

> I do think we should use citizen data to schedule shifts though. It makes no sense to me, to have 10 nurses and 15 teachers do full time scheduling in a city of 60,000-100,000 citizens when an algorithm can do it instead. But we can’t, because the GDPR prevents us from using data that way.

Can you give more details on that case?

Making sure the right staff gets to the right citizens at the right time is a massive undertaking. It’s where 60-80% of our staff works. We have something like 1200 teachers out of 7000 employees for instance.

It’s also an area that’s subject to a lot of requires/shared resources. I mean, you have the regular schedule which takes up a lot of time on its own because you need to find replacements when someone is missing. If I get sick, no one really cares that we go a day without an Enterprise Architect, but if a teacher goes sick, multiple classes will need an replacement. Then there is the irregular stuff like rehabilitation, special school events or a range of things.

Basically it’s so complicated that it takes up the time of several full time positions.

It’s not the kind of complicated that’s not solvable by ML though. Our neighbouring municipality did a PoC on it, and I’m not sure how the procured the rights use the data for it (they probably didn’t), and it turned out that they could automate almost all of the planning and scheduling. Humans still had to make decisions, but it would suggest available resources or alternative schedules making the process much smoother.

That’s a lot of nurses and teachers you could actually put to work, nursing or teaching if it works.

It works by knowing what resources are needed though, and in the case of rehabilitation that involves knowing that someone needs anti-suicidal therapy at 10 am at a certain address. Which is extremely sensitive data, that the algorithm isn’t allowed to access under our adoption of the GDPR.

Under the implementation of GDPR, or under derived local rules? Because as far as I understand, humans working on a filing cabinet full of paper can be just as much "data processing" under GDPR as a computer reading a database. If the scheduling person knows "Mr X is sick and needs a replacement scheduled", an algorithm in their place can know that too.

It's certainly something where extra care is required though, and it's easy to see how people in charge go with a rather safe than sorry approach, and extending it into ML poses additional questions.

Our national implementation of the GDPR for the public sector prohibits cross-sectoral access to citizen data.

So while our teachers/nurses could legally use ML for planning as they have a legal right to use the data for planning, our digitisation department can’t build/train/support it and neither can a 3rd party supplier.

Since laws are very open to interpretation, at least until they are tested a few times in the courts, you could interpret them different than us. Which I’m guessing is what our neighbouring municipality is doing. They have the advantage of being 10 times bigger than us though, giving them much more influence, so much in fact, that they may end up paving the way for the rest of us.

Interesting, thanks for explaining!

GDPR is not a directive. There is no 'national implementation'.

I can believe such a law does exist in Denmark. It is not GDPR. GDPR might increase the penalties for non-compliance.

Such a law is a sign that the Danish don't trust their public sector as much as you suggest...

BTW to you remember that time that all your health data was delivered to the Chinese embassy on a DVD?

> Maybe someday, but society has to deem it morally acceptable first.

Err, please let's not make individual freedom dependent on what society finds morally acceptable.

> I’m European, I trust my government in a way many Americans simply won’t understand.

I am as well, and I don't trust my state + federal government. Not to the extent that it seems common in the US, and in slightly different ways, but I certainly want my government to have as little data on me as possible.

Even if you do trust your current administration, imagine that the most extreme party of whichever political side you consider crazy & generally wrong wins with a landslide next month and has all that stuff available that you figured you can trust your government to have.

Do you trust your government more than Microsoft?

That’s what I meant to say, but I should certainly have voiced what I meant better.

Do you trust your government more than Microsoft?

Absolutely not. And yes, I'm American. You're probably right that this is a core cultural difference.

I don't understand this.

Microsoft makes decisions for its own benefit 100% of the time.

Politicians sometimes make decisions for their own benefit, but sometimes they make decisions for the benefit of the public.

No matter how corrupt your politicians are, how can they possibly be less trustworthy than Microsoft?

All entities make decisions for their own benefit 100% of the time. Where you come out ahead is when their interests coincide with yours.

That works out rather poorly against large governments, because businesses can lose customers by misbehaving, but a government with 55% of the vote doesn't need any more than that and can then do anything they want to the remaining 45% of the people. Especially if they can convince their own supporters that the victims are the villains -- then they can set you on fire and still get re-elected.

> All entities make decisions for their own benefit 100% of the time.

Then I must have met a lot of non-entities in my life. Don't assume everyone is like you.

Don't assume you know what "for their own benefit" means. It doesn't mean not doing things that benefit society, it means not willingly hitting yourself in the face with a hammer.

People do things to help other people because it builds goodwill and reputation, and because they're a large enough entity that doing something that costs them $5 and makes everyone including them $6 each will still result in a $1 profit, and because of Hofstadter's theory of super-rationality, and because they care what happens to their kids, and a hundred other reasons.

Nobody but an idiot does things that are purely destructive to themselves and everyone around them.

Sorry for assuming that you don't redefine "for their own benefit" to something useless and idiosyncratic.

Why are you constantly arguing in bad faith?

"For their own benefit" means literally what the words say -- something that benefits them. Your wrong assumption is that socially beneficial acts can't benefit individuals. That's something we can argue about, but you don't have to be a self-righteous jerk about everything. That doesn't benefit anybody.

> Why are you constantly arguing in bad faith?

I've been wondering the same about you.

> "For their own benefit" means literally what the words say -- something that benefits them.

You have to admit that "it means not willingly hitting yourself in the face with a hammer." and "Nobody but an idiot does things that are purely destructive to themselves and everyone around them." is not the clearest way of expressing that. "Not actively harming everyone" is not the same as "doing things for your own benefit".

> Your wrong assumption is that socially beneficial acts can't benefit individuals.

That would be a wrong assumption indeed, considering society consists of individuals.

(I'm tempted to write more, but I've already spent more than enough time telling people they're wrong on the internet today)

> That's something we can argue about

Even if we actually disagreed on that point: It looks like there's something about us that means that no, we can't argue.

> but you don't have to be a self-righteous jerk about everything.

That is true. But when I perceive someone as arguing in bad faith, then it's hard to resist – even if they aren't and we're just misunderstanding each other.

When you wrote that you believe that Google does not violate the GDPR, to me it was like arguing that the moon does not exist because it would rip apart the earth. That might be an interesting intellectual exercise but I don't have to analyze your theory to know that it's wrong. The GDPR plainly says that you cannot force your users to consent. Google does. Easy to verify from Europe. Case closed. I hope that explains why I refused to debate that topic.

I think the issue is with power, not intentions. Microsoft may make selfish decisions 100% of the time, but there's only so much impact they can have. The government has monopoly on violence, implemented through army and law enforcement, and can also make your life painful (or end it) in countless less direct ways - like monetary policies, healthcare policies, welfare policies, etc.

Ultimately, what the government can do is only limited by the country's constitution. Not doing beneficial things doesn't reduce its ability to bad things.

> Microsoft makes decisions for its own benefit 100% of the time.

The nature of decisions is completely different. Microsoft cannot put you in jail, confiscate your property etc. Also, microsoft has outlived a ton of governments who lost the trust of the public.

> Microsoft cannot put you in jail, confiscate your property etc.

Without a data protection law, the government can put you in jail and confiscate your property. Companies can spy on you.

With a data protection law, the government can put you in jail and confiscate your property. Companies cannot spy on you.

With a data protection law, the government can put you in jail and confiscate your property. Companies cannot spy on you.

What you call spying, others would call a preferable alternative to directly paying for services.

Which is absurd but has nothing to do with trusting the government.

Arguing that somehow being targeted with ads to make $$$ is worse than being jailed / having your property taken is kind of tone deaf.

I didn't.

>I think we went in the wrong direction in terms of public data.

Aren't all the complaints from private companies? You can't use say FB data to do some nice thing for the society because FB will not give it to you even before GDPR , maybe they give you some secret access if you pat them a lot of money. The API access is super limited.

GDPR does not affect public data. At all.

People like to say that, but it does. Each member state has had to adopt the GDPR into their national legal system, it’s true that it’s called various things. In Denmark where I’m from we call it Persondataloven, but for all intends and purposes it’s GDPR.

I did mean public sector data though.

So the guy getting his public court records removed doesn’t exist?