Facebook, Google spending big bucks to fight California data privacy measure

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article206394929.html

by pulisse • 8 years ago

132 34 8 years ago

sacbee.com

pmoriarty5• 8 years ago

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

craftyguy2• 8 years ago

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

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

pmoriarty5• 8 years ago

You certainly do.

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

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

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

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

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

confounded3• 8 years ago

You can also devote the waking hours of the best years of your life to something else!

godzillabrennus• 8 years ago

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

sqdbps5• 8 years ago

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

barryparr• 8 years ago

First, federal action on this issue is not happening in the near future, when this issue needs to be addressed. To say it's a federal issue is to say that it shouldn't be addressed.

Second, huh? That's an argument for total deregulation at the state level and abdication of the state's responsibility to protect its citizens.

sqdbps5• 8 years ago

Protect them from what? this is a partisan knee jerk reaction to goings on in DC. More importantly these actions are potentially detrimental to local companies the interests of which are intertwined with the state's.

mmanfrin• 8 years ago

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

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

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

sqdbps5• 8 years ago

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

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

Whatever happened to 'our business is business'?

privacy_678• 8 years ago

They were debated and enacted by the FCC on the federal level. One of the first thing Trump's FCC did was to repeal them:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/28...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/04/04...

The California legislature then tried to reinstate them for California,

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

but the bill was committeed to death:

http://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-califo...

The hitman was Kevin de Leon, a name you may recognize as he's now running for Dianne Feinstein's senate seat.

In any case, having failed to get a vote in the California legislature, its backers are taking it directly to the people.

I'd be happy to have these privacy rules on the federal level, but I'm glad that California is leading the way.

IBM• 8 years ago

Google and Facebook have been lobbying against state privacy legislation for a while now [1][2]. The latest Facebook privacy scandal will give those bills momentum.

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

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

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

[2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-geolocation-pr...

[3] https://www.axios.com/blackburn-bill-would-extend-privacy-ru...

staunch• 8 years ago

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

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

confounded3• 8 years ago

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

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

narrator• 8 years ago

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

1. https://www.morriscreative.com/6-corporations-control-90-of-...

2. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/consumer-brands-ow...

jakeogh• 8 years ago

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

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

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

juststeve• 8 years ago

this is insane

Facebook, Google spending big bucks to fight California data privacy measure

Related Stories