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Comment by drgo | Hacker News Reader

why is it that only the EU seems to care about Internet privacy?

Not true at all, USA begin to care about it too with foreign companies(TikTok) gaining traction in the American market. Up until now, these tech giants were all American and therefore under American control in American jurisdiction. For EU, it was always the case that the dominant tech giants were foreign - only setting up shops in EU for tax purposes. Besides EU, other countries have protections in place too.

> Not true at all, USA begin to care about it too with foreign companies(TikTok) gaining traction in the American market

I'm not sure banning foreign competitors count as "caring about internet privacy". Has there been anything lately to actually protect internet privacy in the US?

There's California's Consumer Privacy Act: https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa

The US government's interest in TikTok is mostly a question of national security, not privacy.

If they wanted to fight for privacy, they wouldn't have to go to China to find egregious mishandling of personal data. There are plenty of examples well within their borders.

> Not true at all, USA begin to care about it too with foreign companies(TikTok) gaining traction in the American market.

You can't seriously believe this. It's quite obvious that the TikTok debacle is mostly a protectionist measure for Facebook & Google who are looking to get their money's worth for their lobby.

California has CCPA, Utah, Conneticut, Virginia and Colorado have Internet privacy laws.

Canada has its own version of TCF.

There are loads, and loads more are coming.

> Utah, Conneticut, Virginia and Colorado have Internet privacy laws

No plans for a US federal regulation here? Wouldn't that save a lot of money and headache for everyone, if instead of complying with 50 different regulations you had one?

There is the concept of a 'US National' set of regulations too. IANAL, so I don't know if it's a Federal regulation.

It's about to become increasingly tedious to be a website operator.

https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/Global-Priva...

The federal government has a lot less power than a lot of people think, there are limits to control over interstate commerce and nobody wants Google to be regulated like a telephone company.

You should google Wickard v. Filburn. The US Supreme Court ruled that the US government can regulate what you grow on your own land for your own consumption, because it affects inter-state trade.

More and more countries are following the EU's lead. For example, Vietnam's PDPD is similar to GDPR (stricter in some ways) and is coming into force on July 1st:

https://blog.didomi.io/vietnam-data-privacy-law-pdpd-everyth...

However, I guess we won't talk much about Vietnam's new law on the English speaking web, whether it's successful or not. Purely because we don't talk or hear much of anything about Vietnam's internal policies on the English speaking web. While we will continue to discuss every tiny detail about the GDPR.

> While we will continue to discuss every tiny detail about the GDPR

Because large legislation by the EU like the GDPR and DMA has the the Brussels effect.

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

That's just because the GDPR applies to the richest market on Earth (by some metrics), which won't be the case for anything regarding Vietnam.

The only metrics that say that are metrics that are fake, the US market is significantly larger than the EU market.

Call it second-largest, the point still holds.

Why would they be fake? Can't they just be wrong?

In Canada, Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) was updated in 2015 to require user consent not unlike GDPR()

https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/technology/online-p...

You may not know, but China has also adopted pretty elaborate privacy laws called Personal Information Protection Law(PIPL) which is pretty close to GDPR.

And Brazil adopted the LGPD back in 2018, it's very similar to the GDPR.

Good for China, but since they have CCP people in every group to report on people, neighbors in every community whose job it is to report on people, do things like WeChat dropping messages containing unwanted content, censor people's postings, I'm skeptical how much privacy people are really getting. Sure, maybe BigCo can't build a profile on you, but I'd much rather have BigCo know everything about me than the State. Especially when the State is totalitarian.

> I'd much rather have BigCo know everything about me than the State

Sure, for the state to snoop on you, especially in the USA, they’re supposed to need judicial oversight and approval, which is arguably a better system, than having the state snooping on you without any oversight.

Is this still meaningful in a world where BigCo is snooping on you, and then able to sell that information to the state without any oversight?

Is there a point where BigCo should be treated as a part of the state, that’s just being funded partially by your tax dollars?

Is there a meaningful difference between the state building a snooping infrastructure itself, or outsourcing that to a private contractor who provides Snooping as a Service?

Yeah they also burn witches and stone adulterers. And some other sh*t.

Its amazing how those in the west worry more about a country that has no power on them instead of the psychos who can kidnap, torture or disappear them at whim.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/1...

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