Obama's Privacy Bill of Rights: Just a Beginning 222
jfruh writes "Last night the White House hastily arranged a phone conference at which a 'Privacy Bill of Rights' was announced. It's an important document, not least because it affirms the idea that our data belongs to us, not to companies that happen to collect it. But it has a number of shortcomings, not least among them the companies aren't required to respect the rules laid out."
aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Interesting)
Privacy Bill of Suggestions
In this country, that's progress. However, we are still woefully lacking compared to the EU, where privacy is taken very seriously and most industries are required to disclose any and all personal data held and delete it upon request. And I'm not talking the "We just hid it from our homepage" delete either, but a bona fide "We don't have it anymore, anywhere, and if we do we could be sued for a very large amount of money."
It's stuff like this that has firmly convinced me that while the US might have been the origination point of the internet, it is no longer a leader, or even in the race, when it comes to either innovation or culture. My country's only political agenda is its GDP. It will do so even if it means feeding its own citizens to the wolves in the process... Anything to make a buck.
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In this country, that's progress.
How is NOT moving forward considered progress again?
If they don't have to respect the suggested "rules", then it isn't doing ANYONE a favor. At all. Period.
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Which is why people want to mandate EVERY LAST DETAIL. How would you mandate people respect privacy? Would you throw people in jail for violations, even if accidental/innocent? If someone "poor" violated the mandate (law), would you fine them, jail them if they couldn't pay, ignore them?
The problem isn't with the goal (protect privacy), it is always with implementation, and how it never fixes the problem it intends to.
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Which is why people want to mandate EVERY LAST DETAIL. How would you mandate people respect privacy? Would you throw people in jail for violations, even if accidental/innocent? If someone "poor" violated the mandate (law), would you fine them, jail them if they couldn't pay, ignore them?
The problem isn't with the goal (protect privacy), it is always with implementation, and how it never fixes the problem it intends to.
I am pretty sure that the vast majority of "privacy violations" have nothing to do with individuals selling your personal information. It is typically with corporations, who CAN be fined for their actions. However, the fines mean nothing if they are meager amounts like $50,000 fines going to, say, Google for leaking your home address, phone number, date of birth and the size shoe you wear.
FTFA:
Re:aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
So tired of hearing how privacy is so highly upheld in the EU, while at the same time reading about government after government mandating the retention of every tweet, email, text, gps position of every single citizen. Give it a rest, will ya?
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Yea, progress towards another watered down piece of shit that does more harm than good.
You don't seriously think the government is going to do something in our interests that might inconvenience corporations even slightly or impede their ability to invade our privacy do you? There is no financial motive for doing so.
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"We don't have it anymore, anywhere, and if we do we could be put in jail for a very long time."
FTFY
Corporations would be willing to take the risk if it's only a financial penalty that they need to worry about.
Re:aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is president, not king. He can't force companies to do anything unless Congress first gives him the power to do so, and there's no chance in hell that the current Congress would give him the Heimlich if he were literally dying in front of them, let alone pass a bill at his suggestion.
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Nor does he want to force them to do anything. All he's doing is posturing for the election with another meaningless piece of shit legislation.
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Obama is president, not king.
While I'm not surprised saying people who say that he is/wants to be, I'm hugely bothered by all the liberals who are upset that he's not.
I fail to see what that has to do with what you quoted. The person above you did not voice an opinion, he stated a fact. Nowhere did he say what he wanted nor did he imply it.
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Nowhere did he say what he wanted nor did he imply it.
Nor did I think they were.
OP said, in essence, why doesn't Obama require all the companies to comply.
The GP said that Obama is a President, not a King, by way of explaining why he can't do that.
I replied agreeing and saying this is something a lot of people (and in particular liberals) seem to forget when complaining about why Obama hasn't done certain things -- kinda like the OP.
Not every reply has to be an attempt to tear down the post replied to. Sometimes you can build off of their salient points to ad
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So this is a Privacy Bill of Suggestions :)
This bill of rights will go the same way as the last "Bill of Rights", the way of the Constitution.
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Re:aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an important step, although the summary makes this out to be the presidents fault. The fault lies with congress. The president cannot unilaterally create a bill, and make it a law, which is why this doesn't have the force of law behind it. If you want to point the blame, then the answer lies with congress, not the president.
Re:aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
But he can unilaterally order the NSA to stop scanning phone calls and email and text messages and tweets.
Half the crap the private companies collect are at the behest of the government.
Everyone wants to blame Bush, but Bush's America was under attack. That was then. This is now. But Obama's America is still saddled with all the things Bush put in place and all the additions Obama put in place, and nothing has been scaled back.
Re:aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Interesting)
I shouldn't have to tell an american this, because I'm an australian and you are an american and you should know this. But show your damn constitution and founding principles some bloody respect.
Your own forefathers told your people that they should chose liberty over security. The attack you talk of, September 11, was sad, but could a single, albeit well executed, attack really justify the abandonment of centuries of american struggle?
George bush instituted the patriot act, invaded sovereign countries , drove away numerous liberty oriented allies including the very people, the french, who gifted you with the statue of liberty to symbolise your struggle, and put in place a chain of events that lead to catastrophic decline in the international respect America once yielded, because of a paranoic belief that the world was out to get you, and finally ruined a once vibrant economy by placing the interests of a wealthy elite over the interests of the citizenry and its liberties.
Barack Obama has been a deep disapointment, but by arguing that by deifying the most destructive president the united states has endured in living history you invalidate the very measures that one should judge a president.
Do not forgive Mr Obama, but god damn it, Don't forgive george bush. America is better than that. And if me, a man who has never visited your country can believe that, for fuck sake so can you.
Re:aren't required to respect the rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a distinct difference between setting executive policy, and creating law. Educate yourself.
Right, there certainly is. The difference is, Obama can set executive policy, you know - the rubber meets the road stuff, without having any one else's say-so. He also has the bully pulpit and the almighty veto. He hasn't done anything that would safeguard our civil rights. In fact, he's worse on civil rights than his predecessor was. Dubya never assassinated an American citizen. Dubya never signed a bill that allowed for indefinite detention of American citizens by the military without any sort of due process. He probably would have, but the Democrats would have screamed bloody murder. My ears ache from the silence now.
Compare Candidate Obama c.2007 to President Obama c.2012, it's like some crazy brain-switch has occurred.The one who would end the wars, open up the government, and finally bring truth to the American people has been exposed as nothing but another cheap peddler of lies and also lies. So what are we to do? Vote for the opposing party's liar? As if Romney or Santorum would do any different? Meet the new boss, et cetera. If Ron Paul won, well, that would be something, but quite honestly we all know that that particular outcome wouldn't be allowed since it would end the whole military-industrial complex stranglehold on the executive and legislative branches.
So in summation, dear Anonymous Coward, let me encourage you to educate yourself on what really happens in Washington, and how little changes from administration to administration, and from Congressional session to Congressional session. The same vested interests buy off the small men and sociopaths that are put up for us to select, and we are told that if we don't vote for them we're wasting our vote. And we believe them, mostly because we're too self-involved with making sure we've a roof over our heads and food to eat. Oh and all the shiny things on TV, American Idol or whatever.
We have the government we deserve, until the point when we as a nation decide that we don't. It's a shit sandwich I wish more people could taste.
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If Ron Paul won, well, that would be something, but quite honestly we all know that that particular outcome wouldn't be allowed since it would end the whole military-industrial complex stranglehold on the executive and legislative branches.
"Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?" -- Patrick Henry
I'll be voting for him no matter how many people stand idle at home complaining to their monitors.
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I'd really like to understand why people think that Ron Paul would be any different than any other right wing republican out there.
And don't tell me about shrinking government. Both parties try and shrink government all the time, so long as it's the other party's government that's being shrunk.
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The fault lies with congress.
This is why it is so absurd that the only election that matters to the vast majority is the Presidency. He can't wipe his butt unless Congress writes a law allowing it.
Wake up, folks. Pay attention to whom you are electing to represent you in Congress. They are the only ones who can actually enact "change" of any kind.
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The president is the president and responsibility ultimately rests with him.
If he hasn't gotten congress to do what he needs them to do then he needs to figure out ways to do so.
I voted for him and I'll vote for him again because the alternatives seem worse to me, but I don't like his apparent (and this is not a real quote) "Talk softly and carry a small stick" approach to things.
Obama signed the anti-constitution 2012 NDAA (Score:2)
It does seem like Obama may not be the right guy to protect our rights.
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Just because he is the lesser of two evils does not absolve him of being incompetent in some respects.
I haven't been that impressed ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... with how his Administration (or the previous one, before you partisan bedwetters get all bunched up) has treated the *actual* Bill of Rights. So I don't have much hope for its respecting the goals of this one.
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Don't be silly! Of course they'll be interested in supporting the goals of this legislation!
Look, it's already generating positive sound bytes for his campaign, and is non committal enough he'll surely still get oodles of corporate contributions!
It's a start (Score:2)
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Let me know when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. President,
Please let me know when you plan on respecting our privacy rights w/r/t warrant-less wiretaps and data-mining of personal information of American citizens by the NSA, FBI, and etc.
Otherwise your so-called "Privacy Bill of Rights" is just a shallow gimmick designed to score brownie points from the less informed and less attentive among us in the electorate.
Re:Let me know when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise your so-called "Privacy Bill of Rights" is just a shallow gimmick designed to score brownie points from the less informed and less attentive among us in the electorate.
Unfortunately, the "less informed and less attentive" far, far outnumber the rest of us.
We have two options. First is advocacy (make the people more informed and, hopefully, more attentive). This has worked pretty well in stopping at least some of the bullshit.
Secondly is getting people who are all about the whole "fair play" kinda thing - you know, respecting the Constitution and civil rights, acting for the benefit of the people instead of the benefit of corporations, etc. - actually elected into offices. That is much more difficult and I really wish someone with a fanbase would step up and leverage that social power towards getting elected and making a particular change in our government.
The people who are most able to affect such a change are the "leaders" - mayor, governer, president, etc. It is said that without compromise, nothing will ever get passed. Even the most honest politician will be stopped by an uncooperative legislature because he didn't sign off on their latest bad bill in order to get his good bill pushed through. The solution to this (that is rarely, if ever, resorted to) is twofold: first, directly tell the public that the city/state/national legislature is being a bunch of asshats and trying to stop this good thing from happening, and secondly to veto everything you don't like. (A lot of the votes in any given legislature are close enough that they are unlikely to pass a veto override).
We (as in those who use the Internet for more than lolcats and WoW) have a lot of power that we just need to get together and use to effect real change. Look at how we managed to stop SOPA and PIPA. Had the Patriot Act been proposed ten years later (instead of in the early 2000s when broadband penetration was still comparatively low), it would never have passed thanks to our efforts. We use it too often in a reactionary fashion instead of a pro-active fashion.
Please, someone who has the gusto to be honest step up and make a run for office. Any office. Try to be the mayor of somewhere insignificant like West Bumblefuck, Ohio, or Newark, NJ. Get the tech savvy people behind you, and use your connection with them to pull the populace out of its apathy. I'd do it if I thought I had a chance in hell, but I'm pretty sure I don't.
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Wow, just reading over the intro on his Wikipedia page... he seems like a really good guy. I'll, of course, have to dig into his voting record and what he's said over the years (go go Internet!), but I finally might have someone worth voting for in the next election. Thank you!
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He's in campaign mode this year. That means he's less believable than ever. Watch for all of the "Ideas" he and his cabinet have been shooting down to re-emerge as his. Watch him try and reverse the tables on the massive energy melt down his group caused by shutting down our offshore drilling and like minded antics. This year should be epic on spin from the White House.
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Re:Let me know when... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, shutting down off shore drilling is insane. I mean, it's not like anything happened.
No, Obama and his administration did NOT shut down offshore drilling, not even in the area of the doomed Deep Horizon platform in the Gulf.
He simply turned it over to people he likes better than US oil companies.
The oil company Petrobras of Brazil that George Soros heavily invested in just prior to Obama's decision. Obama even announced that the US was going to start engaging in more oil business with Brazil like it was a great thing.
But, I'm sure that having Brazil's oil company do the drilling rather than US companies will turn out to be much safer and better for the environment
Safer for Obama, his corrupt cronies, and the Left's agenda, not the Gulf of Mexico's environment. Of course, the environmental groups all ignore his actions, which just proves that the majority of the environmental movement organizations are simply partisan political action groups.
Strat
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Dear Mr. President,
Howsa bout I vote for you again and then you introduce these proposals as actual Constitutional Amendments. You know--the kind that bind the executive branch.
Otherwise, your so-called "Privacy Bill of Rights" is not only a shallow gimmick, but also confuses the citizenry about what the real Bill of Rights used to be.
I'm more worried about YOU (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Barack, how about a Bill of Rights that protects me against *your* NSA, CIA, and FBI reading my goddamned emails, listening to my phone calls, and asking my doctor how long my dick is without at least a court order?
Re:I'm more worried about YOU (Score:5, Insightful)
...asking my doctor how long my dick is without at least a court order?
Most women would appreciate the government staying out of their vaginas as well. Unlike your joke about penis size, they have real intrusions to complain about on the privacy front.
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they have real intrusions to complain about on the privacy front
You've got me curious. Could you name some? Abortion isn't a privacy intrusion and that's all I can think of.
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Regardless of your view on abortion,
The Roe vs Wade ruling forming the basis of US abortion law today determined that abortion is a privacy issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade [wikipedia.org]
"the Court ruled that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion"
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Abortion isn't a privacy intrusion
According to Roe v Wade, it all came down to a "right to privacy".
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they have real intrusions to complain about on the privacy front
You've got me curious. Could you name some? Abortion isn't a privacy intrusion and that's all I can think of.
Birth control.
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Need more teeth (Score:5, Interesting)
It needs to apply to government as well as the private sector.
Another problem. (Score:2, Insightful)
Another problem is that it makes no sense to say that data doesn't "belong" to people who collect it. It clearly does, and there isn't really anything the government can do about it. If you wan't to keep something secret, keep it secret! It that so hard to understand?
You can't just "keep it secret" (Score:5, Interesting)
The era of massive data mining is beginning. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ [forbes.com] And that's just your groceries, not your online behavior, which likely contains a lot more hidden clues.
When companies can decide to track and analyze your behavior in any way they want to, reasonably accurately predict things such as pregnancies, marriages, divorces, etc., and use it to their advantage, intentionally disguising all this from you... it's borderline absurd to say "people should just keep their secrets secret".
It's true that it's arguable whether this sort of behavior should be regulated (It's not "evil" that they just look what you've bought and try to predict your interests based on that) and if we decide to regulate it, we'll face a lot of problems... But it's quite odd to say that there shouldn't be a lot of public discourse around this subject (It's relevant to a lot of people and we already have some laws about ethical advertising and for a good reason) and just silly to say that people should take personal responsibility about how data miners figure out things they've never told anyone.
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Probably a far better question is when your purchases at a grocery store are scanned who owns the scan data? Right now the grocery store sells it to a marketing company which analyzes is and sells the aggregated data back to manufacturers and the like.
So if you are in the business of selling toothbrushes wouldn't you like to know if your brand is being beat out by some upstart in Whole Foods stores but not in the low-cost no-frils stores? Would that not tell you something important? Literally, this is th
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Making it unhappen puts all the same companies on the same level playing field. think about it.
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Good luck with that. This is why harsh privacy laws already exist in some countries, germany and canada for example. They can try to mine whatever the hell they want, but the second that they violate the laws of the country and they operate here they're screwed.
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Try to be more naive.... i bet you cant.
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What does that even mean? If I give it to you, you have it. That's the end of the story.
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Actually, a credit card number, along with most identifying numbers associated with everything from Social Security to your bank account, belong to the issuing institution, just like (if you read it closely) your driver's license and your SS card. You don't own it. You can't change the data in question. Which, I think, goes to your original, and very valid, point.
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How can a number belong to anyone?
The right to use a particular number for a particular purpose can belong to someone, but it is absurd to suggest that a number belongs to someone.
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Well, yeah, the number as a mathematical entity doesn't belong to anyone as such, but the number in its capacity as an identifier "belongs" to the agency or company. It's a number, yeah, but it's also the label that they use to associate a person with an account, and, in that sense, belongs to the company/agency/whatever. I'm not talking epistemology, here. The proof is that a credit card company can assign you a new credit card number at will; you can't just call Visa up and tell them that you've decided y
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Yes. If you have my credit card number, and obtained it by legal means (i.e. didn't steal my wallet), then the knowledge of it belongs to you. You can print it out and put it your refrigerator, and I don't care.
What you can't do is buy things with it. That's fraud. You also can't go post it on /b/, since any reasonable person would expect that doing so would lead to fraud, and would make you an accessory.
Obama is looking for distractions (Score:3)
Obama is looking for issues that will take the public's attention away from Gas prices.
I would suggest the US use the EU standards, but lately the EU bends over anytime the US says boo.
Companies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep your eyes on both hands, boys and girls.
Leave Obama alone!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I can't understand you people! President Obama is doing everything he can to help the people of the world and you whiners complain about your precious privacy! I hope he turns the NSA, CIA and FBI loose on you people and hunts everyone of you down and sends you to Gitmo. See how you like your precious privacy then!!!
Obama 2012!!!!
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We DON'T need yet ANOTHER "Bill of Rights"! (Score:5, Insightful)
First, every website had to have its own "Privacy Policy."
Now, we need a federally-mandated one?
Anyway--a quick search reveals numerous existing "Bill of Rights," for example:
Voter's Bill of Rights
Patient's Bill of Rights
Donor Bill of Rights
Academic Bill of Rights
Landowners Bill of Rights
Taxicab Rider Bill of Rights (NYC; Ha! Figures!)
The eBook User's Bill of Rights
Visual Effects Industry Bill of Rights
Merchant Bill of Rights
Campus Sexual Assault Victims' Bill of Rights
* Stop calling anything but our original Bill of Rights a "Bill of Rights" -- to do so is to diminish its significance and uniqueness
* With so many "Bills of Rights," collectively they mean little--just like so many "Privacy Policies"
Bills of rights stop the government. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the whole point of rights. All the rights in the bill of rights are negative rights. They don't tell people they can do stuff they say the government can't stop them doing it.
So for example, the freedom of speech doesn't say I can stand on a soap box and sing show tunes backwards. It says the government can't stop me from doing that.
It doesn't stay you can have a religion or beliefs. It says the government can't stop you from having them.
So on and so forth. They're more about restraining the government.
So... Is that what Obama has done here? Has he said the government can't do certain things? Because I rather doubt it. And if he hasn't then he's not offering anyone rights so much as putting additional regulations on ISPs. That isn't a right. If he wants to give me a right then he can agree the government will leave the internet alone.
Corporations = new government. (Score:2)
Corporations and cartel are what the government used to be...so coorporation cannot do certain things to individuals...and that is the bill of right !
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Really? How many millions of people have corporations killed in the last 100 years? Because governments have probably killed at least a billion people over the last 100 years.
There is no comparison. Saying corporations are the new government is ignorant.
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If this is your standard about protecting individual rights...
Who has more control an individual rights your senator or Goldman Sachs ?
If killing people is your standard about lack of protecting individual rights... ...then i'll say count the toll of tobacco companies, oil in 3rd world countries, including your mac manufacturers in china etc etc... it is definitely more than all the wars in the last 30 years combined. BTW a billion is a lot...on an aside i'll let you decide what is more ignorant ...pleas
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Not a fair comparison.
No senator can do anything to your rights alone. However, the senate itself with the cooperation with the house can.
So a better comparison would be "who can control your individual rights more All the Big Corporations or The total might of the United States Government?
Here's a way to guess... who would win in a war between the major corporations and the US government?
The corps can't fight. The national guard could walk around through wallstreet and execute them all going door to door a
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"Rights" are a rhetorical device. I can more easily convince you that my policy should be followed if I appeal to some mystical authority by talking about rights. I don't mind this conceit as a rule. My point is it's a bit silly to define rights as restrictions on the government's power when the term has no real meaning. Obama('s underlings) seem to be using it precisely as rhetoric here.
Strictly speaking, your assertion
All the rights in the bill of rights are negative rights. They don't tell people they can do stuff they say the government can't stop them doing it.
isn't true. For instance,
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial...
This gives a right to accused persons. It does not say the gove
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As to the rights of the accused, it limits how much time the government has to present its case.
Effectively it says " the government must be ready to try a case shortly after arrest"...
Thus it remains a restriction on government action. You can't arrest someone and then not try them for years. The government must be ready to go to trial within a specified time or the accused must be released.
Try to explain Obama's position in the terms I used. You'll find that it's hard for you to call anything a right that
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Your definition of rights as things telling the government what it can't do to the people is interesting, though not standard. The first definition I found, "That which is morally correct, just, or honorable," is decidedly different. This would seem to be the definition used in "The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights". That the actual Bill of Rights can be interpreted as limiting government power is immaterial. Rights in general, operationally at least, limit the power of some group or people, not necessarily
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Maybe this will help you.
Do you know what a white list and a black list is?
Okay... The constitution contains portions that are both white list and black list.
The white list is filled with all the powers the government is supposed to have. Things like national defense, ability to negotiate diplomacy, collect taxes, etc.
The bill of rights is all blacklist. Its not talking to the people and saying "you have these rights" it's talking to the government and saying "you can't do these things".
Read the bill of rig
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I don't understand why you're disagreeing then... If you understood then why don't you agree?
Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court... (Score:3)
Words are easy. Actions are harder. Here's an ABC reporter taking Obama's press secretary to task for using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court again and again.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/wake-reporter-deaths-syria-white-house-grilled-aggressive-154806577.html [yahoo.com]
Real privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
First, how about giving email the same level of privacy as postal email?
The problem with these rules are that bad actors don't have to follow them. We need things like actual end-to-end encryption so companies and malicious individuals can't snoop. (see Code is Law, Lawrence Lessig).
Data ownership (Score:5, Insightful)
... our data belongs to us, not to companies that happen to collect it.
I know I'm in the minority on this, but I disagree with the underlying assumption that data belongs to you by virtue of being about you. Take it down to the simplest level: Adam sees Bob crossing the street. "Bob crossed the street" is the data, an observation that belongs to Adam (the observer) not Bob (the observed), by virtue of now residing in Adam's brain, which belongs to him, not to Bob. Everything else is just communication, storage, analysis, and technological assistance. It comes back to this fundamental point once you remove the obfuscating details, and Bob doesn't acquire the right to perform a partial lobotomy on Adam just because he doesn't like what or how much Adam knows about him, or whom Adam might tell, or what decisions Adam might make based on what he knows.
This assumes, of course, that Adam didn't violate Bob's rights in order to make these observations -- he didn't trespass by breaking into Bob's house, for instance.
Re:Data ownership (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd vote that they MUST tell us what they keep, so we can decide if that price is fair for the service received.
I'd vote against mandatory restrictions on what they can keep. I am willing to pay some level of privacy intrusion, just like I am willing to pay some amount of my attention by accepting advertisements in TV and web pages, so that I can avoid paying actual currency for many services these 'free' vendors provide.
Re:Data ownership (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, but now assume we're not talking about some observation Alice (I like Alice as my A name better) made about Bob while Bob was out walking, but some personal information Bob specifically gave to Alice because Alice was doing something for Bob where she needed that information.
Nobody else needs that information. Bob has not agreed to let it be shared with anyone else. He gave it to her because it was necessary, not because he wanted to have everyone know it. You can say "tough shit" and then forced everyone to choose between having every fact of their life known or not getting anything done. I think a reasonable society can find a better middle ground.
Alice doesn't need to be lobotomized. She just needs to respect Bob's wishes that she not share the information with anyone else without his permission.
Why's that so much to ask?
Of course there's no substance to it. (Score:3)
If there was substance, it would be meaningful and might offend someone - either his corporate donor/masters, or his slavering popular worshipp...er, followers.
The previous president was no substance, and no image.
The current one has improved, he has "image" out the kazoo.
What a joke. (Score:4, Interesting)
Everything listed in the "Privacy Bill of Rights" is common-sense, caveat emptor-type stuff, or is easily handled by a standard contract. But by making it part of a "Privacy Bill of Rights" enforced by some government agency, it implies that these "rights" are bestowed by the government, which means that they can be repealed in the future, which would actually harm privacy.
Maybe Barry should start small. Say with the whole indefinite detention thing, or maybe just something simple, like taking it easy with the drone strikes on American citizens abroad.
Typo (Score:2)
White House PDF (Score:3)
Unintended Consequences (Score:3)
The problem is that this document never defines what it means by either "consumer" or "personal data" (although there are suggestions they're both far broader then we'd normally use the terms: "Still, data brokers and other companies that collect personal data without direct consumer interactions or a reasonably detectable presence in consumer-facing activities should seek innovative ways to provide consumers with effective Individual Control."). Given this will get the typically clueless implementation that Congress invariably comes up with on technology matters, this creates all kinds of possibilities for abuse.
Does The Church of Scientology have a right to control the content of its Wikipedia page? If a news organization does an undercover investigation of corruption at some company, do they have to approve the distribution of information that gets collected? Is talking about who's funding a particular interest group allowed?
Non-consensual mind reading (radio telepathy) (Score:2)
Will this include my junk (Score:2)
White house is the wrong place for this (Score:2)
I just cannot see the white house coming out with sensible policy for this.
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Killed some Somali pirates
Got Osama bin Laden
Established the groundwork for a privacy bill of rights
Took away your right to a lawyer.
Took away your right to a trial.
Forced you to buy health insurance against your will.
Anyone else want to add some?
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Took away your right to a lawyer.
Took away your right to a trial.
Nope, plenty of lawyers and trials everyday here in the US of A.
Forced you to buy health insurance against your will.
Everyone will need health care, some expensive enough to bankrupt any average working person. Insurance is a practical way to pool resources and avoid that. Without insurance, you end up in the emergency room sponging off of others.
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Last summer I was between jobs. I could stand to incur about $5000 in unreimbursed medical expenses before I would have serious trouble (read: before the marginal-utility-of-money curve went seriously nonlinear), so I bought a catastrophic coverage policy with a deductible of $5000. This is how insurance is supposed to work -- you figure out what risk you can't bear yourself and pay someone else to bear it for you.
Such plans are going to be illegal soon under Obamacare.
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Stfu and accept the fact that single.payer is cheaper per capita and works amazingly in every comparable country.
sick of hearing this stupid factless drivel. support good factually based ideas like single payer and you wont face abominations like obamacare.
Is Obamacare single payer? (Score:2)
I don't think it is.
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Took away your right to a lawyer.
Took away your right to a trial.
Nope, plenty of lawyers and trials everyday here in the US of A.
There are even more cars than lawyers, but we don't have a right to a car (in the same way that a right to a trial was enshrined). Sure, cars aren't illegal In the same way that lawyers aren't illegal, but if you're suspected of something terroristy enough, you'll get a hellfire missile from a drone whether you're an American citizen or not. No lawyer, no trial. And that is unprecedented in the US. Violent response is reserved for someone who is being a present danger, not a potential future or prior on
Look up the 2012 NDAA Obama signed (Score:2)
Yes Obama is denying Americans the right to a lawyer, and the right to a trial.
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The awful part of Obama's presidency is the continuation of Bush's national security policy. Warrantless wiretapping, assassinating under age American citizens, keeping Guantanamo bay open, failing to prosecute anyone for torture. He stayed in Iraq until the last minute set by the Bush administration. All right, good he killed OBL. Now can we GTFO of Afghanistan? Can we stop war mongering with Iran?
Let's not forget his economic policy. Employ the exact same people who caused the problem, and watch th
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The awful part of Obama's presidency is the continuation of Bush's national security policy. Warrantless wiretapping, assassinating under age American citizens, keeping Guantanamo bay open, failing to prosecute anyone for torture. He stayed in Iraq until the last minute set by the Bush administration.
Obama also signed the 2012 NDAA. So Obama not only continued Bush's constitution shredding policies, Obama accelerated those policies.
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You have Stockholm Syndrome something bad.
He established no groundwork, he just put out a non binding little pithy statement.
Now, I would be singing a different tune if he had issued an executive order which legally mandated new privacy rules.
Bush killed more pirates than Obama did, and Bin Laden is not really what you think it was.
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