Cimpanu: The US Govt Accountability Office recommends the US adopt GDPR-like privacy legislation

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It’s about time. Catalin Cimpanu, writing for ZDNet, has some great news: An independent report authored by a US government auditing agency has recomm
[See the full post at: Cimpanu: The US Govt Accountability Office recommends the US adopt GDPR-like privacy legislation]

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Elly, SueW, AJNorth

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Agreed…, the big boys, especially Silicon Valley need some slapping around, BUT remember the CFPB which protects consumers so well that they couldn’t get a loan and is accountable to no man?! In the USA at any rate, the last thing we need is another bureaucracy which will spin out of control. Beware unintended consequences.

Provided some existing law can be utilized to add additional scrutiny for the big boys, over here that might be the best approach. Or you could always move to Europe and experience “nanny” first hand. I’d wager you might come back screaming, but YMMV…

Remember, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you” and duck for cover!

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wdburt1

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In principle I also oppose adding another agency especially when one of the underlying problems is incompetent federal policy. However, in this case there is very poor protection of personal information and how it used in the US. So some strengthening of the law is necessary and one with some real teeth. I like Wyden’s suggestion of a prison sentence for the C-suites who orchestrate a cover up, not sure how to implement so it really nails them. Many industries already have stringent requirements for protecting personal information so this would just extend and enhance the requirements to cover others.

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My take on this is a bit different: we cannot get another bureaucracy, however well organized and set up, with actually competent public servants that want to serve the public, but that is sabotaged from above by politicians beholden to powers outside effective democratic control, deprived of sufficient funding, systematically badmouthed in the media by mercenary talking heads, and are also, and quickly, depleted of useful staff that, if they are not sent out at the behest of those politicians, then find in a hurry they can have a career with a future elsewhere.

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woody wrote:

(Although it looks like the report was published on January 15. First I’ve heard of it.)

Public distribution was intended to be delayed by a month:

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the report date. At that time, we will send copies to the FTC chair, the FCC chair, the Secretary of Commerce, and interested congressional committees. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov.
(Page 38 of the PDF)

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Lars220, Elly, SueW, woody

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Oh this just a bit late with all the database thefts, also the likes of the credit agencies which should have been reigned in some forty years or more ago, and creepy web sites which aggregate all kinds of data.

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And good luck with any REAL privacy regs.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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While this is indeed a good idea you shouldn’t be so eager for them to adopt EU legislation lest they also adopt the more egregious junk like the new copyright directive that’ll soon be put up for its final vote and that many of us are fighting to stop – https://saveyourinternet.eu

Of course, the US will not be exempt from this nonsense should it come to pass.

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OscarCP

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Here is why I have extreme cynicism and doubt that such protections would ever come to the US.

I just received this joke email about 15 minites ago with a very appropriate, and timely example.

Let us now consider the parable of the “Wishing Fairy.”

I met a magical fairy yesterday who said she would grant me one wish.
“I wish to live forever,” I said.
“Sorry,” said the fairy, “That is the only wish I’m not allowed to grant.”
“Fine,” I said, “then I want to die the day after Congress is filled with intelligent, honest, hard-working, bipartisan men and women who act only in the country’s and people’s best interests!”
“Well, aren’t you just the crafty little devil,” replied the fairy.

And there you have it.

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Lars220, OscarCP, Microfix

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Ending Tech companies “self-regulate” practices would be a first step in the process. GDPR being added into the same legislation would be the crowning jewel. There have been too many data breeches and its our data not being protected. All being said, many have said “be careful what you wish for”. The clowns we have now running the country aren’t competent nor up to the task for much of anything. Let fix the self regulation aspect and move forward from there. Just at another time.
Cheers!!

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OscarCP

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Next step: Following the precedent of Ma Bell, that would be something too!

Where is the Teddy Roosevelt of Big-Tech, when we need him?

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After Citizens United the average citizen has even less of a voice against all that corporate funding of our political process that has been allowed under the guise of corperate personhood, and one with very deep pockets I might add. And those donations have a negative effect on the Regulators also with The political side that controls the regulators keeping the regulators on such a short leash that things get so often(Wink Wink) overlooked and unenforced. The hands that fund from those artifical personages, the corporation as defined by that Citizens United judgment, have taken over the politcal process to such a degree that the actual real persons are in effect politically disenfranchised.

Just look at the OEM laptop market where the  major CPU market place share holder has so incentivized the Laptop OEMs with in kind marketing and engineering assiatance over the years to the end result that the Third Party Laptop OEMs are so dependent on that big CPU monopoly’s TRUST arrangement that the Third Party Laptop OEMs can not fully produce any product on their own. That’s because most of the Laptop’s BOM is spent on the processors that that the big CPU monopoly market share holder manufactures.

So It does not matter that the one smaller sized market competitor has APUs with better Integrated Graphics because those very same OEMs will mostly only ship Laptops with the one smaller competitor’s APUs with only a single channel of memory populated and the other memory channel unpopulated(very bad for a GPUs performance to lack sufficient memory bandwidth). And that’s even if the laptop OEM even bothered to include a second memory channel at all on the Laptop’s motherboard.  That Big CPU Monopoly’s in-kind marketing assistance and engineering assistance amounts to a form of TRUST agreement whereby the smaller CPU competitor, lacking the same kind’s of funds for in kind marketing assiatance and engineerng assiatance of the Laptop OEMs, can not get it’s APU products in very many OEM laptop products relative to the larger CPU market monopoly.

Privacy is also a Product to be sold to the highest bidder with that big monopoly OS interest creating a version of its OS that’s more related to metrics gathering the OS users’ internet browsing histories and software usage and pushing app store sales/subscrption services than that OS interest’s OS is related to actually  serving the end users’ computing needs. And this OS monopoly’s OS product in on most of the “Independent” Trird Party PC/Laptop OEM’s products(Bundled with the hardware and preinstalled). Ditto for the Big Search Engine Monopoly that’s pushing out the ads with scripts that seed users devices with tracking cookies and some Ads that are themselves also an attack vector via the nefarious ad scripts that do their level best at trying to infect folks devices with adware and spyware in order to violate that privacy.

The OEM Laptop, and to a lesser degree the PC, market is so dominated by incentivized in kind marketing and engineering assiatance that the one big CPU monopoly actually had a initiative whereby that CPU TRUST and its Laptop OEM partners created an industry wide thin and light laptop category similar to the designs that Apple had created. So after a time the entire non Apple OEM Laptop market became afflicted with that Thin and Light and undpowered form over function madness, and very overpriced madness at that for that reduced processing functionality at the highest of markups. Ditto for the GPU market also where the monopoly market holder has an outsized influnce on the Laptop OEMs.

So the fair market’s does not exist in the technology sector any more than there was a fair market in the Oil markets at the Time Of that Standard Oil Trust that put the Trust name front and center in the new Anti-Trusts laws that came about in the Time of Teddy as the gilded age of the late 19th century became the Trust Busting age into the early 20th century.

We have been in This New Gilded age of  Technology Trusts for some 4o years where OSs and CPUs, GPUs markets have becime so dominated by Trusts. And that includes the Search Engine Trusts and The other Interet Social Networking Trusts.

The Mobile Devices Market is healthy on the CPU/GPU side with plenty of competition but not on the Mobile Radio IP side.  But actual fair competition is the one true driver of innovation. The Laptop market needs some serious Trust busting and that Laptop OEM In Kind incentive practices from the large CPU Trust needs to be stopped as it’s not healthy for a CPU parts supplier with a Monopoly Market share to have such outsized control over any OEM parts supply market, Laptops, PCs, or otherwise. Those incentives amount to a Illegal Trust arrangement that stifles fair market competition.

 

 

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Lets hope they limit the regulations to big companies – say those with $50million or more in revenue.  No need to replicate the insanity of GDPR applying to small biz including local restaurants etc., which imposes big costs and burdens for minimal value.

Different story with Facebook, Google, etc. – they impose totally different type of problem and impacts, plus it’s low cost (per user) for them to deal with it.

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Size matters, when it comes to Big Tech. I’ve found an interesting note in an UK journal and posted it here #328614

Not just Big, but really Big.

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anonymous wrote:

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Agreed…, the big boys, especially Silicon Valley need some slapping around, BUT remember the CFPB which protects consumers so well that they couldn’t get a loan and is accountable to no man?! In the USA at any rate, the last thing we need is another bureaucracy which will spin out of control. Beware unintended consequences. Provided some existing law can be utilized to add additional scrutiny for the big boys, over here that might be the best approach. Or you could always move to Europe and experience “nanny” first hand. I’d wager you might come back screaming, but YMMV… Remember, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you” and duck for cover!

I thought this was supposed to be an APOLITICAL site.  i don’t appreciate the extremely obvious political bias in your reply.  Keep politics out of this site, please.

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Mele20: Well, the topic is very much about public policy, and therefore politics, so it is fair enough for people to have different points of view on it. But on this one I agree with you entirely: tone and how things are said do matter. Making one’s point of view clear is one thing. Venting one’s contempt for different points of view, telling people that might not agree with one’s where to go, is quite another. But those who do so might yet learn: perhaps the author of that comment is new to this and will reflect and get better at doing this, or so I hope. I know this is possible from first hand experience.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Should this thread be moved to the rants forum?

I found more heat than light—but of course, that’s just lil ol me

Lugh.
~
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