I have a feeling all these FTC cases like this and the ones against big tech companies will all be dropped in a couple of months with just a little greasing of the wheels from these companies that are under investigation.
Why should we have piecemeal, extra-legal policies that only favor special interest groups? It's nice that they protect the privacy of church goers, but they can still geofence my neighborhood to estimate my income bracket among other invasions. It's well past time for comprehensive data protection laws rather than a hodgepodge of special treatment policies for whoever the executive wants to curry favor with.
We really need a leak of tracking data on Congresspeople going to compromising places to make this happen.
A really good book on this topic is Byron Tau’s Means of Control. His contention is that this surveillance data has made NSA warrantless wiretaps old news. Cops don’t need to do the spying themselves, they can simply buy the info.
I am of the opinion that at this point, Americans only believe we are less surveilled than people elsewhere. It’s not visible so people forget about it. Yet it is so deeply embedded into the government that it will never be removed.
Maybe this helps make your point [0]. The data purchased and
aggregated so seamlessly now that standardised 'one-click' software
similar to X-keyscore (Locate X) is widely available for tracking
citizens.
There's the old saying that "we are free only as much as we don't have guns in our face telling us we're not". The reigns placed on our freedom are just unrecognized by the vast majority of people so they feel they have more freedom than what they might appreciate.
I’m not entirely sure if I understand the point you’re making, but let me try an analogy.
We are all forced to buy a car. There is no one with a gun to our head forcing such a purchase, or a law specifically requiring you to buy a car. But nevertheless the laws are structured so that everyone realistically must buy a car, whether they want to or not.
If you chose not to buy a car then your life will be dramatically more expensive and difficult to live, because of the network effects of this requirement.
So while you are technically free to not buy a car, realistically you are forced to do so.
I would say it's more like the American people are so propagandized in favor of free markets and enterprises and so poisoned at the notion of the Government doing literally anything that they utterly don't care about how thoroughly and completely our freedoms have been subsumed by capital interests, as long as they aren't "big government me no like."
Government death panels? Orwellian, literally 1984, communist, socialist. Your insurance company refusing to cover your cancer treatment? Well that's the free market bub, can't argue with it. Sorry you're gonna die.
Like I'm being hyperbolic, sure, but I am being that hyperbolic?
Some people might be against regulating private data collection on principle, but I would imagine far more people are simply unaware of it. And even if they are, it’s pretty damn hard to opt out of, and the harms are pretty abstract.
Unless you can demonstrate concrete ways in which it even inconveniences someone, it’s gonna fall pretty low on most people’s priorities.
> I am of the opinion that at this point, Americans only believe we are less surveilled than people elsewhere.
I'm not sure who believes that (Hollywood/any cop tv show would have you believing the opposite), but I'm also skeptical that these data brokers are only brokering US data.
> (Hollywood/any cop tv show would have you believing the opposite)
Hollywood and cop TV would have you believe that "zoom, enhance" is a legitimate means of surveillance. I suspect most educated Americans avoid framing their understanding of surveillance around CSI and SVU.
Well, if you follow legal cases as I do, you know that isn't true! We are surveilled just as much as everyone else, save for maybe the UK, but we're even getting pretty close to that!
> Despite understanding that precise geolocation data is sensitive information that requires consumers’ consent, Respondents fail to take reasonable steps to confirm consumers consented to Respondents’ collection, use, or sale of this data and consumers do not, in fact, consent to the collection, use, and sale of their location data by Respondents.
Is there some actual law that this is based on? I am sympathetic to arguments that this should be a law, and is sketchy and gross, but the legal requirement of active consent for geolocation data seems to be something the agency is just declaring to be true and daring lawsuits to challenge.
> seems to be something the agency is just declaring to be true and daring lawsuits to challenge
I'm pretty sure that this is exactly how it's supposed to work. Federal agencies like the FTC have (had?) the authority to make rules and reinterpret existing rules with the force of law.
In the (present) US government, it really can't work any other way. Without this sort of autonomy, any action by the FTC, EPA, etc would require congressional approval, which would mean that they effectively would never be able to function at all. Law moves far, far too slowly. FTC needs autonomy to go around the law to react to rapidly changing markets and technologies. Notionally their actions should be codified by Congress after the fact, but Congress is incapable of doing anything useful within 20 years.
Especially after recent supreme court decisions, which I support, Congress has to give an agency specific authority within defined boundaries in order to make regulations which have the force of law.
Congress doesn't have to get down to the very specifics (like for example emissions standards numbers for cars), but it does have to be specific enough (can't say: EPA, you're responsible for environment stuff, make whatever laws you feel like).
The legislation charges the FTC with preventing unfair business practices, defines what it means by unfair, and then gives authority to address these things through administrative actions or the courts.
It's based on Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair and deceptive practices. The vast majority of "FTC cases" you read about are Section 5 cases.
IANAL the tech developed and then laws started to form.. slow walking the laws took over due to internal law enforcement and intelligence agency desire to use the data. Tech companies brutally compete with winners emerging controlling billions in cash flows. Both US political parties are completely complicit behind closed doors. "motivated individuals" by the tens of thousands built the tech and drank the kool-aide, reaping many mini-millionaires (reading right now?) $0.02
great, so look for EULA/ToS updates soon to be released by all of the other players in this area with explicit permission granted hidden behind legalese weasel words
Honda sold their users' data for 26 cents per car.
Hyundai sold their users' data for 61 cents per car.
Whether or not that data is used to affect insurance premiums is hard to ascertain, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone somewhere in the world was affected by it.
> without obtaining verifiable user consent for commercial and government uses.
and if they did obtain it, this data should have trackable provenance, should be revokable, and there should be payment and royalties to the user for its use and continued use
unless you plan on making it DRM protected, how else do you make data revokable? it's just text that can at worst be screen scraped into whatever format they want/need. plus, as we all know, DRM encryption keys tend to have a way of being broken or discovered or whatever other method of being rendered useless.
we can just copy a regulatory regime seen in other industries: non-compliant offerings are outright illegal and anyone trading in it can be sanctioned outright, while compliant offerings have this feature set.
the feature set can have a standardized way of tracking provenance, which the user can look at and revoke its compliance if desired, by signing a cryptographic signature that produces the expected address that approved consent to begin with. the same address's public key would be used for royalty payment. there are many examples of this working in standardized ways in some networks.
> The companies can retain historic location data if they ensure that it is deidentified or rendered non-sensitive or if consumers consented to the use of their data.
They left a loophole, sounds like nothing will change.
Readit News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25288341 ("My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants", 170 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896456 ("CBP Refuses to Tell Congress How It Is Tracking Americans Without a Warrant", 98 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32689862 ("[Here's] The Manual for the Mass Surveillance Tool Cops Use to Track Phones", 96 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24709347 ("The IRS is being investigated for using location data without a warrant", 80 comments)
Dead Comment
We really need a leak of tracking data on Congresspeople going to compromising places to make this happen.
Oh, for horror! That might mean more banners on websites....
I am of the opinion that at this point, Americans only believe we are less surveilled than people elsewhere. It’s not visible so people forget about it. Yet it is so deeply embedded into the government that it will never be removed.
[0] https://www.404media.co/email/f459caa7-1a58-4f31-a9ba-3cb53a...
Is this actually an old saying?
We are all forced to buy a car. There is no one with a gun to our head forcing such a purchase, or a law specifically requiring you to buy a car. But nevertheless the laws are structured so that everyone realistically must buy a car, whether they want to or not.
If you chose not to buy a car then your life will be dramatically more expensive and difficult to live, because of the network effects of this requirement.
So while you are technically free to not buy a car, realistically you are forced to do so.
Is that approximately what you mean?
Government death panels? Orwellian, literally 1984, communist, socialist. Your insurance company refusing to cover your cancer treatment? Well that's the free market bub, can't argue with it. Sorry you're gonna die.
Like I'm being hyperbolic, sure, but I am being that hyperbolic?
Unless you can demonstrate concrete ways in which it even inconveniences someone, it’s gonna fall pretty low on most people’s priorities.
I'm not sure who believes that (Hollywood/any cop tv show would have you believing the opposite), but I'm also skeptical that these data brokers are only brokering US data.
Hollywood and cop TV would have you believe that "zoom, enhance" is a legitimate means of surveillance. I suspect most educated Americans avoid framing their understanding of surveillance around CSI and SVU.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-i...
Is there some actual law that this is based on? I am sympathetic to arguments that this should be a law, and is sketchy and gross, but the legal requirement of active consent for geolocation data seems to be something the agency is just declaring to be true and daring lawsuits to challenge.
I'm pretty sure that this is exactly how it's supposed to work. Federal agencies like the FTC have (had?) the authority to make rules and reinterpret existing rules with the force of law.
In the (present) US government, it really can't work any other way. Without this sort of autonomy, any action by the FTC, EPA, etc would require congressional approval, which would mean that they effectively would never be able to function at all. Law moves far, far too slowly. FTC needs autonomy to go around the law to react to rapidly changing markets and technologies. Notionally their actions should be codified by Congress after the fact, but Congress is incapable of doing anything useful within 20 years.
Especially after recent supreme court decisions, which I support, Congress has to give an agency specific authority within defined boundaries in order to make regulations which have the force of law.
Congress doesn't have to get down to the very specifics (like for example emissions standards numbers for cars), but it does have to be specific enough (can't say: EPA, you're responsible for environment stuff, make whatever laws you feel like).
For example the origination of the FTC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_Act_o...
The legislation charges the FTC with preventing unfair business practices, defines what it means by unfair, and then gives authority to address these things through administrative actions or the courts.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61711288/automakers-sold-...
Honda sold their users' data for 26 cents per car.
Hyundai sold their users' data for 61 cents per car.
Whether or not that data is used to affect insurance premiums is hard to ascertain, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone somewhere in the world was affected by it.
and if they did obtain it, this data should have trackable provenance, should be revokable, and there should be payment and royalties to the user for its use and continued use
this data will self-destruct in five seconds?
unless you plan on making it DRM protected, how else do you make data revokable? it's just text that can at worst be screen scraped into whatever format they want/need. plus, as we all know, DRM encryption keys tend to have a way of being broken or discovered or whatever other method of being rendered useless.
we can just copy a regulatory regime seen in other industries: non-compliant offerings are outright illegal and anyone trading in it can be sanctioned outright, while compliant offerings have this feature set.
the feature set can have a standardized way of tracking provenance, which the user can look at and revoke its compliance if desired, by signing a cryptographic signature that produces the expected address that approved consent to begin with. the same address's public key would be used for royalty payment. there are many examples of this working in standardized ways in some networks.
They left a loophole, sounds like nothing will change.
The consumer has a phone, they obviously consented - hardly passing through the eye of a needle.