Strict 'Do Not Track' Law Proposed By US Senator (duo.com) 107
This week a Republican senator "unveiled a 'Do Not Track' bill with tough penalties for companies who break its protections," reports The Hill.
Trailrunner7 shares more information from the security news site Decipher: Senator Hawley's bill makes the Federal Trade Commission the enforcement authority for the system and any person who violates the measure would be liable for penalties of $50 per user affected by a violation for every day that the violation is ongoing. "Big tech companies collect incredible amounts of deeply personal, private data from people without giving them the option to meaningfully consent. They have gotten incredibly rich by employing creepy surveillance tactics on their users, but too often the extent of this data extraction is only known after a tech company irresponsibly handles the data and leaks it all over the internet," Hawley said.
"The American people didn't sign up for this, so I'm introducing this legislation to finally give them control over their personal information online.... [The bill] just says that a consumer can make a one time choice to not be tracked. I think we should make it compulsory and give it the force of law and give consumers real choice and force the companies to comply."
DuckDuckGo's founder had proposed similar legislation, and the Hill reports that he's since been approached by "a few other" U.S. lawmakers. They also remind readers that a 2010 push for Do Not Track legislation "never panned out amid enormous pressure from industry representatives, who could not come to an agreement over what 'tracking' means in the first place...
"Consumer advocates and tech industry critics say Hawley's bill could find better traction amid a larger backlash against tech behemoths including Google, Facebook and Amazon."
Trailrunner7 shares more information from the security news site Decipher: Senator Hawley's bill makes the Federal Trade Commission the enforcement authority for the system and any person who violates the measure would be liable for penalties of $50 per user affected by a violation for every day that the violation is ongoing. "Big tech companies collect incredible amounts of deeply personal, private data from people without giving them the option to meaningfully consent. They have gotten incredibly rich by employing creepy surveillance tactics on their users, but too often the extent of this data extraction is only known after a tech company irresponsibly handles the data and leaks it all over the internet," Hawley said.
"The American people didn't sign up for this, so I'm introducing this legislation to finally give them control over their personal information online.... [The bill] just says that a consumer can make a one time choice to not be tracked. I think we should make it compulsory and give it the force of law and give consumers real choice and force the companies to comply."
DuckDuckGo's founder had proposed similar legislation, and the Hill reports that he's since been approached by "a few other" U.S. lawmakers. They also remind readers that a 2010 push for Do Not Track legislation "never panned out amid enormous pressure from industry representatives, who could not come to an agreement over what 'tracking' means in the first place...
"Consumer advocates and tech industry critics say Hawley's bill could find better traction amid a larger backlash against tech behemoths including Google, Facebook and Amazon."
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If they legislate too far Google, FB, etc will simply refuse to give you an account if you choose to be untracked. And public websites will start blocking non-tracked people like they do with adblock users. Sure you can be totally untracked, but conversely no one has to give you free access to their stuff either. Pretty soon every site you visit will have a paywall for untracked users.
Re: Dumb (Score:1)
And that would be fine. Being blacklisted by Google and Facebook would be worth it. If 20% of us chose to be on that "list" it would break the model of Big Data. Make our day.
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Why do you need a law? Tell your fingers to stop typing google and facebook. Install an ad blocker.
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Note that the parent also says -- install an ad blocker.
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I don't need a law. My comment was just 'who cares' if Facebook and Google 'block' me because I won't submit to their data collection. The law would be fine by me because it isn't a 'threat' that they would block me.
Re: Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you need a law? Tell your fingers to stop typing google and facebook. Install an ad blocker.
We're long past the time when that would have worked. Nowadays, even if you're trying to live a clean, healthy, Google and Facebook free life, opt out of everything and not use any of their properties, you're still being tracked by both of the behemoths, and by who knows how many other smaller data suckers. This is happening both online and offline too - unless you want to live in some remote shack, pay only cash and have no phone or internet, you WILL be tracked.
For example: the page you're reading, on slashdot.org, is reporting about you to gstatic.com, google-analytics.com (both Google properties) even though your fingers haven't typed either of those addresses. Google also grabs the credit card transactions you make in brick and mortar stores - and there is no way to opt out of that, except by dropping credit cards - but without a credit history, good luck buying a car, or a house, or generally participating in society.
No, the only way left is harsh legislative action. This said, I have no hope this particular law will pass. It's not for nothing that Google is the biggest spender on lobbyists in America. Moreover, Google has experience in destroying and defanging laws or standards it doesn't like - see the DNT debacle they arranged a few years ago.
So, even if anything passes at all, Google, Facebook & comp. will make sure it has more holes than a Swiss cheese - but surely won't be as tasty.
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Why do you need a law? Tell your fingers to stop typing google and facebook. Install an ad blocker.
Yo have to do more than that.
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They won't deny you, you will get shunted to a paywall.
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The bill makes that illegal (Score:2, Insightful)
The bill makes it a violation to refuse service because someone chose do not track.
If this bill were passed, the web economy would have to be completely re-created from nothing; there is no adjustment web sites could make. That might be okay.
The problem I see is that the bill doesn't phase in over time. It takes away all the revenue that pays for the internet overnight, with no transition period. That would cause chaos.
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Everyone will put up a paywall and use the fees to pay for the needed changes. And, duh, once the paywall is there they kind of have to track you. You know, to make sure you have paid.
This type of law is fundamentally incompatible with a free to use web. Some how someone has to pay the bills to keep the servers running and for new content to be developed.
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They could be old-fashioned and just place ads on their page that don't track or intrude.
Wow, That would be innovative. Far beyond what anybody here could imagine.
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The disconnect is that you think "DO NOT TRACK!" == "No advertisements!"
That is incorrect. You can have advertisements without tracking. See for example, billboards.
The problem is that the advert industry demands the most bang for their buck. That means tracking.
This move will hurt advertisers, not web companies. Web companies can still be advert funded, it just means that the adverts have to be dumb adverts without unique impression tracking.
Re: The bill makes that illegal (Score:2)
"That would cause chaos."
Compared to an authoritarian anti-democratic dystopia, chaos may be preferable.
Should the US Army have slowly phased out Hitler's policies? Should Khrushchev have slowly phased out Stalin's policies?
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If they legislate too far Google, FB, etc will simply refuse to give you an account if you choose to be untracked.
Good! I don't have accounts on either of the two, but I'm still being tracked.
Google and the others should be legally obliged to only keep and use tracking information for people who have explicitly opted in (for example, by creating an account). If they can't link a particular piece of information to one of their accounts, they should drop it immediately, and not be allowed to use it for anything.
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And pretty soon nearly every site will be out of business. Only a few of the worthy sites will survive. Outside of those, no one will win this war.
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If they legislate too far Google, FB, etc will simply refuse to give you an account if you choose to be untracked. And public websites will start blocking non-tracked people like they do with adblock users. Sure you can be totally untracked, but conversely no one has to give you free access to their stuff either. Pretty soon every site you visit will have a paywall for untracked users.
Good.
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Sure you can be totally untracked
No, you can't. God damn I hate that I'm the only one who keeps bringing this up, I feel like I'm yelling into the wind here: in March of 2017 congress stripped away basically all limitations on what ISPs can do to track you. The excuse at the time was that it "wasn't fair" that other tech companies (i.e.: Google, Facebook, Amazon) didn't have the same limitations. Never mind that the method and means of data collection is different, and that the relationship with the customer is different, that was the excu
Re:There are 2 problems (Score:4, Interesting)
it should be way more than $50.
If they pay me $50 per day, they can track me all they want.
Heck, for $50 per day, they can put a camera in my bedroom.
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I'm pretty sure Porn Hub already offers that deal.
Just read the bill. It's harsh. Google would HATE (Score:2)
The bill sounds like it was written by the most strident anti-tracking advocate. There is no compromise in this bill, nothing that Facebook or Google would like.
As an extra bonus, the bill allows state attorney general's to sue on behalf of the citizens of their state. So for example if a site were used by about 10% of the population, and they violation the law, the Texas attorney general could sue for $2.8 billion.
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The bill sounds like it was written by the most strident anti-tracking advocate. There is no compromise in this bill, nothing that Facebook or Google would like.
So what's the problem exactly?
Two problems, actually (Score:2)
I was thinking "no problem with that". Turn it occurred to me there are two problems. One fairly solvable.
Targeted advertising is the primary funding for web sites. All the sites we use mostly get their revenue from running Google-powered ads. This bill doesn't phase in its provisions, but instead cuts the web economy off at the knees overnight. I was witness to a miniature version of this in 1990s. Something like 25% of the web sites in a given sector had their revenue cut off. That meant they couldn't
That was a long time ago, didn't switch overnight (Score:2)
I've been working in the internet industry for a long time, too. I was there long before targeted advertising. Slowly, over a period of fifteen years, the web transitioned from that to where we are now. It didn't happen overnight.
> Fuck Google and the rest of the trackers.
I'm not concerned with Google and Facebook. The problem is all of the other sites, sites like Slashdot, Hackaday whatever. The majority of sites are funded by ads handled by the targeted advertising companies. We aren't going to get ba
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Targeted advertising is used because it has the highest payout per impression.
This is because the advertisers themselves use the tracking data, and it is the most valuable to them for the purposes of convincing people that they need to buy things.
HOWEVER, once that option is off the table, it means the advertisers will have to re-evaluate their payout calculus. It does not mean that current levels of remuneration for non-tracking, or non-unique impressions will remain. To be competitive, the advertisers w
Not a big problem, except making payroll thismonth (Score:2)
Sites coud certainly go back to selling content-based ads. That's what I used to do with my web site. It took about a year to get the right advertisers - to sell the space to companies who highly valued the visitors to my site, because it was a match for their business.
Web companies need to make payroll THIS month. Their employees can't wait until next few to get paid. The hosting bill is due this month. If everybody in the web industry suddenly didn't get paid for a few months that would be catastrophic
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THAT IS NOT A PROBLEM.
It certainly is a problem if I start getting random ads for hemorrhoid cream and feminine hygiene products. You know, instead of my normal adds for hard drives and chainsaws.
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Look, you and I BOTH know that, statistically speaking, our demographic is both male and overweight, and thus in need of using brassiers. :P
Those manboobs are NOT going to support THEMSELVES you know!
LOLOLOL, J/K.
Also, sitting for extended periods of time has been shown to greatly increase the incidence rate of hemorrhoids. You act like adverts for the cream are not already targeted toward our demographic! :P
Now, Quips about man-ginas aside, "Tampon" is a surprisingly versatile word, and covers everything f
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Re: Fundamentally flawed logic... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, just because Israel is a genocidal imperialistic ethnostate, that doesn't mean they're nazis!
I'm curious how this will be enforced (Score:3)
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I can answer that (Score:2)
Jokes aside, it's not uncommon to have laws on the books and nobody to enforce them. In my state the "labor board" only exists on paper and the only actual remedy (besides the occasional national Union) is class action lawsuits. And those are going away thanks to the Supreme Court ruling that upheld a Congressional ban on them (e.
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Under the EU version, GDPR, they can't make agreeing to tracking a condition of receiving the service. Permission has to be given freely, meaning they can't offer anything in exchange.
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Citizens United ... (Score:2)
... created the Capitalistic Party and they are in power now.
This guy's party is irrelevant.
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Or to (mostly correctly) quote George Carlin: "There is a club and you're not in it."
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Doesn't matter if you fine telemarketers $10K a call. Those fines never get collected. The telemarketing company simply collapses and reforms the next day under a new name. Jail is a more effective deterrent.
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>"Doesn't matter if you fine telemarketers $10K a call. Those fines never get collected"
That's because it is all civil and not criminal. There are hardly ever any fines now, anyway, because that comes AFTER a successful lawsuit. And those are so few as to be completely meaningless.
Re: You think the credit bureaus care? (Score:1)
The Credit Bureaus could be killed by one thing: if a sizeable number of us decided to publish our SSNs. The SSN was never intended to be a secret identifier. If use of it that way could be broken, the 'easy credit at the checkstand' business model would be broken and the credit system would be forced to radical change.
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>" In fact, all they were really meant for was to track your social security taxes paid in to calculate your benefits paid out. It just happened to be the one truly unique identifier for every person in the US."
It was supposed to be used for Social Security *only* and there are even laws, when it was created, that prevent any government agency from requiring you to supply your SSN or denying you service if you didn't (unless specifically required by law). When it was created, people were afraid it would
Royalties (Score:1)
Re: Royalties (Score:1)
Sure they are. I have not logged onto FB in probably a year. They give me nothing. I am fairly confident they have not stopped taking.
Re: As well intentioned as this is (Score:1)
That would be fine. Separate the tracking/harvesting function from the main bodies of these companies. Then it will be easier to excise like the tumor it is.
We Get Services Too (Score:2)
The problem with many of these laws is that they don't consider the fact that consumers get considerable benefit from the services which are funded on the basis of their tracked information. This bill is no different in that a single 'Do Not Track' list offers no granular way for consumers to opt-in...not to mention the irony of creating a database of privacy concerned individuals.
The idea that we should give consumers more control over when access to some online service or ad supported site is worth allo
Republican bad (Score:1)
Why is it that Republicans are always backwards thinking, conservative asshats that would sell everybody out to BigCo?
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illegals
Allegedly illegals. Note how they all are denied a fair trial to determine if they actually are illegals.
criminals
In the last 50 years the Republicans have supported 90 times as many criminals in the executive branch compared to the Democrats.
pedos
Again, something that Republicans keep electing. (+ the ones in the church they keep supporting.)
If you have the stomach for it you should watch through this clip [youtube.com]
It's an interview with that girl that got raped by Trump when she was 13.
hollywood
You got i mixed up. Actors tend to support
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Showing documentation to someone in EU does not require tracking. If this information is subject to someone being logged in, so long as you don't share user details (referred to as PII) outside the company, that's allowed.
As for an increase of 500% for shipping costs, the fuck it costs that now.
So many in US have no idea about GDPR and think it means "thou shalt have no information on anybody from EU, ever" which just isn't true.
Wrong Way Around (Score:2)
Instead of requiring people to "opt out" of being tracked (via the "do not track" option), the law needs to be changed to require users to actively "opt in" to being tracked, and the law must require web sites to presume that people do not want to be tracked unless explicitly told otherwise.