
Facebook, Google spending big bucks to fight California data privacy measure - pulisse
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article206394929.html
======
IBM
Google and Facebook have been lobbying against state privacy legislation for a
while now [1][2]. The latest Facebook privacy scandal will give those bills
momentum.

Also Marsha Blackburn's privacy bill would have applied to telcos as well as
internet companies. You can guess that it went nowhere [3].

The best thing that could happen is for Congress to pass an omnibus privacy
bill modeled closely after GDPR.

[1] [http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/facebook-google-facial-
recogni...](http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/facebook-google-facial-recognition-
lawsuits/)

[2] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-geolocation-
pr...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-geolocation-privacy-
rauner-veto-20170922-story.html)

[3] [https://www.axios.com/blackburn-bill-would-extend-privacy-
ru...](https://www.axios.com/blackburn-bill-would-extend-privacy-rules-to-
google-facebook-1513302428-9acf6f55-5af0-4e78-9174-f769b9fb9d0b.html)

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pmoriarty
Google and Facebook employees: you have the power to influence what the
companies you work for do.

~~~
craftyguy
pmoriarty: no you don't, not unless you are on the board or are a corporate
officer.

Having worked in a large tech company for quite a while now, grunts have very
little (at best) influence on the decisions that upper management makes
regarding where they sling their lawyers. In this time when you can be laid
off for being "too old" or for other arbitrary reasons, you'll be
removed/replaced for causing a stir.

~~~
pmoriarty
You certainly do.

First, you could just resign and choose not to participate in ongoing
violations of privacy. By not giving them your help, you are already making a
small difference.

Second, you could threaten to resign because of this. Better, you could get
together with others of like mind and threaten to resign en-masse. If enough
people do this, upper management will take notice. It's just a matter of how
many Google and Facebook employees have the will to do it.

Third, when privacy issues come up, employees could try to influence their
companies to err on the side of privacy. In companies this size there are
always many situations which aren't guided by explicit policy or direction
from on high, and where employees can use their own judgment or advocate for
one course of action over the other. This is where people who care about
privacy can make their voices heard.

Finally, Google and Facebook employees are smart, creative people. They are
more than capable of figuring out other ways they can make a difference -- if
these issues are important to them. The main question is: are they?

With all the media attention around Facebook and Google privacy violations
it's becoming harder and harder for their employees to stand on the sidelines
and claim ignorance or pretend there's nothing they can do. By not doing
anything they are choosing to continue enabling these companies. They could
act instead.

~~~
trgv
Each employee should act according to their conscience, not according to your
conscience.

Your perspective reminds me of a Chris Rock joke: "How come it's only
unemployed people who tell you to quit something?" The point being: it's
really easy to tell someone to quit their excellent, fulfilling job over some
moral outrage that you perceive.

Finally, while I understand this is an unpopular opinion around here, I
believe the tech community's focus on privacy is overwrought. We should expect
to be tracked on the internet. If you're doing something that you don't want
to be tracked, there are numerous tools to avoid tracking. Making those tools
cheap and accessible seems like a worthy cause to me. Fighting for overly
broad legislation like this seems like a waste of time.

~~~
mercer
I do think you make a good point.

That said, there are also plenty of people that _do_ choose what they perceive
to be the 'high road' despite the consequences, and based on my personal
experiences these people are not rare, but not plentiful either.

Most of us try to find a kind of 'middle road', and the conviction of those
that _do_ choose these high roads can be extremely valuable, as I personally
believe the default is that it's easy to go for the 'low road'.

All that said, I do find people who tell others to take the high road without
doing so themselves, or from a completely different situation, to be tiresome.

As for your unpopular opinion: part of me thinks that the cat's out of the bag
and we'll have to find a way to deal with a world where privacy is basically
non-existent. I could see a way forward in such a world provided that privacy
does not become yet another thing that only those in positions of privilege or
power can afford. It could be interesting, maybe even positive, if lack of
privacy becomes a fact of life across the board.

That said, I think it's too early to conclude it's all a lost cause, but I
quite likely might be naive about all this. Mostly I count myself lucky that I
can think about these matters with no obvious or direct 'skin in the game'.
For now, at least.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I do find people who tell others to take the high road without doing so
themselves, or from a completely different situation, to be tiresome."_

You don't have to take the high road. But then don't try to pretend you're not
part of the problem.

~~~
mercer
Yes...?

------
godzillabrennus
These big tech giants have learned from Microsoft's failures in the 90's of
beating back government. They all have a well funded government relations
program going on with lobbyists in every important region.

------
staunch
We just need better technology. We need to stop giving our information away
and then hoping it is somehow protected. We need technology to empower us
without sacrificing our privacy and freedom.

Decentralization and encryption are probably two big parts of the answer. Laws
may help or hurt but they won't solve the problem.

~~~
confounded
There's a high chance that without political activity from people who care,
efforts to further decentralization and encryption will be suppressed and
thwarted.

In other words, the right legal environment is likely a necessary-but-not-
sufficient criteria for decentralization and encryption to flourish.

------
narrator
Think of all these online brands that have built huge businesses off of
Facebook and Google profiling. The Dollar Shave Clubs and Tough Mudders of the
world and hundreds of others who all have built incredible companies off of
micro ad targeting. Are we going to go back to the world of a few big mega
brands who can do untargeted saturation marketing? That's the world you're
going to get with all this privacy lunacy. We've got 6 media companies that
own 90% of the market[1] we can easily get 10 consumer goods companies that
own everything[2] the way things are going. All in the name of privacy!

1\. [https://www.morriscreative.com/6-corporations-
control-90-of-...](https://www.morriscreative.com/6-corporations-
control-90-of-the-media-in-america/)

2\. [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/consumer-brands-
ow...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/consumer-brands-owned-ten-
companies-graphic_n_1458812.html)

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jakeogh
CA does not need more laws and "regulation". It's got plenty. I had two _very_
nice police officers (near the AZ border) explain it to me last time I got
pulled over there:

    
    
      Officer: See this? (pointing to a banned inanimate object)
      Me: yes.
      Officer: That's fun. You cant have it in CA.
      Me: oh. Sorry. (not sure yet what is going to happen, it could have gotten very expensive)
      Officer: See that? (pointing to another banned inanimate object), that's fun too. Can you have it in CA?
      Me: I dont know?
      Officer2: It's fun right?
      Me: yes...
      Officer2: Then you cant have it in CA.
    

It went on like that for awhile. Surreal experience. My point is that free
speech is next (incrementally of course, starting with records restrictions
similar to GDPR). They already passed a (totally unconstitutional) law
punishing some people if they use the wrong pronoun.

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juststeve
this is insane

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sqdbps
Patchwork state privacy and net neutrality regulations are cumbersome and
ridiculous. Any such requirements should be debated and enacted on the federal
level.

~~~
mmanfrin

      Second California lawmakers shouldn't introduce laws that are detrimental to their state's companies.
    

California lawmakers should introduce laws that are beneficial to the privacy
of their state's citizens.

e: You just edited your post to delete your second comment, I'm leaving my
response.

~~~
sqdbps
The state's interests are in the companies interests and vice versa, they
share in prosperity.

At a time when outsiders are going after them at least their home state should
be relied upon not to follow suite.

Whatever happened to 'our business is business'?

~~~
confounded
I'm afraid that you may have misunderstood the basic principles of democracy.

~~~
sqdbps
It's not a direct democracy is it? these representatives are not blindly
beholden to the whims of every Tom, Dick and Harry, they are also entrusted
with the wellbeing of their constituency which ultimately means supporting
existing and emerging local enterprises.

~~~
rhizome
Companies can't vote, they aren't constituents. That's why they lobby.

~~~
sqdbps
Campanies are made of people and their economic impact goes far beyond those
they directly employ.

