9 ms·

While from purely monetary perspective this seems like it tips the scales more to a balance, from systematic perspective, this is more corruption on top of corr

While from purely monetary perspective this seems like it tips the scales more to a balance, from systematic perspective, this is more corruption on top of corruption. You have politicians colluding with businesses to save them a billion in taxes, contrary to the intent of the law. Then you have the same politicians colluding to basically go pirate and surprise fine the same business a billion for some semi-arbitrary violation out of nowhere. There's no system here, no law, just both sides one-upping themselves in being absolute fucking assholes. The result is instability and environment not conductive to businesses or the people that makes them up. Think about it, how come everything is fine, and then out of the blue you get sued for a billion? Was there a warning? Was there a grace period, a chance to rectify things? No. This is not law enforcement, this is law abuse. It's like the US cops that stop random cars, and if the driver carries cash, they just take it under bullshit pretense. We're moving towards an anarchy, under the guise of justice.

ectopod 5y ago
Do you think Amazon wasn't using personal data contrary to European data protection law?
- saddlerustle 5y ago
  Do you think European data protection law actually prevents much tangible consumer harm?
  - chopin 5y ago
    The law presumably would if it was properly enforced.
    - yourenotsmart 5y ago
      Do you know what the phrase "throw the book at them" means. It means you have a rich set of laws, which punish various offenses which look fine on paper, but in practice everyone violates just to do their regular job, so they're widely not enforced. But if you want to fuck someone in particular, you can easily find them in violation of a dozen or two of them, and put them in jail for a long time or fine them substantial amounts. You threw the book at them. This is basically what most of EU's data privacy, cookie and so on laws are about, in practice. It's interesting how you can take a collection of seemingly or genuinely good-intentioned rules and use them to basically rule as a king, but there you go. And it's not a good thing.
      - mrweasel 5y ago
        That not really how, at least some, European countries work. Laws are written and companies are generally expected to follow them. We’re try to catch up, going from an society where rules are followed, without the need for actual enforcement, to one where companies don’t follow the law unless the court makes it unprofitable.
        yourenotsmart 5y ago
        Are companies expected to follow laws the day they get signed, even if it might take over an year to implement compliance? Think about it. Because here's what happened: > The penalty is the result of a 2018 complaint by French privacy rights group La Quadrature du Net, which filed numerous lawsuits against Big Tech companies on the behalf of 12,000 people shortly after the GDPR was established that year. This privacy group waited for the law to get signed, and promptly sued every big company that clearly handles user data. Do you think finding everyone a billion or two would help them come up with a time machine and go back in time to implement a law before it exists so they're compliant by the time it's signed? Curious.
        Symbiote 5y ago
        "The GDPR was adopted on 14 April 2016 and became enforceable beginning 25 May 2018." They had two years from when the law was made.
        input_sh 5y ago
        If we're talking about GDPR, it came into effect on 25 May 2018, after being adopted by the European Parliament on 14 April 2016. That's two years, one month, and 11 days for implementation. Those additional days are days after it was published in the EU's Official Journal. It's not EU's fault that companies waited until 2018 to give a fuck about it.
        ithinkso 5y ago
        You'd think that if this was a legit defense they would use it in court, instead of "There has been no data breach, and no customer data has been exposed to any third party" clinging to anything irrelevant, as I'm sure they don't hire incompetent lawyers waiting for an online poster to come up with a solution I think GDPR discussions are always heated on the 'EU vs US' line because of different approach to trust in the govt. In the EU people tend to (surprisingly maybe) trust politicians more because they at least want to be re-elected and distrust corporations/billionaires because they want to increase profit. In the US, I think, it's different, there is a distrust in the government because they are here to get us and more trust (surprisingly maybe) in corporations/billionaires because they are just like me working hard to earn money
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Do you answer straight questions, or do you just keep changing the subject?
- shuntress 5y ago
  I think the parent's point is that in a more well-functioning system Amazon would be given notice and time to rectify their presumably mistaken wrong-doing which they would then appropriately rectify in good faith or to avoid penalties. The parent is pointing out how the current system incentivizes "surprise" fines as an alternative to up-front tax and how this dynamic trends towards fines being seen as a simple cost-of-business rather than a true penalty/punishment.
  - himinlomax 5y ago
    Yeah that's not how GDPR is written, there's no provision for notices, that's the law and it's available to everyone to read. All of Amazon's competitors, including my employer, have spent a lot of money and energy to comply. Why Amazon decided to just ignore what everyone else knew was a big deal is beyond me.
    - shuntress 5y ago
      > this dynamic trends towards fines being seen as a simple cost-of-business rather than a true penalty/punishment I'm sure they ignored it because they thought they would make more money that way. Edit: Also, to be clear, by "system" here I mean the overall environment not specifically the EU or the GDPR.
  - abeppu 5y ago
    Why are they '"surprise" fines'? GDPR was published and companies had time to get ahead of it before it went into effect. There were special recital sessions where guidance was given for what parts of it meant. Many companies put into place a lot of changes to comply. Yes, parts of GDPR could be a little ambiguous, but as with every law, a company can be more or less conservative in making sure they're above reproach. Why should violations be "presumably mistaken" if a company has a legal department and the resources to comply with the law? If the speed limit is posted, I don't expect a cop to give me a warning when I've exceeded it under the assumption that it was inadvertent, and give me a reasonable period to come into compliance.
    - 5y ago
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  We could broaden the conversation and also ask who are the people who got harmed to the tune of $1B, and how they will be redressed for that harm The point is not the legal matter at hand but the nature of the law itself and how it came to be. As much as i like that we don't get spam calls anymore in the EU, the problem was pushed under the rug, not solved (all the spam calls are now from UK numbers). The bigger problem is that while the legislators legislate for putting restrictions on eu businesses, they have not legislated an equal amount that would be conductive to business in the eu.
p_j_w 5y ago
>you have the same politicians colluding to basically go pirate and surprise fine the same business a billion for some semi-arbitrary violation out of nowhere. Your wording here implies that you think this fine is not justified and is nothing more than a shakedown against Amazon. Am I misunderstanding here or is that really what you're saying?
himinlomax 5y ago
> n you have the same politicians colluding to basically go pirate and surprise fine the same business a billion for some semi-arbitrary violation out of nowhere. I work for an online retailer that's not Amazon, we took GDPR very seriously and have as a result stopped collecting a lot of data and spent months implementing compliance. It seems Amazon has done next to nothing compared to what we did and chose instead to ignore the issue. It's absolutely no surprise what's happening to them, it's precisely what our legal department warned us about. Are you saying that Amazon should be above the law?
einpoklum 5y ago
> how come everything is fine I doubt everything was considered to be "fine". Also, the assumption that a grace period is due assumes that such behavior is only marginally inappropriate. Suppose Amazon was reading its customer's email; would you also argue that it needs a "grace period" after a demand to stop doing that before it actually stopped?
james_in_the_uk 5y ago
It wasn't out of the blue. This complaint has been ongoing for a long time. Regulators have been vocal about these concerns for a while. Discussion of these issues,such as how the ad industry is at odds with privacy activists and increasingly regulators too, are common across various academic and industry forums. Amazon will have taken expert legal advice and likely have been involved in lobbying at all levels. Regulators typically have carefully constructed action policies which cover a range of measures, including warnings, which may well be delivered privately. Not everything that happens in the world makes the front page of Hacker News :)

ectopod 5y ago

Do you think Amazon wasn't using personal data contrary to European data protection law?

saddlerustle 5y ago
Do you think European data protection law actually prevents much tangible consumer harm?
- chopin 5y ago
  The law presumably would if it was properly enforced.
  - yourenotsmart 5y ago
    Do you know what the phrase "throw the book at them" means. It means you have a rich set of laws, which punish various offenses which look fine on paper, but in practice everyone violates just to do their regular job, so they're widely not enforced. But if you want to fuck someone in particular, you can easily find them in violation of a dozen or two of them, and put them in jail for a long time or fine them substantial amounts. You threw the book at them. This is basically what most of EU's data privacy, cookie and so on laws are about, in practice. It's interesting how you can take a collection of seemingly or genuinely good-intentioned rules and use them to basically rule as a king, but there you go. And it's not a good thing.
    - mrweasel 5y ago
      That not really how, at least some, European countries work. Laws are written and companies are generally expected to follow them. We’re try to catch up, going from an society where rules are followed, without the need for actual enforcement, to one where companies don’t follow the law unless the court makes it unprofitable.
      - yourenotsmart 5y ago
        Are companies expected to follow laws the day they get signed, even if it might take over an year to implement compliance? Think about it. Because here's what happened: > The penalty is the result of a 2018 complaint by French privacy rights group La Quadrature du Net, which filed numerous lawsuits against Big Tech companies on the behalf of 12,000 people shortly after the GDPR was established that year. This privacy group waited for the law to get signed, and promptly sued every big company that clearly handles user data. Do you think finding everyone a billion or two would help them come up with a time machine and go back in time to implement a law before it exists so they're compliant by the time it's signed? Curious.
        Symbiote 5y ago
        "The GDPR was adopted on 14 April 2016 and became enforceable beginning 25 May 2018." They had two years from when the law was made.
        input_sh 5y ago
        If we're talking about GDPR, it came into effect on 25 May 2018, after being adopted by the European Parliament on 14 April 2016. That's two years, one month, and 11 days for implementation. Those additional days are days after it was published in the EU's Official Journal. It's not EU's fault that companies waited until 2018 to give a fuck about it.
        ithinkso 5y ago
        You'd think that if this was a legit defense they would use it in court, instead of "There has been no data breach, and no customer data has been exposed to any third party" clinging to anything irrelevant, as I'm sure they don't hire incompetent lawyers waiting for an online poster to come up with a solution I think GDPR discussions are always heated on the 'EU vs US' line because of different approach to trust in the govt. In the EU people tend to (surprisingly maybe) trust politicians more because they at least want to be re-elected and distrust corporations/billionaires because they want to increase profit. In the US, I think, it's different, there is a distrust in the government because they are here to get us and more trust (surprisingly maybe) in corporations/billionaires because they are just like me working hard to earn money
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Do you answer straight questions, or do you just keep changing the subject?
shuntress 5y ago
I think the parent's point is that in a more well-functioning system Amazon would be given notice and time to rectify their presumably mistaken wrong-doing which they would then appropriately rectify in good faith or to avoid penalties. The parent is pointing out how the current system incentivizes "surprise" fines as an alternative to up-front tax and how this dynamic trends towards fines being seen as a simple cost-of-business rather than a true penalty/punishment.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  Yeah that's not how GDPR is written, there's no provision for notices, that's the law and it's available to everyone to read. All of Amazon's competitors, including my employer, have spent a lot of money and energy to comply. Why Amazon decided to just ignore what everyone else knew was a big deal is beyond me.
  - shuntress 5y ago
    > this dynamic trends towards fines being seen as a simple cost-of-business rather than a true penalty/punishment I'm sure they ignored it because they thought they would make more money that way. Edit: Also, to be clear, by "system" here I mean the overall environment not specifically the EU or the GDPR.
- abeppu 5y ago
  Why are they '"surprise" fines'? GDPR was published and companies had time to get ahead of it before it went into effect. There were special recital sessions where guidance was given for what parts of it meant. Many companies put into place a lot of changes to comply. Yes, parts of GDPR could be a little ambiguous, but as with every law, a company can be more or less conservative in making sure they're above reproach. Why should violations be "presumably mistaken" if a company has a legal department and the resources to comply with the law? If the speed limit is posted, I don't expect a cop to give me a warning when I've exceeded it under the assumption that it was inadvertent, and give me a reasonable period to come into compliance.
  - 5y ago
cblconfederate 5y ago
We could broaden the conversation and also ask who are the people who got harmed to the tune of $1B, and how they will be redressed for that harm The point is not the legal matter at hand but the nature of the law itself and how it came to be. As much as i like that we don't get spam calls anymore in the EU, the problem was pushed under the rug, not solved (all the spam calls are now from UK numbers). The bigger problem is that while the legislators legislate for putting restrictions on eu businesses, they have not legislated an equal amount that would be conductive to business in the eu.

p_j_w 5y ago

>you have the same politicians colluding to basically go pirate and surprise fine the same business a billion for some semi-arbitrary violation out of nowhere. Your wording here implies that you think this fine is not justified and is nothing more than a shakedown against Amazon. Am I misunderstanding here or is that really what you're saying?

himinlomax 5y ago

> n you have the same politicians colluding to basically go pirate and surprise fine the same business a billion for some semi-arbitrary violation out of nowhere. I work for an online retailer that's not Amazon, we took GDPR very seriously and have as a result stopped collecting a lot of data and spent months implementing compliance. It seems Amazon has done next to nothing compared to what we did and chose instead to ignore the issue. It's absolutely no surprise what's happening to them, it's precisely what our legal department warned us about. Are you saying that Amazon should be above the law?

einpoklum 5y ago

> how come everything is fine I doubt everything was considered to be "fine". Also, the assumption that a grace period is due assumes that such behavior is only marginally inappropriate. Suppose Amazon was reading its customer's email; would you also argue that it needs a "grace period" after a demand to stop doing that before it actually stopped?

james_in_the_uk 5y ago

It wasn't out of the blue. This complaint has been ongoing for a long time. Regulators have been vocal about these concerns for a while. Discussion of these issues,such as how the ad industry is at odds with privacy activists and increasingly regulators too, are common across various academic and industry forums. Amazon will have taken expert legal advice and likely have been involved in lobbying at all levels. Regulators typically have carefully constructed action policies which cover a range of measures, including warnings, which may well be delivered privately. Not everything that happens in the world makes the front page of Hacker News :)