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Comment by dpkirchner | Hacker News Reader

Ideally a regulator would intervene, demanding that the data provider prove that each person in their database has explicitly opted in. That should be really easy for these companies -- it's just another record to include in our files. If they can't prove it, they must delete all related data.

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And when they autofill that value with 1, because they obviously got all of that data legitimately? Will consumers be asked to prove a negative?

Even test cases will run into data sharing issues.

>And when they autofill that value with 1,

amazingly enough the law is more clever than programmers assume it is, and the clever dodges programmers come up with tend to be seen through and just lead to jail time.

Prime Exhibit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

I don't understand how Hans Reiser is an example of this. He was convicted of murder and nothing about his case (that I could find) seems to indicate that he used "clever dodges" to skirt the law.

if one followed the case at the time Reiser seemed very much the stereotype of the really superclever person who figured they were smarter than all those dumb folks who were never going to catch him and it all fell apart real quick.

Then when it fell apart he dropped back to arguing he just looked guilty because he was too smart to look innocent or something https://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/02/23/2218256/hans-reiser-...

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2010/08/02/review-from-a-report... >He thought he was smarter than everyone else, but ultimately he was not

I see what you mean. There is some nuance to that which wasn't captured in the Wikipedia article or my general awareness of the details about the case.

Why not just outlaw data brokers entirely?

Because they need them for their stupid election campaigns, surveys and crap like that.

Yeah. They sure did a great job surveying "accurately" every election cycle.

Well, my experience says that they are decently accurate, at least here in EU.

However, I would ban surveys because they can lead people to vote for the wrong person due to social pressure.

What does proof look like?

On past projects we've recorded the time the user submitted a from (with a checked consent checkbox), but this doens't feel like rigorous proof.

A scanned signature would work, I think, on a form mailed in by the user. The form would need to be clearly identified as coming from the data broker but could be provided by the company ultimately seeking your data.

Ah, the evil bit.

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