Or put it this way -- is there a data analytics platform that is suitable & easy to use for any US government agency? Not that I am aware of (but please let me know). Without such infrastructure, these government organizations understandably are looking for those commercial options.
That's definitely just a GeoIP database picking up AWS traffic.
* (in the last 30 minutes, as of now)
Well…
This is analytics data.
Or maybe you'd call that "mass surveillance".
I don't agree with them using known abusers of personal data for the tooling, but this is what I was talking about.
I don't like them using Facebook for analytics, I don't know what they were getting from it. But the basic premise of analytics, I think they should do.
I think it's fucked up that any agency is "marketing products" at all, but inasmuch as this is necessary in some way, surely they don't need the kind of surveillance marketing that's questionably even worth it for corporate advertisers to use. It literally reads like a google or facebook lawyer wrote it
I agree that they shouldn't be using tracking code from Facebook etc. for their analytics, but they do need analytics of at least some sort. I think that should hopefully be uncontroversial.
https://www.royalmail.com/privacy-notice and the cookie policy, 3.4.
I suppose it is nice that they tell you that they may send your name, contact information and purchase information to market research companies?
Matomo is pretty solid. And you can always use it just to ingest the data, then analyze it with something other than the default dashboards.
I think about it every time I have to use it.
Maintaining a system takes people & resources. For 40+ years, there’s a push to not allow the government to actually hire and manage those itself, but use commercial entities, because “big government is bad”.
So it is easier to get the approval to pay x2 as much for a 3rd party than do it for half the budget internally. And as things need to be done, you end up saying f*k it and help ruin public service because it was mandated you’ll do so.
And then you end up with shitty services, which was the intent all along: it’s not about big government, it’s about outsourcing government contracts to you and yours.
frankly I prefer when it's the government rather than companies selling it to foreign countries or scammers
The person that you’re replying to already called it negligent. It’s clear that it’s negligent.
That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere.
I’m not even American, but I just spent 30 seconds on the USPS site and came across an online store where you can buy gifts, etc. This reasonably puts them well within the ballpark of an organisation that’d seek to use this sort of tech. As anyone that’s worked with anyone in ecommerce marketing will tell you, there’s always organisational pressure to shove these ‘tracking pixels’ onto your site.
Again, it’s negligent that they did it, from a privacy POV. But let’s not conflate that with ‘old man grumbling about social networks’.
> That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere.
I don't think the USPS has any legitimate reason to be hosting tracking pixels from any entity outside the US government. USPS should have analytics on their website, but the USG has a hosted analytics package[0], and that's what they should be using -- which they are[1], so they should already be getting the data they need.
> But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people
Agree, but someone should probably tell Congress that.
The situation is trash (literally; 95% of my mail goes directly to the recycling bin), but conservatives want the USPS to behave more like a business, and its funding -- and need to do crappy things -- reflects that.
Their job isn't to stop junk mail. Their job is to reliably deliver whatever mail has my address on it to my mailbox.
How? The US government doesn’t fund the USPS.
There’s been some back and forth about the sudden mandate for USPS the pre funding retiree healthcare out 65 years, which nominally created a great deal of debt to the government as they failed to meet that sudden obligation. However, by removing the obligation that ‘debt’ disappeared as the government hadn’t actually spent any money on USPS retirees healthcare.
The second amendment doesn't define "arms" because (a) at the time there wasn't much ambiguity there and (b) "arms" isn't actually the most important concept there. The second amendment enshrines the right for citizens to be able to stand up militias and defend themselves. The US didn't have a standing army until WW2, despite Alexander Hamilton's opinions on the matter. The second amendment was put in place because colonists lived under the thumb of a monarch and at the end of an army's barrel with nothing guaranteeing the people a right to defend themselves, their neighbors, or their fellow colonists (eventually countrymen).
That aside, the concept of amendments exist for a reason. It's totally reasonable for Congress today to amend the Constitution if a definition of "arms" is now needed. It wouldn't be the first time a new amendment modified or entirely voided an earlier amendment.
What we don't need is court rulings, executive actions, or even new legislation short of an amendment trying to modify or redefine an existing amendment. If an amendment needs to be changed or clarified that needs to happen at the level of another amendment, anything less is short cutting the system and, in my opinion, not democratic.