UK "No Tracking Law" Now In Effect 208
Fluffeh writes "The British Gov might have more cameras up on street corners than just about anywhere else in the world, but it seems that the Gov doesn't want anyone else stepping on the privacy of their folks. In what the media have dubbed the 'Cookie Law' all operators of websites in Britain must notify users of the tracking that the website does. This doesn't only cover cookies, but all forms of tracking and analytics performed on visitors. While there are potential fines up up to 500,000 pounds (Over US$750,000) for websites not following these new rules, the BBC announced that very few websites are ready, even most of its own sites aren't up to speed — and amusingly even the governments own websites aren't ready."
do as I say, not as I do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Been hearing this my whole life.
Re:do as I say, not as I do. (Score:4, Funny)
You have the voice of god in your head!
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In this case, it seems to be more a case of "Do as the European bureaucracy says, not as we do, but our guys won't really go after you if you're being reasonable about the spirit of the rules anyway, as long as you don't take the piss."
Re:do as I say, not as I do. (Score:4, Insightful)
Silly to post something like this when European obviously aren't around to debunk the crap in TFA.
It's not about the British Government not wanting others to snoop on their citizens; the no cookie law is a European mandate and all member nations are required to implement it within the next few years.
And yes, most sites are going to have some real trouble implementing this.
Re:do as I say, not as I do. (Score:4, Informative)
Cookies to do with security, checkout baskets etc. are largely exempt. The law is to control analytics cookies from advertisers, sites that remember users and so forth.
A bigger issue is this law is going to be hideously hard to enforce, there are plenty of edge cases to consider (such that the guidelines are 30 pages long) and at the end of the day it's not really doing much for the user. I think it would have been better to oblige EU sites under law to honour a "do not track" cookie sent by the browser with various levels of privacy control.
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This is key, making the distinction for what the *purpose* of the cookie is. I hope they got that right in the legislation. Tracking cookies are probably fine to regulate. But they need to make sure they're not interfering with the stateless nature of the protocol we have to work around by using cookies, for keeping people logged in, shopping carts, or knowing this person has consented in the first place.
Session cookies are fine (Score:2)
* It's reasonably clear (from most guidelines) that session cookies are fine, (because they are essential to functionality). Furthermore, implict consent is given by the act of logging in,
* Long term preference cookies "remember my name and my customisations" are also OK, though it's usually good practice to notfiy the user (the T&C is sufficient for this).
* Analytics cookies (eg Google Analytics) really should be covered by the directive, but basically aren't.
* Evil (cross site advertiser tracking cook
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It's not too hard to conform with the rules.
Sure, that's always how it starts. Then eventually they pile more and more and more and more fucking rules on everybody, until the whole goddamn thing collapses inward on itself from the weight of all the "know better than yous" and their "this is for your own good, I promise" "rules."
Fuck this bullshit. If I don't web sites tracking me, then I should not a) run insecure software which allows them to do so, or b) visit said web sites. More laws is NOT the answer.
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No wonder you are posting as AC, what a load of bollocks. The European Union are by no means toothless, and sure as hell aren't specifically targeting US companies. Last year, some billion euro class fines where handed out to local price cartels, the reason you don't hear about it is a. you got your head stuck firmly in your arse or b. only reading news spoon fed by your US propaganda machines. (Well, one could argue they are the same...)
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So nobody gets to observe you intrusively and in detail...except the one entity proven to be vastly the most harmful to human existence, as shown by actual historical evidence. Indeed, the vast bulk of history is this evidence itself.
Also as learned from history, nobody learns from history.
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So nobody gets to observe you intrusively and in detail...except the one entity proven to be vastly the most harmful to human existence, as shown by actual historical evidence. Indeed, the vast bulk of history is this evidence itself.
Also as learned from history, nobody learns from history.
You're insane. And when I say that, I mean you've got a fundamental disconnect from reality.
If this "entity" was so harmful to human existence, evolution would have destroyed it and it's adherents long ago.
If you want to effect real change, you need to make things that are necessary but onerous obsolete, and that starts with acknowledging that the intrinsic value of those patterns you hate is so significant that it's been overcoming the objections of the unsophisticated since before you hit the sce
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If this "entity" was so harmful to human existence, evolution would have destroyed it and it's adherents long ago.
No, he's got it basically right.
Fire is harmful to human existence as well, yet fire and it's users have flourished. Government is like fire. Simultaneously very useful & necessary, as well as dangerous & lethal in the extreme.
Both government and fire must be used only where and when necessary, and in only the quantities, size, and intensity necessary to accomplish the task, and there must always be strong safeguards against either spreading out of control, as left to their own, both will grow as ra
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No, you're a dumb ass who didn't learn from history. GP has it right
You maniacs! You blew it up! (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, the ICO has proven itself utterly inept when it comes to enforcing its own regulations - I can't see them doing any better with this idiocy.
Re:You maniacs! You blew it up! (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is killing ad-tracking "blowing it up"? Are you sure it is not you that is illiterate? Try reading up on the subject...
They did not ban cookies. They are banning tracking. Not the same thing.
Cookies are ok when necessary for the functionality of the website. Login cookies, webhops and so on are all ok.
Re:You maniacs! You blew it up! (Score:5, Informative)
They are not banning anything. They are requiring notifying user about tracking. Not the same thing.
If this means that every site just shows something like "We use cookies to give you best experience and provide relevant advertising. We also use few analytics scripts", people will simply start ignoring it just like they're clicking through EULAs now. After that, websites could even easily get people to consent to "... and also we'll watch you while you touch yourself. Here, we warned you" - most won't even notice.
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People need to actively accept that you are tracking them. Just showing such text somewhere is not enough. Few sites are going to want people to read terms and require people to click accept before giving access to the site. Also you need to provide a way for people to opt out again (required).
You need to be specific about each cookie and what you are going to use it for. If you ever add another cookie or change the use of the cookies, you need to ask permission again. Text such as "we use a few analytics s
Re:You maniacs! You blew it up! (Score:5, Interesting)
People need to actively accept that you are tracking them. Just showing such text somewhere is not enough.
Actually, the ICO seems to have pulled a complete U-turn with 48 hours to go, and now says that implied consent can be enough [ico.gov.uk].
Whether that will stand up to the seemingly inevitable legal challenge in the European courts remains to be seen, but I suspect even the ICO think this is a dumb law behind the scenes, and their language has been softening substantially in recent weeks relative to their early advice.
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They are confused. It is not possible to tell the user and at the same time not tell the user. It is very clear what you have to tell the user BEFORE setting any cookies, implied or not. So you need a landing page either way.
The problem with Google Analytics is that Google is not telling what they are going to use the data for. You can not tell the user what you do not know yourself. So it is impossible to use Google Analytics until Google change their ways.
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Exactly. Few sites are going to want to do that. They might try what the UK government does on the ICO site (check the bar at the top): http://ico.gov.uk/ [ico.gov.uk]. However few users is going to click yes in that bar.
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You're conflating two issues.
If a cookie is strictly necessary to do something the user has directly requested, all this new silliness was never going to apply anyway. That takes care of session cookies for logging in, shopping carts, and so on.
It's when you start getting into areas like analytics that are not strictly necessary from the user's point of view that you cross into a grey area, and that's where the whole opt-in/opt-out (or, if you prefer, explicit/implicit consent) issue arises.
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Actually a new interpretation of the rules from ICO last week changes this. Presumed consent is now OK-ish.
Re:You maniacs! You blew it up! (Score:4, Interesting)
ICO are clearly morons. They write this about their use of Google Analytics:
"These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited."
I am sure this is all correct. But what about _Google_?! What are THEY using the data for? This is also the responsibility of the site owner (ICO).
The fact that the government is breaking the law does not change the law.
The danish government is a bit more knowledgeable. The danish version of these rules are very clear and easy to understand and there is no implied consent bullshit. And I think the UK version does not have implied consent either in the actual law.
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You might notice that until you agree to the cookies, the ICO doesn't actually include the GA script in their pages. Goes to show they don't believe they have enough control over Google to ensure that the no cookie rule is followed.
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Not the politicians (Score:3)
Normally these people are kept in warm environments with soft lighting so they can't hurt themselve
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It has been commented, both by a retiring senior civil servant and an experienced Minister, that the Civil Service is full of people with dumb-as-a-very-dumb-thing ideas. The usual objection is that the proponents assume that everybody is exactly like them, and so once a law is passed people will just automatically obey it, and once an agency is set up it will instantly work perfectly.
Yeah, and in this case there's an even worse aspect to the problem: This is a law pertaining to the actions not of people, but of software. All the AI dreaming to the contrary, software doesn't act the least bit like a human mind. The chance of any software being written that satisfies this and other laws will differ only infinitesimally from zero. We have a lot of software people here on /., and they should all be a bit nervous about being held responsible for their software that tries to satisfy this
Re:You maniacs! You blew it up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Fascists don't want money, they want power. Money will just turn up as offerings from servants. The fascist dream is an abhorrent crime with a heavy punishment that everyone is guilty of.
Anytime you don't seem subservient enough they lock you up for this crime whilst ignoring everyone else who did nothing to get their attention.
1984 called it 'thought-crime'. The UK government recently re-branded it 'terrorism' and removed the requirement to have any evidence whatsoever. Maybe they want to expand their list of criminals to everyone with a website.
WIll be very fun to see Gizmodo.co.uk warn... (Score:4, Interesting)
because atm, ghostery reports 10 diffrent tracking entities.
Pretty much emotional stageplay (Score:3, Insightful)
At the same time as this happens across all of Europe, they roll out INDECT and the Data Retention Directive.
How about I follow each of the MEPs around and write down on a list everyone they speak to, when they speak and where, over the course of 6 months? That would probably mark me as a terrorist.
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That would probably mark me as a terrorist.
Didn't you see the news for the last few years? Under current UK laws everyone is a terrorist.
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That would probably mark me as a terrorist.
Didn't you see the news for the last few years? Under current UK laws everyone is a terrorist.
Yeah, and there's like this book called 1984 which I just read, and it's a sort of prophecy of what happens in the UK when you let socialists like George Osborne take control.
Its an EU directive (Score:5, Informative)
While the British government might have implemented, the law comes from the EU.
It actually came in last year and websites were given a year grace to enable the features required.
Its that grace period which has expired, not that the law has now suddenly been introduced.
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While the British government might have implemented, the law comes from the EU.
It will be interesting to know if there was much gold plating [wikipedia.org] though.
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I wouldn't expect so, avoiding gold plating (or claiming to) seems to be a particular hobby horse of the current bunch of clown in Westminster.
Anyway, enforcement is what matters, and given the utter contempt in which the toothless watchdogs at the ICO are held by the industry, I doubt they'll be falling over themselves to comply with this latest dictat.
It "might", but it doesn't. (Score:5, Informative)
The British Gov might have more cameras up on street corners than just about anywhere else in the world
It doesn't, though. The whole "eleventy billion cameras in the UK" thing was made up by one of the screaming right-wing tabloids a few years ago, by counting all the CCTV cameras in about a half-mile stretch of the main street of a fairly scummy part of London, and multiplying by the total length of all the roads in the UK. So, the figure is probably accurate *if* you assume that every single road in the UK has lots of off-licenses, bookmakers, cheque cashing centres, "we buy scrap gold" shops the like - but, it isn't. For the figures to be correct, you'd have to have something like one camera every 60 metres or so on *every single road* right down to farm tracks.
Most cities in the UK have no more CCTV than cities in the US - and if you think US cities don't have CCTV then I wonder what you think CCTV cameras look like...
Re:It "might", but it doesn't. (Score:4, Insightful)
The British Gov might have more cameras up on street corners than just about anywhere else in the world
It doesn't, though. The whole "eleventy billion cameras in the UK" thing was made up by one of the screaming right-wing tabloids a few years ago, by counting all the CCTV cameras in about a half-mile stretch of the main street of a fairly scummy part of London, and multiplying by the total length of all the roads in the UK. So, the figure is probably accurate *if* you assume that every single road in the UK has lots of off-licenses, bookmakers, cheque cashing centres, "we buy scrap gold" shops the like - but, it isn't. For the figures to be correct, you'd have to have something like one camera every 60 metres or so on *every single road* right down to farm tracks.
Most cities in the UK have no more CCTV than cities in the US - and if you think US cities don't have CCTV then I wonder what you think CCTV cameras look like...
Slash-groupthink at its best. This is a group that will argue for hours over each subclause of copyright law, but will never question statements like this. (That and figure out that the UK != England).
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lack of actual THINKING?? (Score:2)
most folks don't say "I think ...." simply because they are not in the practice of actually thinking.
if you saw a 2 foot high neon sign on a store stating "Everything Yogurt & Salad Cafe" would you think the place had icecream??
the number one question asked when i had that job: "Y'all have Icecream???"
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Central control (Score:2)
My council's CCTV system is most certainly under our control and not under any central control. The police do have appropriate access to it, but with council staff (who are more directly subject to democratic accountability than the police) as gatekeepers.
We could close the system down tomorrow if we wanted to, with no need to consult any "central control". It wouldn't do us any good at the next election, of course, as the punters like the cameras and keep asking for more.
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That's simply not true, and never has been. I live in New Zealand, which is a British territory, and we operate in a similar manner - there is local government, and central government. Local government can set bylaws, own stuff, provide services, whatever. They are not in any way shape or form accountable to central government, short of being bound by law - there is no central control whatsoever. In fact, our central government is currently in the middle of a scrap with our city councils (local authorit
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Oh, it's on Wikipedia so it must be true, eh? If there were as many cameras as that then you'd think I'd have actually seen some about.
Really the right-wing are the anti-privacy lot - the previous right-wing government brought in all the really nasty shit about monitoring phones and emails, and the current load of right-wing extremists are just making it worse. But that's what they're all about - high taxes and big government, with lots of expensive public-funded "jobs for the boys" projects.
Implied consent is now ok (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Implied consent is now ok (Score:5, Informative)
48 hours before the law came into force, the ICO issued new guidelines at http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/blog/2012/updated-ico-advice-guidance-e-privacy-directive-eu-cookie-law.aspx [ico.gov.uk] which basically reads as "If the user's browser accepts cookies, then they agree to the cookies being stored". Making the whole things pretty moot. Why they waited until the "11th hour" to state the obvious is annoying...
I can't find that in there. The nearest I can find seems to be "If the user's browser accepts cookies, and the user has a good understanding of what cookies are and how they are used then they agree to the cookies being stored", with the onus being on the site owner to prove that the users have that level of technical knowledge before setting cookies. That would probably be ok for a tech site, but not for a site aimed at the general public. The one site I manage doesn't use cookies, but if I wanted to implement analytics for example then I reckon I'll still need to implement a landing page.
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I think he means the following from the website link:
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Quite. There's nothing to see here any more. For implied consent you just need a suitably descriptive privacy policy page, which most sites already have. The 11th hour relaxing means everybody can pretty much carry on as usual
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Quite. There's nothing to see here any more. For implied consent you just need a suitably descriptive privacy policy page which the users pass through before any cookies are set, which most sites don't already have. The 11th hour guidance means things are as bad as was feared.
FTFY
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More quotes from the guidance:
"It has been suggested that the fact that a visitor has arrived at a webpage should be sufficient evidence that they consent to cookies being set or information being accessed on their device. The key here is that the visitor should understand that this is the case. It is important to note that it would be extremely difficult to demonstrate compliance simply by showing that a user visited a particular site or was served a particular advertisement unless it could also be d
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Most of the implementations I have seen so far just land the user on the page, but don't load the analytics javascript. The page has a "Accept cookies read more on our cookie description page" bar across the top and when the user clicks Accept it then loads the javascript. Others just have a bar that states "By continuing to use this website you are con
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Not actually that crazy (Score:5, Informative)
The regulations are not actually as crazy as this story makes them out to be. Here are the latest guidance notes from ICO:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/blog/2011/~/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_electronic/Practical_application/guidance_on_the_new_cookies_regulations.ashx [ico.gov.uk] (PDF)
Page 10 has a summary table with some examples of banned (ie. explicit permission required) and OK cookies:
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analytical cookies (eg. count unique users)
Because God forbid website owners aggregate information for optimization purposes. After all, let's all just pretend IE is everything everyone uses, all our users male, there's no purpose in trying to figure out anything precisely, optimizing for our best wild guesses and/or for whatever industry marketers says is fine, and only evil people engage in this newfangled silliness called "math".
Jokes aside, I predict UK will see a surge in AWStats usage, plus a resurgence of very long URLs (including old-style w
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I predict UK will see a surge in AWStats usage, plus a resurgence of very long URLs (including old-style web bugs with very long URLs).
This wouldn't get around the law. Non-cookie based tracking is also covered.
The media may call it the 'Cookie law', but the article title's "No tracking law" is more accurate.
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And God forbid you should actually read the EU directive and the UK law and think instead of jerking your knee.
'Banned' cookies means they are banned if you place them without prior consent.
Mart
Implementations suck too (Score:3)
I'm fairly sure that some of these sites realise that you could set a cookie, immediately try to read it back and if that fails assume cookies are blocked skipping the display of the prompt, and either way you remove the cookie. But no, this law is so poorly written it's not totally clear whether even this would be a breach of the legislation or not and clarification has still not been provided, so as usual for the EU the intention might be good, but the implementation leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. In this case, I can see a number of people are going to end up re-enabling cookies just to get rid of the prompts and end up getting tracked by all those sites who don't implement the law because they are outside the EU's jurisdiction and/or just don't care - completely the opposite of the desired effect.
Harm Europe economically? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen UK based sites start to implement this, but there's no chance that Facebook, Google etc will follow suit - so if the tracking actually does have monetary value, we've just guaranteed that only non-European companies can benefit from it. Woohoo.
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Facebook and Google will follow suit because they have significant business interests in Europe. They have to comply with local laws to do business here, it is as simple as that.
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Facebook and Google will follow suit because they have significant business interests in Europe. They have to comply with local laws to do business here, it is as simple as that.
I'm not sure, every article I've read seems to refer to websites based here rather than visible from here. I have yet to see anything that implies the law would be applied to sites hosted elsewhere or by companies based outside of the UK.
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I'm not sure, every article I've read seems to refer to websites based here rather than visible from here. I have yet to see anything that implies the law would be applied to sites hosted elsewhere or by companies based outside of the UK.
Don't forget 'The Cloud'. Last time I tried a traceroute to my web site it appeared to be in Germany... I've no idea where it might be running today.
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Google and Facebook do host services in Europe. Otherwise latency to the US would be terrible and their sites about as slow as crap like PayPal. Both Google and Facebook have offices in the UK with registered UK subsidiaries.
Look at Microsoft. Fined millions by the EU for breaking competition rules. They are a US company.
Retarded lawmakers. (Score:4, Funny)
Who the fuck came up with the idea of using cookies to warn you about the use of cookies?
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Eat Your Own Dogfood Law (Score:3)
learn how to setup your browser (Score:2)
you don't need some govt to tell ( companies | you ) what ( they | you ) can or can not do.
NO - you, the user, need to learn how to properly setup and use your browser.
Cookie-Whitelist in Mozilla Firefox [youtube.com] setting up a cookie whitelist in Firefox requires no add-ons. It uses default functionality present in Firefox.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Funny)
It's true, Europe is the worst country in the world.
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> Doesn't even matter if the shit happened in
> Hungarian and you live in Norway, you somehow
> want to take credit.
I think you mean "...and you live in Norwegian..."
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Eh? The UK is a member of the EU. That's that. Being in the EU is one thing - membership in the EU. Once that's achieved, the country is a "full" member of the EU. I seriously don't know what you're on about.
The UK is in Europe, however it doesn't use the Euro and people in the UK consider Europe to be 'them', not 'us'.
The UK government happily breaks EU laws on stuff like DNA retention and tobacco imports every day. People take the UK government to the European court and win nearly every time yet the UK carries on ignoring EU law.
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Where to start on this post. Let's kick off with DNA retention. Firstly it was the European Court of Human Rights that ruled on this - and that court is not an EU body, and has nothing to do with the EU. Secondly the UK Supreme Court has also ruled against the UK government on this one, and the government is **still*8 dragging its feet, so by your definitions, presumably the UK is not part of the UK since the UK government dissed a UK court.
Tobacco imports? As far as I can tell the UK is not breaching any e
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Membership in the EU or the EEC is not the same thing as membership in the Euro (i.e. the currency). The UK is very much part of the EU despite not using the Euro.
captcha: "informs"
Fancy that.
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You might like to Google the relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and the EU.
In the meantime, I'll give you a hint - the ECoHR is not an EU body.
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Our press and conservatives required that this happen. Our press is controlled by the same person that controls your Fox "news" and our conservatives are so right wing that they are the most right-wing mainstream party in Europe.
Both of these nasty groups are overjoyed at the financial problems in the Eurozone.
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Our press and conservatives required that this happen.
Well, them and a strong majority of the British public consistently wanting to stay out of the Euro [wikipedia.org]. But this is Slashdot, so let's not let facts get in the way of a good rant.
And of course, jokes about similarity aside, the Tories haven't actually been the ones running the show since Tony Blair's first New Labour administration took office in 1997. The Conservatives have been the more powerful party in the current coalition since 2010, but for some reason, in the past couple of years no-one from any major
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When you say media you ignored Sky and Sky News in particular is not limited to sky subscribers and is fta in various forms. With the digital switch over Murdoch has pretty much everybody in the UK's eyes covered.
Has everyone forgot that the sun on sundays website was registered prior to the closure of the news of the world? Murdoch knew he couldn't save the news of the world after the phone hacking scandal and so stopped the presses for a while.
The sun on sunday is as much the news of the world as Sellafi
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It's very generational in the US. The old still read the papers, the middle aged get news from the TV, the young increasingly the Internet. There's hope there - by its nature the Internet is hard to control, and while any given place is likely partial and shrill, they never sing the same song.
The uniformity of narrative (well, 2 narratives) in TV/radio/press in the US is scary sometimes. People feel smart because they believe in Narrative A, and get A reinforced constantly, and only morons listen to Narr
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
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I mean, with 9/11 you guys sure tried your very best to make every american feel that loss. Looking at the amount of taxpayers cash that went into it, afterwards.
And yet we still haven't rebuilt the damned towers. You'd think we could at least get a couple cool skyscrapers out of the damned trillion dollars we've pissed away on wars and homeland security.
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doesn't matter what it is, it's the perfect comeback to the "Europe is a country" line. hilarious.
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You're new here. I think what you were supposed to write was "whoosh!"
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Not necessarily true, at least in the UK interpretation of the directive. There are some very thin exemptions. That said, logins and stuff are easy - just add boilerplate that says 'By logging in you are blah blah, cookies, blah blah, first born child, blah'
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Yes login cookies are ok. So are cookies for implementing an online webshop and so on.
It is Google and their ad-tracking that is getting run over by this. Good riddance.
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It is Google and their ad-tracking that is getting run over by this.
FWIW, it seems Google Analytics is relatively sane on this count, in that the technology they use and their current use of the data are (reportedly) not as intrusive as some people assume.
On the other hand, if say Facebook wanted to track people as they surf the web by using cookies connected with content on third party sites, then Facebook and/or the sites that support them could actually be in trouble at this point, even with all the hedging of bets that is going on at the ICO. I suspect it's "Like" butto
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Actually, you *do* have to warn and the definition of "necessary" is quite tight. Login cookies are fine providing there has been a warning as the act of logging in then counts as informed consent.
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"At the same time people must realise that the livelihood of hundreds if not thousands of people depends on data gathered from sites."
No, I must not.
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If your livelihood is based on spying on me and tracking my browsing habits without my consent, you can starve in the streets for all I care.
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You're totally missing the point. This law effects everyone, not just those that are tracking you for profit. It's not even possible to run a web server that doesn't track you with some kind of analytics. It can't be done easily, and you just need to accept that. So you can talk about how much you want your privacy all you like. But at the end of the day, you, and your uneducated, dangerously inept government need to understand that we live in reality, and these things happen.
That said, if the Parliament re
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It's your choice to set cookies without my consent. All the law requires is that you get my consent, and guess what? Once you do, you can track me all you want; I consented to it, after all.
And you're talking bullshit. There is no technical reason that a website requires analytics.
So why don't you just take your privacy-raping business model and sod right the hell off?
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Have a look in /var/log sometime. Holy crap tracking data!
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Doesn't the UK listen to its intellectuals any more?
You must be new to this planet.
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Doesn't the UK listen to its intellectuals
We don't have intellectuals in the UK. We leave that sort of nonsense to the French
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No, that is an urban legend, and it reflects very poorly on you when you parrot it, as clearly you have spent no time investigating whether the claim is true or not before regurgitating it as fact.
At least he didn't mention Nineteen Eighty sodding Four.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)