[HN Gopher] European Parliament Voted to Ban Remote Biometric Su...
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European Parliament Voted to Ban Remote Biometric Surveillance
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 183 points
Date : 2021-10-11 14:20 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.schneier.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.schneier.com)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This is nice in theory but I no longer have hope that it'll be
| effective. Remember that the GDPR is supposed to rid us of any
| non-consensual data collection and annoying cookie pop-ups, and
| yet years after it went into effect it's still not being enforced
| anywhere near enough and companies openly breach it.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| The GDPR created TONS of annoying cookie popups.
|
| Under GDPR you MUST pop-up consent requests with explicit
| consent.
|
| Luckily at least the EU website now does them at the bottom
| rather than the top.
|
| https://europa.eu/european-union/index_en
|
| for an example that is a bit less annoying - the EU website
| used to do a blocking top banner that was super annoying back
| when GDPR was being taken seriously, now they just bury it
| (like lots of others do).
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| > Under GDPR you MUST pop-up consent requests
|
| You actually don't, if you don't do any activity that calls
| for consent.
| samhw wrote:
| I think the point is that no one knows which activities
| call for consent, or what all of their transitive
| dependencies do, and so they show it out of an abundance of
| caution. As should have been predictable by intelligent
| legislators, which the EU generally are.
| blibble wrote:
| > As should have been predictable by intelligent
| legislators, which the EU generally are.
|
| this is certainaly debatable
|
| in every subject I'm a... subject matter expert in: it's
| been pretty bad
| simion314 wrote:
| Websites could do a better job and if browser makers
| would get involved to standardize the popup for Accept
| All/RejectAll/Manage Cookies then you could have a
| perfect experience.
|
| Today I hit for the first time a site that made it as
| easy to Accept or Reject startrek.com also many sites now
| offer option to delete my account and even JS APIs for
| tracking now have options for GDPR to not store private
| data. So YES things improved but are not perfect, to
| blame is not the law but the jerks.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| As mentioned in a sister thread, europa.eu uses the
| browser's DNT header (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DN...) to see if they should
| bother asking for tracking.
|
| Browser vendors tried to establish such a standard but it
| pretty much died when Microsoft enabled it by default for
| IE9 and some ad brokers began to claim that they can now
| ignore DNT because it doesn't actually reflect user
| intent anymore. (see https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/
| 03/microsoft_reverses_ie...)
|
| With that it became deprecated. Thank you, Microsoft and
| Yahoo.
| simion314 wrote:
| You still find people here on HN that want to be tracked,
| they are convinced that tracking is necessary. So a
| browser could implement something to shut this people up,
| Instead of a simple flag On or off, you can start with 3
| states, On, Off, Unset and you can have it set per
| webpage.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > As should have been predictable by intelligent
| legislators, which the EU generally are.
|
| we got a bootlicker folks.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Please see the EU website itself - All normal websites are
| using cookies. The EU itself is doing a banner - they have
| (thankfully) made it a lot less obtrusive where you can
| still use the site now without giving explicit consent.
|
| But this is I think the "big lie" of the GDPR folks - no
| banners needed, when even the EU itself and its agencies
| etc all use it.
|
| So you expect random joe blow website to overthink this
| even further, go against what they see the EU itself doing?
| It's total garbage.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| I'm browsing europa.eu a fair while now (in a private
| browser session to avoid any old cookie from maybe
| interfering) and the only banner they show is "An
| official website of the European Union - How do you
| know?"
|
| There are two links to the cookie page
| (https://europa.eu/european-union/abouteuropa/cookies_en
| or equivalent for the currently used language), one in
| the top nav bar, one in the bottom. Interestingly, that
| page talks about the cookie banner and how they need
| consent for analytics and stuff, but I never saw that.
|
| So, given how they explicitly state that they need it for
| analytics, I went to my browser settings and disabled
| sending the DNT header - and there was the cookie consent
| popup.
|
| So: State outright and by default that you don't want to
| be analyzed and they won't bother you.
|
| My only question is why they see a need to do analytics.
| Without that they wouldn't require that stuff _at all_.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No banners are needed. They are required when you start
| tracking your users because that when you need their
| consent to do so. And that's quite proper.
| still_grokking wrote:
| That's not true, you don't need any consent banners at all!
|
| As long as you're not spying on your users or stealing their
| data.
|
| Simple as that.
|
| For example:
|
| https://noyb.eu/en
|
| https://codeberg.org/
|
| See any consent banners? No? Just guess why.
| s_dev wrote:
| https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
|
| I see ten fines applied to big tech companies that are over 10
| million Euro and three that are over 50 million Euro.
|
| GDPR is definitely being enforced but mostly on big tech
| companies not small ones which I'd imagine is part and parcel
| of the intent of the regulation.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Compare the amount total fine amount to Google or Facebook
| with their yearly profits, the majority of which are earned
| by illicit data collection.
|
| Not to mention, to this day both these companies are _still_
| breaching the GDPR, so the fines clearly didn 't have any
| effect and they are still happy to continue acting in bad
| faith regarding personal data.
| ulucs wrote:
| The reason the fines are low is because they exist to push
| for compliance, not to punish. That's also why they are
| increasing up to 4% global revenue. If that's not enough,
| the maximum can always be increased. More money for the EU
| countries.
|
| It's really funny how US-oriented thinking made HN go up in
| arms about how GDPR fines were too excessive to how
| ineffective they are meanwhile the fine structure didn't
| change at all.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > they exist to push for compliance, not to punish
|
| Well that clearly doesn't seem to be working.
|
| > It's really funny how US-oriented thinking made HN go
| up in arms about how GDPR fines were too excessive to how
| ineffective they are meanwhile the fine structure didn't
| change at all.
|
| Just FYI I'm UK-based and never had any of these US-
| centric concerns regarding the GDPR.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > Well that clearly doesn't seem to be working.
|
| Those "privacy score cards" for apps on both iOS and
| Android, filled out for 1st to 3rd party apps? GDPR in
| action.
|
| The ability to reject tracking (which might cost money
| for a subscription or something - which will actually be
| tracking-free, instead of earning on both ends of the
| market, by selling a subscription _and_ tracking the hell
| out of their customers)? GDPR in action.
|
| There are some dark patterns around the cookie consent
| popups, but it's up to people to report them, there's no
| EU privacy police squad digging up these cases on their
| own. There are only so many hours Max Schrems can spend
| every day (it's rumored to be 24hs or less, except maybe
| for one day a year) on running his non-profit to do that
| for you, me and everybody.
|
| That stuff has ramp-up time, and as mentioned, the goal
| is compliance, not collecting fees. As practices _under
| GDPR_ are becoming established, and stuff went through
| court a few times, I'd expect schedules for compliance to
| shorten.
|
| It would be a PR disaster for all things privacy if DPAs
| were to go all in on some case (taking 4% of global
| annual revenue), then losing the case in court. Given how
| many media companies are big in advertising and
| surveillance tech as well (with media mostly existing to
| attract eyeballs for their "real" business[0]), there'd
| be no end to the assault on privacy. Rather take it slow.
|
| [0] e.g. https://venturebeat.com/2015/09/29/business-
| insider-buyer-ax... "Adblock Plus said Axel Springer's
| lawyers asserted that "The core business of the plaintiff
| is to deliver ads to its visitors. Journalistic content
| is just a vehicle to get readers to view the ads.""
| ulucs wrote:
| s/US/common law/
|
| The fines are not enough _right now_ , but they'll just
| keep on increasing until compliance is satisfied. There's
| no reason to start high and bringing small companies to
| ruin when everything will work out in the long term
| techpression wrote:
| The only decent fine was the Amazon one and even that one was
| minuscule compared to their net income. It was also covered
| in secrecy and will likely be overturned and drastically
| lowered like the other big cases like British airways and
| Marriott. This for a law that took four years to finalize, to
| me it sums up to a very mediocre outcome, at best.
|
| You are right that it's being enforced, there's just not very
| much force in the enforcing.
| s_dev wrote:
| Whats app was fined 250 Million. It might be a small % of
| their revenue but it's a significant cut of their profits
| for that year.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Is WhatsApp still a separate company? The real reason
| WhatsApp exists is to provide Facebook a backdoor into
| people's contacts so they can infer their social graph.
| Whatever "revenue" WA earns is peanuts, the real value is
| the collected data.
| techpression wrote:
| If you only look at it as pure loss, which would be
| wrong, WhatsApp (Facebook) most likely made a lot more
| money (and will continue to so) with the data, than they
| were fined.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Where do(es) the [income from the] fine(s) go?
| kiba wrote:
| It's the annoying banners and all the likely useless business
| information that sites think worth collecting.
| still_grokking wrote:
| That's simply not true.
|
| That is a laughable case count compared to all the violations
| just everywhere.
|
| If it would be enforced all of US BigTech would need to be
| outright banned from the EU until the US fixes its no-go
| issues like CLOUD Act or that secret FISA court.
|
| That's the one part.
|
| The other part is that also almost no domestic companies
| comply. More or less every business and all the country
| governments in the EU breach the GDPR in one or another way
| (for example by using US BigTech products behind the scenes
| as all governments do, or simply just collecting personal
| information without consent labeling it "legitimate interest"
| like almost every websites does).
|
| All big German media outlets have for example right now a
| case in court for noncompliance with the GDPR. It will take
| years in court of course, and than nothing will happen, as
| every time before.
|
| The same goes for things like "Privacy Shield v3.0" the EU
| Commission is working on. This new version is obviously
| illegal for the same reasons as it was the case for v1 and
| v2. But they don't care. The courts need many years to stop
| it again. Until then this illegal regulations that
| _obviously_ violate the GDPR will stay in place.
| still_grokking wrote:
| Who cares what the EU Parliament voted for? They can't make laws.
|
| It will start to be interesting when the EU Commission makes its
| point. And everybody knows the true rulers of the EU want to
| extend the surveillance and police state further no mater what
| the people's parliament thinks about that. This has by now a long
| tradition. All previous regulation went in that direction. They
| won't make just now a 180 turn. That's clear.
|
| Some evidence:
|
| https://www.justsecurity.org/36098/era-mass-surveillance-eme...
|
| https://www.statewatch.org/automated-suspicion-the-eu-s-new-...
|
| https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/sicherheitspolitik-...
| gremloni wrote:
| European governance really seems to work in that they keep
| getting common sense legislation right and passed over and over.
| Kenji wrote:
| You have no clue. The EU is an illegitimate, antidemocratic,
| aggressive, power hungry entity that will destroy anything in
| its path, in particular the sovereignty of countries and
| civilians. One out of a million legislations is sensible, the
| rest is colonialist garbage.
| richlandlord wrote:
| Until it is not common sense and the only way to go around it
| is to leave the Union and then everyone panics.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| who benefits?
| jdasdf wrote:
| *Except for themselves.
| blibble wrote:
| I wish I'd stop seeing headlines posted that the European
| Parliament has voted to do X Y and Z, suggesting that this will
| be implemented
|
| ... the European Parliament doesn't have the ability to legislate
|
| it has the ability to "suggest" legislation and the ability to
| block any that has been proposed, but that's it
|
| and I doubt the commission or the council will be interested in
| banning this technology
| jahnu wrote:
| But that it votes on something is significant and often leads
| to implementation of something similar eventually. And since
| you know that it does not mean implementation and I know this
| then we both should assume many or enough people know this.
| blibble wrote:
| it rarely leads to implementation as the make up of the EP is
| completely different to that of the Council
|
| the Council sets the legislative agenda, and the Council
| consists of the member states governments
|
| similar to how the US senate was before the 17th amendment
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > it rarely leads to implementation
|
| So is the EU in a perpetual state of legislative gridlock?
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Is the US?
|
| https://apnews.com/article/congress-moves-to-avert-
| partial-g...
|
| The European Union muddles on through in a very
| undramatic and ugly fashion, same like every other
| government.
| still_grokking wrote:
| No, it isn't.
|
| After "long talks" (maybe there is even money involved,
| who knows) with the parliament the things that the
| Council and / or Commission want get implemented.
|
| Maybe the parliament is allowed to keep some wording form
| it's proposals as long as it stays mostly symbolic form
| the practical point of view.
|
| The EU is a "democracy simulation" as we call it. Neither
| the Council nor the Commission are elected by the EU
| people but the laws are made by those institutions in
| practice.
| blibble wrote:
| no, the parliament's aims and objectives are simply
| ignored
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(page generated 2021-10-11 23:02 UTC)