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Comment by jgeada | Hacker News Reader

There is an easy way to fix this: make the companies collecting the data be criminally liable for any misuse or leaks of this data. Something with teeth, such x% of total revenue, not our current “sorry, we leaked your data, tough for you”

If this data is so important it should be treated with the same care & auditing that their income stream gets.

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Two other potentially effective punishments:

1. Removal of all crowd-sourced data from their systems. Let's see if users will want to come back if there are zero network effects. Maybe sad for the users, but I'd feel safer if data-leak==data-removal.

2. Forced modification of their trademarked logos for some period of time. This will warn people to stay away from the company and their products. (Trademarks are all about trust, so this seems fair).

I like #2, that is creative and would really ruffle some feathers (in a good way). Mandate them to change app icons, favicons, etc. everywhere and then include daily fines for any instances of the logo that are non-compliant. One can only dream

That's just beating around the bush hoping some tangential cost might make the fundamental problem moot. What's needed is a comprehensive privacy law that gives individuals legal power to prevent/audit/delete/restore companies' dossiers on us. Critically one that can't just be nullified through more boilerplate legalese "terms" that nobody reads. Something like a US port of the GDPR.

Does nothing to prevent state abuse when the state sets and executes the punishment for it.

Indeed, but this post is about commercial surveillance.

Commercial surveillance, by definition, includes the context of a surveillance company's primary customer. When dealing with the sale of endangered animal furs, you don't just go after the trappers. It's no good to ignore the market effects of an eager customer.

Doesn't the state just use commercial sources for their data anyway? Corporations all have far more resources and power, so it's easier to just ask for it.

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