Hacker News Reader

Comment by celdon25 | Hacker News Reader

From the opt-out link:

> If you are a California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, or Utah resident, you have the right to request that we delete personal information that we collect about you, subject to certain exceptions.

I think it's time to require this on a national level. This is getting ridiculous.

View on HN

That's a step forward, but not a solution. There are so many firms collecting data on everyone. There should be something similar to a "National no call list". If you register there, all firms should delete your information or face consequences.

Unfortunately this will be used to discriminate against people when applying for a loan or a job, so we must make it illegal to discriminate when these data brokers return nothing for a search because someone has opted-out.

If you’re going to make it illegal for anyone to use the data broker information to make decisions, you should just ban the data brokers from existing.

Bingo. This is clearly the answer. However, law enforcement buys from data brokers, so it will never happen.

This is the crux of the issue. The ever evolving police apparatus would never give up such a thing. The people who write the laws and their spook handlers want to increase data collection, if anything.

Does anyone else feel like we are slipping into a Dark Mirror episode? I fear that nothing will be sacred soon.

I thought the whole premise of Dark Mirror was that we are slipping into a Dark Mirror episode.

Ideally, yes.

Firms don't seem to face consequences for violating the no-call list, as people notice FCC does not seem to stop spam calls or texts.

It ebbs and flows. Afaik, most of the spam calls and text tend to "leak" through over international agreements, until the carriers block them.

so register in a central database to not be registered in a bunch more central databases? Then the one "do not collect data" list will be leaked over and over?

The national do not call list isn’t effective so I can’t advocate for another one as a solution UNTIL the first implementation is fixed.

It's also not a guarantee anything was ever really deleted. What about offsite/physical backups? Seems highly impractical.

Or legislate these things have to be opt-in. I remember when politeness dictated you ask someone before even taking their photo.

I think the companies collecting personal information assume they have more entitlement to it they they actually do, and are on the wrong side of the law - especially when breaches like this result in real damage. I'd like to see a few really harsh class action lawsuits bite them in the ass and leave behind bad enough scars that other firms begin to see personal data as a liability not as asset.

It's enlightening to see read comments from this forum when GDPR was being introduced. It was just seen as pesky legislation designed to trap people needlessly in red tape and not legit privacy protections. I think a lot of Americans are coming around to sense -- now seeing US companies consistently abuse their data. The US should have similar legislation to protect Americans.

Here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154971

Seems like you're putting words in my mouth. The Utah law is 14 pages, where the GDPR is 88 pages, with at least twice as many words per page. We don't need a sledgehammer here.

Given that the EU has already taken its licks for the ineffective "cookie law" and used that experience to draft the GDPR, I'm inclined to think that length is quite necessary. I'm sure it's possible to express the spirit in a much shorter law, but such a law would be likely to facilitate legitimate activity by simply creating loopholes that severely neuter or even nullify the whole thing (which is one of the common failure modes of US legislation).

Specifically, the EU's teasing out an effective definition of consent is paramount, otherwise the only thing a US privacy law would mean is a few more paragraphs in the bullshit legalese "terms" that nobody reads. Frankly I think Congress should just import the text of the GDPR wholesale and let the courts sort it out. I doubt the outcome could be any worse than what surveillance industry lobbyists end up doing to domestically crafted legislation.

Sounds like they should hire you to tell them how to write the laws then!

erm, isn't most message board discussion talking about what "should be" ?

The USA has a justice system where loophole-abuse is rampant, much more than any EU state, I'd venture to say a 14 pages long law for the country is not even close to sufficient to cover against that aspect.

Utah is a small state, the EU dictates how a free market should work across 27 different nations with a variety of laws, 88 pages doesn't seem much to cover for that.

IANAL but my feeling is that also European courts judge more on the spirit of the law, so the unavoidable loopholes (because nobody is perfect) cannot be abused to the same extent.

> I think it's time to require this on a national level. This is getting ridiculous.

How would you have known to opt out from your data being retained? Were you aware of this site before reading this article? I know I wasn't.

Ain't nobody got time for all that.

Opt-in by default.

And then if I want me some spam, I'll ask for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com