Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

Given the actual informed and uncoerced choice, people say no to this kind of collection and especially its sale or use for any purpose other than the explicit service they thought they were allowing it for (navigation, setting the time, etc etc). This is true for basically all information collected. I'm glad to see there is some minor protection language being included but it needs to have real teeth and get to the point. If you collect data from me under false pretenses or using coercive methods (you can't use the thing you just paid a lot of money for if you say no) you will not only be fined but criminally prosecuted.

View on HN

Completely agreed. Even for people who are like "I have nothing to hide", the only people who think this way are simply unaware of just how much harm can come to them without the protection of privacy (and laws that ensure this)... or they just have no self-preservation instinct, I guess?

So, aside from nothing to hide domestic/family violence and stalking, the fact that they can and will build an inference about you to attempt to influence your choices is fundamentally menacing to every person.

Corporate stalking has become so normalised (and provides so many livings) that we are through the other side.

Half a millennium ago they tried to control us by restricting our access to information to control what we think, now they bombard us with it to control what we think.

The "I have nothing to hide people" are the reason our privacy rights have eroded.

> or they just have no self-preservation instinct

I actually feel this way very often when talking to some younger people online. I wonder if they really competely lack this skill, or their desire for upvotes online leads to them expressing compassionate, but stupid and dangerous, conclusions.

They didn’t grow up before all this was completely normal. And before we throw too many stones at them, we should all maybe consider how many of us in this thread contribute to the “attention economy” in one form or another, most of which drives everyone into the corral to have their data collected.

It’s easy to point fingers at young people and treat them as ignorant/not caring about what matters, but they were born into and grew up in the world we built and continue to build.

If I was rich, wouldn't I just pay the fines though? I hear about megacops fined billions of dollars every year for doing this shit they don't give a fuck

Edit: Okay my brain processed the information now, criminal prosecution sounds like slightly more deterrence. (Nobody would do an illegal thing, after all ;)

Criminal prosecution isn't even an issue because it does not extend to the executives. PG&E somehow keeps paying fines to resolve murder charges.

https://liberationnews.org/pges-rap-sheet-the-criminal-histo...

Hence, the alleged action of Luigi Mangione.

If the law of the government doesn't catch up, eventually the law of the jungle will. But maybe not in their lifetimes.

As President John Fitzgerald Kennedy said: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable."

it remains hard to imagine a jury that would convict, fully knowing he actually killed the mass murderer. reasonable doubt might almost work againt mangione

Yup. All it will take is one juror who understands Jury Nullification [0,1], and they've got at best a hung jury mistrial...

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/jury_nullification

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

What's the limit of coercion?

Can someone provide a product that loudly says "we will sell your geolocation data" on checkout?

Is it coercion if you simply want the product?

Yes. Paying the money the data is worth isn’t coercive, linking some other transaction to selling your location data is.

This includes having a discount larger than what your location data is worth. IE: I’ll sell you this car for 50k, o you want it without location tracking that will be 150k.

If thats the standard, then I suggest people find a less polarizing word with a clearer definition.

Putting the semantics aside, Who decides what it is worth and to whom?

Why wouldn't a company sell a car without geodata for what it is worth? Maybe it is worth 150k to them because that is what some people will pay the maximum return price point for that package?

There is a valid debate but the example I gave clearly coerced the consumer. They had paid for something with the expectation of use and then were hit with a requirement to give consent after the transaction. We shouldn't let some grey area prevent us from stopping the ongoing harm. One side has clearly been abusing the other. If a law goes just a little to far in favor of the consumer I think we can all agree that is better than letting the consumer be completely abused without protections. You don't let an attacker keep punching their victim because we gotta get the laws perfect to act to stop them. Act and reduce the harm and then adjust to get the balance right.

One of the major things courts do is price stuff, ie how much is a lost leg worth.

The question isn’t what’s the value of not being tracked, the question is what’s tracking data itself is worth. Here what the company actually makes selling the data puts an actual price on what that data is worth.

If you can make 50$/year selling the data and want to pay someone 40$ to be tracked that’s a reasonable transaction, if you want to charge them 1,000$/year not to be tracked than it’s no longer about what the data itself is worth.

A court will decide the cost of a leg someone lost in an accident.

However, If Elon wants your leg as a sex toy, a court won't set a price and force you to sell it.

Finding the actual value has nothing to do with forcing the sale.

The point is Elon can’t price Starlink at 1 billion dollars a month then give a 999,999,900 discount if you give up your privacy. At that point the bundle is coercive.

I dont think that is coercive. I dont think coercion has anything to do with finding the value. It is "coercive" if he puts a bullet in your brain if you buy neither option.

Legally have “sex with me or lose your job” is considered coercion without any direct threat of force. Sleep with me and I’ll pay you 10k isn’t.

The difference is leveraging something else in the transaction not just payment.

By that definition a 150k car clearly isnt. It is obviously payment inside the transaction

I think the practice of tying the use of one product to coerce the loss of rights of your private data has some comparables (noted below).

The law seems to recognize that companies coercing someone to give up money using tie-ins may be illegal but is not yet recognizing data as a monetary equivalent. Because it’s not money it’s not regulated.

Isn’t it time that our data be treated as the exchange of value that it is? And the coercion should be something we are protected against?

1. abuse of monopoly power in tie-in sales.

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

2. Freebie marketing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor-and-blades_model

3. RESPA

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/real-estate-settlement-...

GDPR does a great job defining this iirc?

gating the product on unrelated data access is coercive

Reply on news.ycombinator.com