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Comment by klvino | Hacker News Reader

Understand the intent behind the bill. Wouldn't the bill be closer to effectiveness if it banned corporations from selling to any government and not only the US government? By only banning the "US government" in the "purchase" of the data, it doesn't prevent acquiring the same data from another governmental body (Canada buys the data and shares with US Intelligence community, suddenly & mysteriously trade relations with Canada improve).

So many loopholes, the bill becomes 'feel good' legislation instead of effective legislation.

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>Wouldn't the bill be closer to effectiveness if it banned corporations from selling to any government and not only the US government?

Why stop there? If this data is dangerous for governments to have it, why is it safe for corporations to have it? Why not have a bill banning the collection of this data or these specific use cases of already collected data? I don't understand why we should inherently trust corporations more than governments.

I agree. Frankly, I rank corporations even higher than governments on my list of entities I absolutely do not trust with my location data.

Mainly because 'the government' has all these people with guns and flak jackets that are perfectly happy to come after people proactively.

If McDonalds maintained a SWAT team and was run by people known to bomb weddings in the pursuit of regional stability, I'd be worried about them having my location data too. But they're not going to so that, they're going to come up with a crooked scheme to feed me more burgers.

The quality of the outcome is arguable, but the level of risk is much lower.

And if Amazon buys location data on union organizers and their contacts? If farming conglomerates buy environmentalists locations? If General Electric, or other military-industrial giants, buy anti-war activist locations?

It won't stop at burgers.

If I had to add up the number of times everybody I know offline (in the real world) has run into SWAT teams that massive number is still 0. So to me the risk of danger by SWAT teams is low.

I've had 3 and I consider my life really boring, from a risk perspective.

I wonder if you know these people's lives as well as you think you do.

Risk is low if you're a CIS white male, not if you're a young black male in a poverty stricken urban area (or even just getting caught driving while black and pulled over anywhere). Also the danger level is off the charts. So not the same.

How different are they in numbers?

That's pretty poor statistical reasoning about risk.

I have met people who have won the lottery and been struck by lightening but I have never met anybody who has had a run-in with a SWAT team.

that's anecdotal evidence and has nothing to do with your risk of encountering a swat team

Are you pulling my leg?

The number of people a government imprisons, de-homes, kills or otherwise causes trouble for is orders of magnitude higher than any corporation. Said government is working on blanket principles and regularly makes mistakes.

Them knowing where I am is orders of magnitude more concerning than some dude trying to hawk me stuff based on my location. Last century, if someone was killed by human intervention it was probably at the behest of a government. It'll be same again this century. It will be the same again pretty much every century.

I'd rather nobody was tracking where I am, but it is going to be a government that actually abuses the information. How a body can look at the US government go Bush-Obama-Trump-Biden and think "yeah, I'd trust these people to keep tabs on where I am" is beyond me.

Because you have to start somewhere. Also, because unless it's dreadfully obvious (like choking you out for 9 minutes until you're dead while said person is begging you to stop with multiple witnesses in a nonchalant manner) then you will never be able to convict police misconduct where they can basically say "I thought they were pulling a weapon". thus the police/government are a lot more dangerous than google knowing where you are.

Not a bad idea, pass some laws that makes holding onto other peoples location data for more than a week or knowingly collecting large troves of location data a criminal offense. Just because you can make money from something doesn’t mean it should be allowed

Indeed. But this seems like a good place to start.

I'd imagine the intent is to require government to obtain a warrant prior to collecting location data.

They won't regulate the data broker industry precisely because they don't want the warrantless data pipe to be cut off. Location tracking is just a small piece of the invasive activities going on.

I doubt the limitation is lost on Wyden et al, but there is a political barrier to getting a bill like this passed at all. It's a lot more symbolic to introduce a bill with no chance in hell of passing the Senate than to introduce one that has at least a fighting shot. That is the piecemeal and practical nature of the legislative process. It will be more achievable to get Senate votes to constrain the government's actions than to regulate business. Until there's a stronger shift in the political winds in favor of more robust regulation of the private sector data collection business, the probability of getting over the filibuster hurdle to pass a stronger bill is remote.

> Wouldn't the bill be closer to effectiveness if it banned corporations from selling to any government

They should just ban them from selling it to anyone. Otherwise, they can buy the information from a homeless Russian?

I'm not sure it'd be constitutional for congress to ban selling something to a state government if the goods aren't themselves illegal

Not a lawyer but I think this would be constitutional in the same way that international sanctions are constitutional. The regulation of interstate and foreign commerce is an enumerated power given to congress and usually interpreted pretty broadly.

That's right, but a company in a state selling to a state gov isn't engaging in interstate commerce. Maybe SCOTUS will use the cockamamie "but the market is nationwide so it still affects it" excuse but normally...

Wickard v. Filburn pretty much ended the idea of any real limitations in regards to calling something interstate commerce:

"An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone 'interstate" commerce'..."

Roscoe lost.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

> Wickard v. Filburn pretty much ended limitations in regards to interstate commerce.

It did not, illustrated by among others, US v. Lopez.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1994/93-1260

How would they claim this isn't a economic activity?

> That's right, but a company in a state selling to a state gov isn't engaging in interstate commerce.

A company commercially gathering data that is not exclusively limited to data on in-state activities of in-state residents from (transitively) exclusively in-state sources, and selling it, is engaging in interstate commerce.

If growing your own wheat for your own consumption is under the commerce clause so is every other economic activity

Also make it so selling / giving access to location data without explicit opt-in consent, along with notification to users if their data was accessed / rented / sold / used in a thing that others had access to.. basic transparency should be added as well imho.

that could make some of 'the goods' illegal.

and no I don't think t-mobile's recent email about privacy changes should count as opted in - I know the other users of the plans did not even get such an email also.

ITAR restrictions come to mind but I'm not sure if they're the same. For example, if I were to produce a gyroscope with sufficient accuracy the U.S. government can legally prevent me from selling it to foreign entities. Sure my product has excellent civil uses but it can also be used in weaponry (e.g. missiles). Data may have similar implications but I've never thought about this in depth.

Wouldn't you just do an export ban on that "product"? I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it there is no constitutional limitation. A relatively recent example[0], although maybe congress/POTUS require extenuating circumstances to get around the constitution?

[0] https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/allocation-rule-personal-pro...

Export controls. Interstate commerce. There's plenty of precedent for federal statute regulating international and interstate commerce.

Precedent isn't necessary when that is one of the federal government's few enumerated powers.

I understand you're being pedantic, but that's actually false.

Potentially not if the entity was based only in that state, only collecting data on residents of that state, and only then when those residents were physically located in that state. So basically a situation that would never exist.

Of course it is, it's pretty easy to present it as a process that should require a warrant because of the 4th amendment.

Speaking of loopholes, does this affect border control agencies? I read that they can sort of do what they like within x miles of a border

They have a lot of freedom 100 miles inside the border, and pretty much all of Florida is covered by this 100 mile non-sense and probably at least half of California: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone/

FWIW, that map isn't accurate. The border starts from the boundary of international waters, not the coastline itself, which cuts out a few areas (most notably Chicago and DC, as Lake Michigan and the Chesapeake Bay are no longer the starting point).

(I haven't seen the ACLU provide any legal citation to the claim that it starts from the coastline.)

This is not the interpretation given by enforcement agencies, it seems:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-14/mapping-w...

Maybe what you say was the origina intent, but we know how the enforcement agencies love to reinterpret the laws to their advantage.

I looked into the case a touch more (see https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6106095/michigan-immigr...).

The key relevance I see is https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.316027... (which includes the CBP's response to the allegations of the 100-mile border being counted from the coastline), where the CBP sort of denies that this is the case. It also sort of doesn't deny it, but this can very easily be a case of "we don't want to stake out a position in legal documents if we don't have to" (which is not an unreasonable thing for a lawyer to do whether the ACLU's claim is right or wrong).

I'm pretty sure the ACLU wouldn't invent a case regarding border laws if they're not being used to persecute people. You seem to be asking the ACLU to prove that the law is correct as a prerequisite to fight against abuses of this law.

Page 10 of this PDF from the Congressional Research Service has an updated map that shows what the parent commenter is talking about: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46601

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