Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

I am curious. How does this work?

Do big-tech companies actually pay these fines? In cash? By daily bank transfer? Direct debit?

And to whom? Margrethe, the Queen of Denmark? Or to some bank? Or are bank notes scattered to wind in Copenhagen square so the people can stuff them into their pockets?

Or do the governments of countries whose laws are broken have a nod-and-wink tacit agreement that "fines" are just numbers for the press to print and assuage our sense of outrage. Aren't we just starting to use numbers like this as abstract tokens of justice?

I'd like to see Zuck made to personally lug an enormous pirate's chest of treasure up to the gates of Copenhagen, or face blood-eagling at dawn.

View on HN

You might care to learn the difference between Norway and Denmark.

I would not mind if they pay Norwegian fines to Denmark

Almost the same currency name anyways.

at least by name

Tangential, but it's a hilarious stereotype of Americans how they just bunch together the whole of Northern Europe. I'm a Finn, and in 9/10 cases when an American learns this, they tell me about their travels in Sweden or Norway.

Can't help but think the correct protocol here is to respond to them "Oh you're American? Nice, I've been to Mexico!"

Wait until you mention you're from an African country... :)

"Oh, yeah! I've been to Africa!"

The OP's site address is .uk, very unlikely to be US based.

I made no such assumption; merely pointed out that the original post is about Norway, but the commenter appeared to have confused it with Denmark. Could happen to anybody, really... ;)

I think there are a lot of Americans who don’t know that New Mexico is in the US, so…

In fairness if you're an American from Uruguay you wouldn't have a lot of interest in the internal political boundaries of that area like an Estadounidense would.

(though I suppose you could be an Estadounidense from the Estados Unidos Mexicanos - it's really not the best continent for disambiguation!!)

"I live in Ireland" "Oh I LOVE the UK!"

got that (and variations of it) more than once..

Americans tend to identify by a state or city. The proper retort here is to bundle together different states.

Silly me. Of course, they don't do blood-eagle in Norway for non-payment of fines. Lucky escape for Zuck. :)

That's easy, Norway has mountains and Fjords and Denmark is flat.

If you're talking about the Kingdom of Denmark (and not the Country of Denmark) then there is Gunnbjørn, Greenland, 3700 m. ;)

What do you mean? Big tech companies pay fines much the same way regular companies pay fines. Going to court and other foreplay notwithstanding, it's generally just a bank transfer to the relevant authority. If you messed up on taxes you usually pay to the tax authority of that country, for many other matters it's often whatever the equivalent of the ministry of finance is. Of course this differs from country to country, but this is a pretty straightforward matter in general. I'm not sure where the confusion comes from?

You say that, but with respect, "the relevant authorities" doesn't add what I'm looking for.

> I'm not sure where the confusion comes from?

There is no confusion, there's a lack of concrete factual knowledge. That's different.

Who exactly takes that money? When and how? And how does that translate into a win for the victims?

https://cms.law/en/int/publication/gdpr-enforcement-tracker-... : "Fines are transferred to the state treasury". Which makes sense, this is usually what happens with fines.

(is this a situation of coming from a US background and being confused about how a unitary state works?)

Given that this is Norway, they probably use Vipps.

The fines are paid to the Data Protection Authority in Norway. You can read their own press here: https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/news/ The kind of tit-for-tat you’re insinuating rarely happens, if ever. I would expect the fines to enter the state’s finances the same way other a fine for speeding does.

Echoing other comments about how Norway and Denmark are separate countries.

Thankyou.

The next question is - if we're hoping to seriously talk about the effectiveness of fines against hostile and uncooperative foreign companies, how does the Norwegian DPA use that money to further remedy the harms inflicted on the people?

That's not a lot of money in the scheme of things. but handing it out amongst everyone doesn't seem useful.

The obvious danger is that the DPA becomes a self-fulfilling entity, in perpetual growth of power and reach, and quite happy if Meta continue to transgress.

Shouldn't Europe use this money to invest in its own social networking infrastructure, thus providing a double-whammy against Meta's misdeeds?

That's a really interesting list of cases and fines. They seem really active and mostly to operate internally in De^H^H Norway.

What to do with that money?

Some of the listed companies clearly got fined because their software engineering is rubbish and they made genuine mistakes. Maybe use the money to pay for (and force) those companies to have their programmers trained in better privacy related SE skills?

One company was fined for changing the password of and then accessing an ex-employee's email account when they left.

Have to think that's pretty widespread behaviour.

https://www.datatilsynet.no/en/news/2021/fined-for-accessing...

They operate a number of programs to help companies and government organizations to do the right thing wrt privacy. Both awareness building, providing open resources, but also having advisors that one can call and get case by case guidance (free of charge for small things). Of course GDPR has been a priority for a long time, but recent focused efforts also exist around AI. Example (should translate OK to English): https://www.datatilsynet.no/regelverk-og-verktoy/sandkasse-f...

Bank transfer would be normal. In some countries a particularly awkward Naughty Company could probably do it in coins if they wanted to (depends on legal tender rules).

i wonder where the money goes

a big viking party would be cool

Reply on news.ycombinator.com