From time to time, important news gets overshadowed by other headlines, even though it could have a profound impact on our (online) world. To most of us, few things are more bothersome than the dreaded cookie banners. On countless websites, you’re confronted with a pesky pop-up urging you to agree to something. You end up consenting without really knowing what it is. If you try to figure out what’s going on, you quickly get lost among the often hundreds of “partners” who want access to your personal data. Even if you do give your consent, it’s questionable whether you truly understand what you’re agreeing to.
Then maybe dont do anything illegal???
You have to activly track someone, it doesnt just “happen”.
“Oops, we are tracking children” is something that has happened many times in recent years, IIRC. Probally still intentional.
IIRC there were hospitals in the US that violated HIPAA by accident because they used the Meta Pixel to aggregate useful information on their website, but which was also sending more information than they knew to Meta. So, it does “just happen”.
Meta is doing it knowingly though so….
If these laws came into place, you would ofc create a grace periode, resulting in løser punishments.
It will give corps a window to really check wtf they are doing, and take it seriously.
Only an absolute brain dead moron would think using a Meta tracking pixel wasn’t going to exfiltrate information to Meta. Thats the level of negligence with important data that should be punished. If people are scared to collect data, then the correct goal has been achieved.
They didn’t think that using Meta pixel would send absolutely no information to Meta. They were on board with that. They just didn’t think it would send sensitive medical information to Meta.
While I do agree with you, sometimes you have to wonder, “Do these places have anyone in IT at all?”
IT experts do nothing except reduce profit margins. You wouldn’t want a lower profit margin, would you?
And a few fines to popular websites and news reports about it and people will start to learn what the law is and don’t implement meta haphazardly. “just happen” will quickly turn to “rarely happens” once it becomes enforced.
I know the human tendency is to think in extremes, but I would prefer to have a system that is as balanced as possible, or at least one that affords adecuate protections to all parties involved.
The issue I have with the “just don’t do anything illegal” argument is that depending on how the illegality is defined, it can be used as a tool for bad actors. Take for instance something like the afformentioned 50% penalty with mandatory jail time for repeat offenders, if I decided that jim’s furniture store shouldn’t exist anymore, I would only need to find some tiny thing wrong with their data handling, like for instance, assuming this specific hole exists, that they asked for contact info before it’s needed for purchase verification. Now they may lose on this minor infraction, and pretty much any small business will die a horrible death without half their revenue. Meanwhile the mega corps will likely find some workaround do to their high priced lawyers, but even assuming we make a rock solid definition, they still just cycle the ceo immediately, because no one will want to be an active ceo when they are one court case from jail.
Got your point, unluckyly every law can be abused if not based on hard evidences (and even in this case it is not bulletproof). And of course it is not automatic so a due process is obviously necessary where you need to prove that Jim is in the wrong.
But we already have similar laws here and they seems to work pretty well.
For the mega corps the real threat is the fine, the mandatory jail time for the CEO (or the board members or whoever is in real control) is only a way to have the people who need to control to make their work. A company, big as you want, is not some abstract entity where things where done by some abstract figure. In the end there is always someone who approve everything and the CEO (or the board) is the ultimately responsible.
Just imagine how much control the shareholdes would make on Zuckemberg if they know they are one lost court case from losing half their money.
And no, rotating the CEO is useless, criminal charges are personal so if you as CEO make something illegal and then quit, your charges do not trasfer to the new CEO.
Then he will check what the company do. He want the big buck, it is right it also has the accountabilty.