Glad to see some reason exists in the world. To read HN comments, one would think cookies and tracking pixels were robbing peoples’ bank accounts or publicizing their illicit affairs to friends and family.
Money is not the definite metric by which everything can or should measured.
The most concerning part from the article IMO is this:
> the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment rejects the Claimants’ argument that the loss of control of personal data has an intrinsic value capable of compensation.
If you think the justice system's statement that no evidence was provided is false, then it would be good to know why. Probably in another thread so as to not undermine your point.
(As a privacy fanatic who uses GPDR all the time to get control of his data) sadly, I think that this is the fundamental nature of the technological era that we're living in. This is just how software works, many things that were previously private in an analog era are now explicit somewhere in the code. Do you really think that if various Apple or whomever policies are struck down, the tech that's built in the 2020s & 30s & 40s & the rest of the 21st century somehow won't gather data on people? As someone who's really unhappy about that state of affairs, it just seems inevitable.
Edit to include: I suspect that 'privacy' is going to be viewed as just a brief moment in time for humans. Previously we all lived in small groups or villages with little privacy (I grew up in a small town, I know!), so the 'privacy' era may have just been for urban dwellers for a few centuries
It's not. It's just how spyware works, but software doesn't need to be that way. It may right now be, but this doesn't make it right. Or inevitable, like a force of nature.
My free, open source software doesn't silently gather data about me (and if it did, I would patch it). We have a right to run our software on our own machines, on our own terms.
Our current state hasn’t always been the case. It’s just been normalized because lawmakers moved at glacial pace to protect people’s privacy.
Billions of people cannot afford to be online, the environmental toll of consumer gadgets is catastrophic.
You seem to think this is forever. I wish more engineers had gone into plain old physics. Humanity hardly needed more meandering story tellers emotionally decoupled from the real constraints of our reality.
Physical reality always determines our next steps as that’s what provides the information we have to iterate against.
This is an extraordinary claim and thus requires extraordinary proof. Speaking for myself, I feel absolutely no loss of freedom or dignity through the presence of cookies, pixels, etc. Quite the opposite, actually. Some of the greatest technology in human history is available to me for free thanks to them. That’s rather liberating.
That's the problem, many other voices were disregarded. Being tracked on the internet is not too different from being peeped on in the shower. Some like it, some don't care, and some definitely wouldn't want to consider the possibility. In that spectrum of views someone will feel "absolutely no loss of freedom or dignity".
Your argument can easily be applied to pervasive surveillance, backdoors, tracking malware, etc. (along with the traditional "only criminals should fear it"). I even heard it from people using this "I wouldn't mind if it happened to me" as a defense for sexual harassment. I'm glad it works for you, what about the people for whom it's not working?
At the very least this should have been a real choice. If people aren't bothered then explain the choice and let them make it. Anything else is abuse.
If you want to, here is a homework assignment: read the excellent book “Privacy is Power” and see if your opinion doesn’t change.
It is, however, the basis of any damages claim. I don't see how it ever got to the Supreme Court, if they can't demonstrate any damages that are measurable in terms of money.
I disagree. Tracking happens very much all the time, everywhere. People know habits of those they're interested in at work, be that their boss or clients, for the benefit of their career. That's tracking. Corner shops track their customers' routine. We call their attention "charm", "nice touch", that make them superior to the big boxes. The subjects in both case certainly aren't aware and it's hard to claim it's antithetical to human dignity and people's freedom.
You may argue that Google do it at scale, and that make them vile, so at which scale does tracking become a problem? Is my little website free to do so? If not, what is different than a little shop with a book that details frequent customers' name, address, birthday, etc.?
Tracking isn't the issue. Using the data against the will or to do harm to people is the issue that needs to be addressed.
More like the Stasi. Stalkers don’t indiscriminately stalk everyone, all the time, everywhere.
Yes. Another way to think about it is that we have a situation where people/citizens as a whole are hurt rather than individuals.
It boils down to the argument of whether or not these concerns apply to individuals that have "nothing to hide". I say yes, it does.
What happened with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica is an example of what the future holds. Was any specific individual "hurt" by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica providing massive amounts of information to bad-actors running disinformation campaigns? No. Was democracy as we know it hurt? Yes.
The same infrastructure used to effectively sell us toothpaste and other consumer goods, is something that has been on the wish list of autocratic despots for decades. This stuff is irresistible to them and they will find ways to use it.
I think there should be a law against large-scale espionage. E.g., collecting, storing and selling of all peoples browsing history should be illegal.
It says nothing about the legality of Google’s actions, and furthermore, it does not preclude similar such damages being successful as long as the plaintiffs are able to back up the numbers sufficiently.