Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

Re:Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law by debatem1 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @04:58PM (#21020698)

This statement is too broad brush for me to actually understand where you're coming from. Let's try a few variations of the theme and see if we can suss out why we perceive this so differently. If none of these touch on your perspective, I'd appreciate it if you could propose some of your own.

Please note that these are deliberately constructed as strawmen; I am not advocating for them or saying you do.

1/ Would you approve of a law which forbade companies (perhaps outside of eg healthcare or finance) from collecting or storing PII?

2/ Would you approve of a law which forbade a company which bought or sold PII (perhaps with the above exemptions) from doing any other kind of business?

3/ Would you approve of a law which required companies to explicitly price and purchase PII from consumers?

4/ Would you approve of a law holding employees or executives criminally responsible for data breaches?

5/ Would you approve of a law standardizing the requirements for anonymizing data?

6/ Would you approve of a law banning online advertising?

7/ Would you approve of a law which placed the same requirements on any company which stored PII as are currently imposed on credit agencies?

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Re:Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law by 1000units on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:06PM (#21020768)

These all sound fine, except I don't know that credit agencies are held to high standards.

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Re:Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law by debatem1 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:23PM (#21020896)

Ok, maybe I'm asking questions too close to my own viewpoint. Let me ask some follow-up questions that are a bit further out.

Would you approve of a law which forbade advertising of any sort?

Would you approve of a law which required service providers to offer their service for free?

Would you approve of a law which forbade service providers from offering their service for free?

Would you approve of a law banning the sale of digital goods or rights to digital goods?

Would you approve of a law banning subscriptions or recurring payments?

Would you approve of a law forbidding the use of cameras in public places?

Would you approve of a law forbidding companies from having more than $X in revenue, for some X?

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Re:Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law by 1000units on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:42PM (#21021022)

> Would you approve of a law which forbade advertising of any sort?

No. People are entitled to speech.

> Would you approve of a law which required service providers to offer their service for free?

No. Making money is Virtuous and Good. Acquiring money by theft, deceit, etc is not.

> Would you approve of a law which forbade service providers from offering their service for free?

No. Charity is fine. In the cases people are actually paying with their data and the "free" is just legal trickery then yes. You already can't pay people in blood. Data is just as important.

> Would you approve of a law banning the sale of digital goods or rights to digital goods?

No. However, DRM should be illegal.

> Would you approve of a law banning subscriptions or recurring payments?

No. The only issue here is predatory sign-ons.

> Would you approve of a law forbidding the use of cameras in public places?

This one is difficult. At any earlier time, no.

> Would you approve of a law forbidding companies from having more than $X in revenue, for some X?

No, I wouldn't bother.

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Re:Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law by shkkmo on Thursday September 19, 2019 @06:04PM (#21021190)

> > Would you approve of a law forbidding the use of cameras in public places?

> This one is difficult. At any earlier time, no.

I suspect the best solution here is laws around how the data from public cameras is stored and processed. Cameras that store a temporary loop of data, delete it after a day or two, and don't upload that data to the cloud are one thing. Cameras that upload every image to the cloud for permanent storage where face recognition software is used to track you movement around the city or your emotional state throughout the day are a different beast.

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Re:Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law by iamnothere on Thursday September 19, 2019 @08:22PM (#21022099)

Surveillance cameras could really use a PCI-type compliance regime. Data must be stored encrypted at rest, intranets must be segregated from the broader web, etc. It isn't perfect but it's better than nothing.

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Re:Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law by debatem1 on Thursday September 19, 2019 @05:59PM (#21021142)

Ok, so you would forbid online advertising, but not advertising overall. What would you allow/ban and why (assuming that viewpoint is germane to this conversation)?

I'm not sure what you mean by "at any earlier time". Can you clarify?

You mention predatory sign-ons. In this context it seems you view the data-for-service trade as predatory. Do you think it would remain predatory if it were explicitly priced-- eg, if Google offered you a $5 credit on a $5 service for use of your data?

Would you approve of a law explicitly allowing blood-for-service or similar?

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