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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

No one will take action.

Outside Europe privacy isn’t a priority for politicians.

Is that why the EU is trying to break my encryption, scan my devices for CSAM, and grab all its visitors' biometric data? To "protect my privacy"?

This narrative needs to end. The EU does not care about privacy. They care about making headlines about sticking it to foreign companies.

What's missing is a catastrophic privacy event. People have been yelling from rooftops about how terrible losing your privacy could be, but the horror stories aren't coming true. There aren't any wide-scale or pervasive negative consequences of a loss of privacy, and there are a lot of immediate positives.

An insurer needs to start disqualifying anyone who, I dunno, is shown in Google Maps to be out at bars past 11 PM or something like that. Until you can show the practical problems associated with a lack of privacy, people won't care, and I would even argue that those people aren't entirely unjustified in that belief.

> What's missing is a catastrophic privacy event

*that directly affect politicians

The Video Privacy Protection Act was passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's VHS rental history was leaked to a newspaper.

I imagine it would take something like a sympathetic party like a child being identified, located, and murdered using breached data before a "Megan's Law" for data privacy passes.

They could probably add a cell phone alert to it. I wonder what color they would use?

Amber, Silver, Blue and Camo (not certain if Clear counts) are already used:

https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/intelligence-counterterror...

Never trust a law named after a child.

Nope, as that's basically like being struck by lightning. Needs to be both common and punishing, as that's what the doomsayers are claiming is inevitable.

What's missing is a catastrophic privacy event. People have been yelling from rooftops about how terrible losing your privacy could be, but the horror stories aren't coming true.

I would argue that the identification of the Golden State Killer (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-08/man-in-t...) was pretty catastrophic for him.

Now in this particular case the magnitude of his crimes make it a little hard to feel bad for him, but once the method is established the only thing we have restricting its replication for more petty crimes is the discretion of law enforcement, and explicit legislation.

I think you're missing the point if your example of "wide-scale or pervasive negative consequences" is "one guy who definitely murdered a bunch of people got caught".

No, even in Europe they don't care, it's just for pr and the image.

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