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Comment by f6v | Hacker News Reader

Is the issue that Meta and Google comply with the law(turning in the data to crime investigators), or that the law itself is medieval? I mean, both are concerning in their own way. But the latter seems like a much much bigger problem.

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I think this issue is that we are giving these companies the ability to reveal sensitive information about us.

We should rethink how we share our data and the costs that it has.

I don't think Meta and Google are to blame here. Other than encouraging us to give them our data unprotected (as well as trying to syphon up as much as they can get their hands on in the background).

> I don't think Meta and Google are to blame here. Other than encouraging us to give them our data unprotected (as well as trying to syphon up as much as they can get their hands on in the background).

That bracketed "as well as" is a 'king huge "other than".

Even your smaller "other than" that is stated as such, is enough to make the premise that they carry no blame seem pretty silly to me.

Yes. But the bracketed part doesn't apply to this article IIUC because it is talking about chat logs which were "consciously" given. If the article was talking about web history assembled by ad tracking scripts than I can definitely agree that Meta and Google have a large portion of the blame.

This comment is a fantastic example of the meta-battle which the tech industry has been waging. They have worked very hard to change the very questions in the privacy debate. In their terms, collection of the data itself is never under debate; all debates are framed in terms of how they are allowed to use data. In this case, the failure isn't the law or the company's compliance with it. It was the collection and retention of the data in the first place.

> comply with the law

What concerns you about this?

Because they are good laws and bas laws, so some requests shouldn't be given in too easily.

I’m not comfortable living in a world where FB and Google get to decide what laws are worth following.

Who decides which laws are bad?

The ideology of the OP usually.

The courts, and there’s precedent saying a companies can petition the courts to review the law before handing over data.

And given Google et.al. actions in other avenues against these laws, it’s sad they aren’t challenging them.

Right, which is your second point about the law existing being the concern.

Companies are simply enforcing the law, right or wrong.

Companies should not enforce laws. They should just follow them.

Except in this case, they are doing both. To not do what you're asking (not turn over data on abortion seekers), they would be breaking the law if they received a valid warrant.

Now... They could comply with the law by not hoovering up as much data as they do, thereby becoming useless to both advertiser and law enforcement alike....

But that jeopardizes their business model.

No they couldn't:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention

https://edri.org/our-work/a-beginners-guide-to-eu-rules-on-s...

The companies profit from this data, but at this point they no longer have a choice: they have to collect the data or stop offering services in a lot of geographical areas. The point that they can avoid it by not collecting it was valid some 15 years ago, but no longer.

One of the main objections of companies is, by the way, that most governments refuse to pay the sometimes extensive development and infrastructure costs for this, instead just threatening the companies with (often illegal) measure to force their compliance.

Turning over data as required by law/warrant is not enforcing a law. It's following the law.

Companies don't get a choice. The "out" some companies are using is to encrypt everything with keys only on the customer's device. They then provide all data they have, as ordered, on request. This, of course, does not include the encryption key. However, as far as I know essentially only Signal does it these days.

Whatsapp is famous for doing this before, and then Facebook killing this for "regulatory concerns". I don't know for sure, but the previous owner of Whatsapp and founder of Signal implied that Facebook got threatened by states into doing that.

But FB/Google/Amazon/... are the tip of the iceberg. The companies really used for "enforcing the laws" (and for using very harsh measures against individuals just to make some government department's job a little bit easier) are banks.

https://www.taxsamaritan.com/tax-article-blog/reasons-the-ir...

(note the wording here: "the IRS has full authority to". They can do this at will. This process has been used to cause problems for political opponents as well. Nobody seems to care)

There is no inherent moral good in enforcing the law. Enforcing a morally evil law is morally evil.

The second part is true, the first part not so much. Enforcing the law creates stability, which is a good trait in and of itself, (all things considered equal otherwise about the law in question)

You have some arguments for that I'm not aware of perhaps?

> Enforcing the law creates stability ...

Do no obvious counter-examples spring to mind for you regarding that? ;)

The only concerning thing to me is when tech companies volunteer information to LEO. They should at least demand a warrant.

First came the data, then came the law.

That is the problem: we have nothing to hide until someone changes the law. Suddenly those things that were legal yesterday become the crimes of today.

Are laws being retroactively applied or since the date the law came into effect, plus some grace period ?

The data was generated, the law changed and law enforcement asked for all user data. There is nothing retroactive here.

There is no respect for the context in which the data was generated.

From the point of view of the company for who it is just a pot of data with no context until analysed, maybe.

It will sure seem retroactive to someone who might have acted differently so the data wouldn't be available to be handed over, if the current laws were in action at the point they could have done something to avoid the data being collected¹².

[1] "Generated" is too benign a word here IMO, hence using "collected" instead

[2] "inferred" might be a better choice as the data could be incorrect³ but that still seems to imply less agency than the companies have in their very deliberate stalky behaviour

[3] so something made up, not a truth collected

I used "generated" viewed from the user, "collected" would be from the perspective of the company. I wonder whether there is a legal difference in the case of law changes, which date would be taken?

The classic form of retroactive application of laws would be if someone performed an action, the law was backdated so that action becomes illegal and the performer becomes a criminal.

In this case we're talking not about direct action as the action is implied via the data collected. So if the action was performed before the backdating of the law but the data was collected after the backdating, is the performer a criminal?

So from the data, an action is "inferred".

It's a good question actually. The law was on the books but not being enforced because of Roe. But then the supreme court says Roe doesn't apply and law is fine as-is. Isn't this legally different from an ex-post-facto law?

Unclear: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/81342/can-abortion-l...

> That is the problem: we have nothing to hide until someone changes the law.

As it happens the Dutch authorities were pretty good with collecting ethnicity and confessional data in the inter-war period, then the very bad guys came along and we know what followed.

Data collection at scale and especially data centralization has always been a mistake, too bad many of the livelihoods of us here depend on exactly that.

Maybe employers and schools should stop collecting diversity data in case a less inclusive nation invades the United States.

In the US’s case I don’t think it would take an invasion to put people’s lives at risk because of innocuous (at the time) data collection on sensitive societal issues. This article is just proof of that.

the only good data is the data that isn't collected.

> First came the data

And as their data was harvested, consumers were told: Relinquish your private data to us, it's a fine and normal thing to do, we are trustworthy corporate citizens and privacy is a concern expressed only by those who wear hats of tinfoil.

Nothing really. Here is the list of this ethnic people you want to eliminate in conformance with the law you just passed on mandatory abortion and sterilization, oh my great overlord. Congratulations for your successful putsch by the way.

Both.

As long as there is diversity of people and jurisdictions the law will vary from place to place.

What is legal and acceptable in one place is illegal and abhorrent elsewhere.

Until we have a homogenous global population and one world government there will be laws you disagree with and wont want enforced.

Edit: Genuinely confused by the downvotes here. Anyone care to take the time to explain?

> As long as there is diversity of people and jurisdictions the law will vary from place to place.

You forgot from time to time. Abortion was legal in all of these places 1 year ago.

Yes, that too.

Social mores and laws can change pretty quickly, in decades.

Both are problems, but naive people expect Google and Facebook to do differently. Google has always been intertwined with the government, and Facebook was absorbed early on. I am not denigrating people by using the word naive. Those who are most naive need protection and knowledge. More tyrannical/medieval rule seems to be trending.

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