
Just Don’t Call It Privacy - octosphere
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/22/sunday-review/privacy-hearing-amazon-google.html
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mtgx
Congressional hearings seem to almost always be a farce. How can you hold
hearings on a new law and _not_ involve the public? Isn't that what's supposed
to happen in a democratic country?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/game-rigged-
congress-i...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/game-rigged-congress-
invites-no-consumer-privacy-advocates-its-consumer-privacy)

> In a surveillance economy where companies track, analyze and capitalize on
> our clicks, the issue at hand isn’t privacy. The problem is unfettered data
> exploitation and its potential deleterious consequences — among them,
> unequal consumer treatment, financial fraud, identity theft, manipulative
> marketing and discrimination.

This is why the EU generally refers to privacy as "data protection." I think
it would be good for the U.S. to adopt this mindset, too, because too often
major data breaches are so damaging _because_ the companies were careless with
how much data they stored on users and how they protected it. Storing personal
user data for moderate to long periods of time should almost always be seen as
a liability for companies.

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic.html)

~~~
salawat
The controversy around privacy revolves around whether or not business you
conduct with someone else should be considered YOURS.

Companies don't want to maintain data that they don't have the capacity to
unilaterally monetize, so they will fight tooth and nail to make sure the and
rhetoric revolves around their right to collect data rather than the
consumer's right to have the privacy of their transacted business maintained.

Privacy is a very heavy word in American political rhetoric, because something
becoming reasonably considered private suddenly obligated businesses to enact
rather expensive data management regimes, and opens the door to a voter's nest
of legal liability, and regulatory oversight. See HIPAA for a good example.
You have to provide consent for information sharing, and the organization is
responsible for maintaining an audit trail. There are also stiff penalties
attached for failure to keep the information secure and protected.

Needless to say, the advertising industry would likely implode overnight if
something of the sort were to be enacted.

Sites would have to eitherturn to alternative revenue generating models, or
attempt to hold their user's ransom for consent to share with whom they wish.

