Zuckerberg: Facebook will not stop spying on Americans to comply with EU privacy law

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/04/nerd-triumphalism.html

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Well, he will have no choice once the Republican Congress and Trump implement airtight privacy laws protecting citizens of the United States…

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Facebook is now one case found in favour of the individual by the ECJ away from one of the largest fines in history.

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Considering how much of his wealth is wrapped up in the value of Facebook, he may soon tumble back into being a mere millionaire. The European Union may end up bankrupting the company.

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Along with single-payer universal healthcare and voting options for actual liberals and progressives, digital privacy would be another nice thing Europeans have but that Americans don’t because “freedom.”

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The Zuck likes to look under your hood, so’s to speak.

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4% of global revenues is easily within the scope of Facebook returns from violating privacy. Just part of the cost of doing business; they’ll pass it along to their customers.

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Latest Speed-Date Pickup Line:

Him: "I don’t use Facebook."
Her: “Let’s get married!”

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Well that’s nice. I’m glad I’ve basically pared down my posts on Facebook and block their tracking cookies everywhere else. Good luck monetizing my terrible data anyways since most of what I do isn’t exactly profitable to anyone (DIY failwhale electronics projects at most gives Digikey a couple hundred bucks, the rest is me pirating episodes of The Flash or Legends of Tomorrow).

Reciprocation would be nice and authorities be allowed to look under his company’s hood.

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So enact the GDPR rules here. Makes him a dick but maybe it’s the dick we need to avoid the impact of breaches.

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This week Facebook also told New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner that they will not obey New Zealand’s privacy laws

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As someone who works with personal data in the EU and worries about our government’s handling of personal data, I tend to worry that the GDPR, being draconian in its fees, doesn’t protect enough.

I’m implementing a system where our client may get huge fines if we don’t delete the customers’ names and addresses in a timely fashion. OK, fair enough.

But at the same time, the government wishes to unify all registrations, medical diagnoses, criminal convictions, school reports etc. concerning families and give them “scores” (story in Danish) so that a mental health diagnosis may be 3,000 points, a missed dentist’s appointment 50 points, etc., “in order to spot troubled children”. They wish, as I said, to collect this information for each and every family with children in the country.

If they can do that within the GDPR, then fuck the GDPR.

Interestingly, Richard Stallman had a piece in the Guardian yesterday where he offers an interesting solution: Regulate data collection so that no system may collect more data that it needs to perform its basic function:

"We can take the London trains and buses as a case for study.

The Transport for London digital payment card system centrally records the trips any given Oyster or bank card has paid for. When a passenger feeds the card digitally, the system associates the card with the passenger’s identity. This adds up to complete surveillance.

I expect the transport system can justify this practice under the GDPR’s rules. My proposal, by contrast, would require the system to stop tracking who goes where. The card’s basic function is to pay for transport. That can be done without centralising that data, so the transport system would have to stop doing so. When it accepts digital payments, it should do so through an anonymous payment system."

This solution would probably kill off Google and Facebook. But then, honestly, so be it. As always when it comes to these things, RMS is right.

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Let’s not malign Data now…

datalifeforms

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Wow. The EU is not afraid to dole out huge fines, though.

So, I’m as upset at facebook as the next guy, but…

If I open my Ublock Origin logger and load this article, I get a page full of trackers, including at least one from facebook ( it’s https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js , which is used in facebook’s pixel tracker ).

I don’t want facebook knowing I’m reading bad stuff about them. They might retaliate and spam me with buzzfeed clickbait and MAGA conspiracies. Plus, if Roko’s Basilisk is true, and facebook creates the Basilisk someday, the Basilisk might try to have me assassinated!

Seriously, though… how much responsibility should bloggers and journalists take for us being tracked everywhere like this? I get that it’s hard to make money selling ads on your content, but at the same time, if writers all stopped accepting ads like this, the internet would be a much safer place.

Also, I would disable my ad blockers, if I had a guarantee that there were no trackers like this. Maybe others would as well? Something to think about.

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One can only hope. I want to see Facebook myspaced. Also, I’ve used an adblocker for so long (ublock origin now) that I am horrified and repulsed by the net anytime I have to use some computer that doesn’t have one, Of course, I STILL refuse to buy Tide because of some grotesque ads they had. In the 60’s. I mf hate ads. TV is only bearable with a mute button.

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