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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Simple answer – no.

The broader problem is that the government, courts, police and everyone else who is otherwise in charge of enforcing rights in this country does not know the first thing about technology.

We have dealt with this problem plenty of times in the past by setting up specialized bureaus and giving them broad authority to regulate players in the space and deal with infractions (the SEC is a great example of this), but there is no such tech authority. Imagine a world where the smartest programming minds aren't just joining Google but also the agency set up to regulate Google. Imagine if in a post-scandal hearing you don't have politicians who can't figure out an iPhone ask the questions but someone who knows how to set up a network firewall and what 2FA means. Until that happens, just passing more and more laws is going to be meaningless.

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You might be right, from a US-centric perspective. I'll respond with a European perspective. I feel like the new laws and the first wave of huge fines are causing a cultural shift amongst smaller companies and the wider public. People starting new businesses know that they can't base their success on the ability to track people and sell the data anymore. It'll take time for the culture to change - there's a lot of people making a lot of money from invading your privacy, after all. And they'll fight back, so it's not a foregone conclusion which side will come out on top. But I'm cautiously optimistic about our side of the pond.

But this is business as usual: after the incumbents secure their dragon hoard doing unethical things, they pull the ladder up behind them by supporting legislation that makes anyone smaller than them need to think twice about doing the exact same thing they did (thus preventing competition).

Unless the same rules get enforced on the big players, it's just a moat around the status quo. In Europe's defense, they have been fining the big players, but on the other hand at this rate the fines are starting to feel more like a kickback than actual punitive measures intended to change behavior.

The EU fines are just fly bites for them.

It's now the game over state for personal and family privacy. All the sites and apps and even casio watches has telemetry always-enabled (via mobile apps). Even cars. No one in governments or agencies cares about privacy anymore. Call it whatever one wants: corruption or lobbying, the name does not matter.

The possible solutions are impossible for the non-software engineers (pihole and dns set in the home wifi, personal openvpn gateway set on all 4/5G connected devices). Younger generations don't care. Older ones just don't understand.

It's the dark age of privacy. Literally no hope.

I wonder what the consequences would be in the next 5-10 years when the collected data would be analyzed by AI and sold to anyone for a more and more cheaper price. What should happen for the people to push the unprivacy back hard enough to stop or revert?

What huge fines? The largest fine I can find on record is Apple being fined $14.8B for their tax scheme.

It’s not just the big companies. The tiny company I work at doesn’t even think about collecting data because everyone knows an inspection will look into it and impose fines if it’s not properly stored. Afaik If we would collect data, that would require advice from GDPR lawyers and other resources. So, GDPR doesn’t achieve the entire goal of killing it. It’s just a deterrent as I understand it.

Meta have been fined over a billion Euro last year alone due to GDPR. Maybe one can disagree about that being large but it's still a relatively new law showing a trend.

Yes, I disagree that fining a company with nearly $117 billion in revenue a billion euro is “large.” That’s “cost of doing business” money, not any kind of punishment or deterrent.

This "cost of doing business" meme is becoming annoying. Collectively, Facebook, WhatsApp and Meta platforms have been fined in 2022 for $687 million by a single country alone, Ireland[1]. $117 billion was the global revenue, the revenue generated in Europe was $25.8 billion[2], so the fines amount to 2.6% of what they make by accessing the European markets. Also their net income was $23.2 billion, globally, so the fines from a single country made 3% of that.

Do you still think it's a negligible cost? These costs are also going up: in January 2023 Ireland issued two more fines for $0.4 billion.

[1]: You can check at https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/745351/facebooks-quarter...

> by a single country alone, Ireland[1].

Ireland's data privacy serves as Meta's main regulator in the European Union because the company's European headquarters are in Dublin. Making it out as if Ireland's GDPR fines are "just one country" is disingenuous.

Yes, ~1 billion from $177 billion in global revenue is a negligible cost.

Of which profits are < 25$ billion. How much of that was generated within the EU?

I don't see why that's relevant.

Then why did you put numbers in your first post if you don't find them relevant? You find local fine/global revenue somehow relevant but you don't find local fine/local profit or even local fine/local revenue relevant? Could you explain why?

And its the govts that enable the tax havens, citing if they dont, some other govt will, ergo all govts are criminal in so many ways.

Which, of course, is a lathe US company. Not the ne of these small EU companies referenced. Of course, this is by design.

Go to https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ and select, say, Italy. There are plenty of multi millions € fines issued to national companies: ISPs, electric utilities, food delivery services and even city administrations.

Did you ever think that maybe you're only hearing about US companies getting penalties because you're...in the US, reading US news?

> I'll respond with a European perspective.

I'm old enough to have seen the internet evolve in the UK, and as usual the US dominates it and screws it up for the whole planet.

I'm surrounded by USAF, and pro American brits because they get employed by the US Mil, and their extremist mentality grinds you down.

So I really do hope the EU starts putting the US and UK in its place, and failing that Russia or even China because there are some very toxic people running these countries, getting away with murder.

Maybe I’m a cynic, but I believe there is too much conflict of interest here to gain any footing. The major government agencies want companies collecting any and all information possible on people. The agencies can then buy that data without needing any warrants or additional oversight. Find some useful data through the back channel? Get the warrant and go through the hoops to publicly request the data needed to bring to the courts.

Actually, finance is quite a similar shitshow, but people feel safe if they think it is regulated. SEC employs some intelligent people, but a smarter always goes where the real money is. The end result is that SEC will heavily police small funds and investors but will give a wrist slap on big players (which caused almost any mess in finance history) because SEC doesn't have the resources to fight them.

Resources exist to fight them. It’s just a choice not to.

Elizabeth Holmes was indicted 5 years ago. She was sentenced last year. She’s still walking around freely.

A normal person would’ve spent at least 4 of those years locked up, if not all of them. They most certainly wouldn’t be out and about after being convicted. These people simply have different rules applied to them.

> She’s still walking around freely.

Wow, I didn't know this, but you're right:

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a39299534/elizabeth-hol...

She received an 11-year sentence last November but she's apparently a free woman until April 27th of this year.

Can someone who knows more about the American legal system explain this to me? Why is this possible? I assumed that when you're sentenced you get taken to jail pretty much immediately.

(Yes, I'm sure the short answer is just "because she has lots of money", but what are the details? What exactly did she spend it on to buy an extra 5 months of freedom?)

A long time (~20 years) ago I used to work at a large bank in The Netherlands. I was told there were some software engineers who stole a lot of money, but it was never reported, because the bank didn't want to get negative publicity. Instead, the bank made a deal with these ex-engineers and they'd keep their mouths shut.

ING Bank \o/

Indeed :)

> The broader problem is that the government, courts, police and everyone else who is otherwise in charge of enforcing rights in this country does not know the first thing about technology.

Politicians might not, but the government apparatus does. There's a reason 3GPP/ITU for years have built backdoors in telecommunication networks. It is simply that the IETF folks building atop Packet Switched Networks are putting up brave resistance: https://archive.is/iawrM

Well yeah, the NSA exists as well. None of these people who know their shit are working in regulatory bodies, however.

> The broader problem is that the government, courts, police and everyone else who is otherwise in charge of enforcing rights in this country does not know the first thing about technology

In the USA, doesn't know? Or doesn't want to know? Things like The Patriot Act are more effective (?) when there's an endless buffet of personal data available without the need for a wire tape, court order, etc. Probable cause? Much easier with phone meta data and CCT footage. Etc.

There's too little incentive for the gov to get it right. The current situation is no accident.

It’s worse than that. As shown by the 14 eyes alliance, our governments themselves spy on us. The 14 eyes alliance overrides the GPRD which makes it seem more as protectionist legislation than anything else.

> Imagine a world where the smartest programming minds aren't just joining Google but also the agency set up to regulate Google.

So you'd get a revolving door between Google and this supposed agency regulating Google where engineers and policy makers would work at the agency, be friendly to Google and then switch jobs into a cushy job at Google with a nice pay bump as a thank you for years served and services rendered.

The HIPAA seems to prove that although flawed the threat of fines provides an incentive for most entities handling it to take it seriously. Twenty years ago your Health data was not protected and was accessible unanonymized to any grad student who wanted to run a study, or any Hollywood reporter who wanted a scoop on why actor Y or actress Z were hospitalized.

I don't necessarily disagree that we could use some regulation in this space, but do you really think engineers that would have joined Google would choose a government agency instead? How many people that would have become investment bankers at Goldman go to the SEC?

You know the government hires engineers already. A boat load of them in fact. Why do any of them choose to work there instead of Google?

They don’t. They can’t get into Google.

> They don’t. They can’t get into Google.

There are many engineers (I'm one myself) who wouldn't even consider working for Google. It very definitely is not the case that all other options are second-bests chosen by someone who failed to get into Google.

> The broader problem is that the government, courts, police and everyone else who is otherwise in charge of enforcing rights in this country does not know the first thing about technology.

It’s beyond that. It’s micromanaging. Regulation cannot and should not be able to keep up.

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