
Google Feels the Brunt of GDPR Enforcement - basicplus2
https://www.saiglobal.com/en-au/news_and_resources/industry_news/google_feels_the_brunt_of_gdpr_enforcement/
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hhanesand
50 mil USD is not anywhere close to “hitting Google hard in the coffers”. I
get it’s a much bigger fine to what was levied before, but let’s be realistic
about the impact here...

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LeoPanthera
The fine is in _addition_ to enforcement. It's not a fee they can pay to avoid
GDPR compliance. They have to do that as well.

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BariumBlue
How's it being enforced, though? Short of outright arresting people, the usual
enforcement tactic is to use fines

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ocdtrekkie
If that enforcement tactic is ineffective, the EU can obviously elevate it's
methodology. Companies which do business, transfer monies, and have offices
and employees in the territory have a lot of potential assets to seize.
Usually fines, which are levied on a regular basis, until compliance is
reached, are adequate.

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buboard
Sad that these are the only euro tech news

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fvdessen
Well this week we've seen the first Belgian Unicorn (Collibra) but that news
didn't seem to reach HN.

[http://www.brusselstimes.com/business/technology/13911/bruss...](http://www.brusselstimes.com/business/technology/13911/brussels-
data-company-collibra-is-worth-more-than-one-billion-dollars)

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lawrenceyan
I can't help but feel like there exists a certain amount of jealousy/envy that
exists on the EU side in regards to American technology companies. Perhaps
this stems somewhat from the inability of European countries to cultivate a
foundation of successful innovation in relation to software/computation like
the Silicon Valley or greater Bay Area has in the United States?

In my opinion, instead of focusing on regulation to hamper outside
competition, the better option would be to spend more on funding
innovation/growth efforts for local companies and startups so that they can
better compete solely based on the merits of the technology or service itself.

This in the long term will provide far more for European countries and its
citizens than, again this is just my opinion and it's definitely not
necessarily purely black or white here, the short term oriented sort of feel
good action that something like the GDPR I believe represents.

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rorykoehler
You obviously haven't spent too much time around Europeans. They (we) think
about totally different things to Americans in general. Privacy (especially in
Germany) has always been a hot topic. You can barely use your card to pay for
things anywhere in Berlin for example because people use cash to not be
tracked.

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jdietrich
A substantial proportion of Germans remember the Stasi. Some remember the
Gestapo. The idea of databases becoming the tools of oppression is not an
abstract risk to the German people. Entirely justifiably, they broadly regard
bulk collection of personal data as a dire threat to liberty. Many Europeans
live with the memory of similarly awful tyrannies, from Franco in Spain to
Ceaușescu in Romania. To dismiss those concerns as mere jealousy of Silicon
Valley is rather churlish.

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gowld
The Germans might remember something slightly older than the Stasi.

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jdietrich
I refer you to the second sentence of my comment. With that said, it is worth
remembering that only a small number of very elderly people have meaningful
first-hand memories of the social and political circumstances of the 1930s and
1940s.

The Stasi is clearly a more pertinent example of the perils of mass
surveillance. The scale and sophistication of their surveillance is the
closest historical parallel to contemporary digital surveillance, and many
currently-serving politicians and civil servants have first-hand experience of
it. Germany is still dealing with the legacy of decades of pervasive
surveillance and the billions of records collected by that agency. A notable
example of those records is a Stasi identity card, issued to major Vladimir
Putin of the KGB.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-
europe-46525543](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46525543)

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fmajid
Well yes, given they are the most egregious violator with Facebook, it's to be
expected they would be among the first hit, and the hardest. This complaint
also only scratches the surface.

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everdev
Crazy idea, but why not put the onus on the browser and require that EU
browsers have the ability to block and manage cookies and tracking scripts.

Much less to regulate plus we wouldn't have ugly banners all over the place.

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pacala
It is trivial to uniquely fingerprint a browser, even if there are no cookies
involved. Surveillance can and should be fought off in the legal sphere.

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c22
So some incentive to design non-fingerprintable browsers sounds great!
Especially since such a product would require widespread deployment to be
effective.

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pacala
Modern ML can fingerprint you based on your mouse movements. Good luck selling
a browser without mousemove events.

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wtallis
The vast majority of web sites don't need mousemove events except to enable
bad UI design. The exceptions that are trying to implement a desktop app or
video game inside the browser can ask for permission. It's not at all hard for
users to make the one or two clicks necessary to grant a domain permission to
use the bundle of advanced features it is requesting, and it gives them a
reasonable opportunity to provide informed consent before a website starts
monitoring their every move.

