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Comment by redeeman | Hacker News Reader

if only we had something called "the law" that would have something to say about embedding spyware into consumer products that puts photos of people on the toilet onto facebook.

of course these kinds of things dont work for the regular guy

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I love the old "Laws like that are why the EU is less innovative than the US" response to critiques like that, given that the past decade or so of innovation feels like it's mostly been finding ways to leverage the previous decade's technology against the user.

Pretty sure they'd be destroyed if they did that shit in EU

You would think so but alas the law isn't actually enforced in many places. It takes a long time for anything to get done as most of the regulators are woefully underfunded. Having the law written is one thing but without the funding to enforce it the law is worthless to most people.

So argue for more laws, more enforcement, and more funding for government agencies and watch the same people complaining about this "travesty" turn against you

After a decade of collecting data, probably

The person on the toilet?

>"if only we had something called "the law"

I'm not trying to be flippant, but what is to stop some company from simply utilizing a Terms of Service that allows them to do whatever they want with the data? I often see people chiming in that consumers "agreed" to all of this, even though the vast majority of people never read through the ToS or privacy policy at all.

Just write the laws so that they override a contract, pretty simple.

ToS are often disregarded in courts.

ToS can't override statutory rights.

ToS are often made to be hard to understand.

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