Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/privacy-congress-facebook-google.html

by pseudolus • 7 years ago

64 60 7 years ago

nytimes.com

piyushpr134• 7 years ago

Is it because large American cos are lobbying against such rules ?

beenBoutIT2• 7 years ago

It's because America invented tech.

braythwayt2• 7 years ago

No, that is not it.

If that was the explanation, then we would say that America is behind the rest of the world on weights and measures because America invented engineering.

And we would say that America is behind the rest of the world on Health Care because America invented hospitals.

And we would say that America is behind the rest of the world on justice and incarceration because America invented prisons.

A much simpler explanation is that all these things share the same social and political forces, and America is different from the rest of these world on all these things for similar reasons, and those reasons--whatever we may think they are--are not related to whether America "invented tech" or not.

mmsimanga• 7 years ago

Wild guess because most of the technology we use is from America (Facebook, Google, Twitter, ...). Edit: Typing this from Africa least people think I am American.

jabbernotty• 7 years ago

Facebook and Twitter are social media companies. I don't think they count as technology companies the way i.e. a company that creates water purifiers and solar panels and such are a technology company. And those products are made in many countries other than the USA.

rock_hard2• 7 years ago

Europe keeps regulating itself to death and america isn’t.

That’s why most modern innovation (Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, Uber, Airbnb, Etc) is coming from the US and not Europe.

If you lived in both continents you would know

Toine• 7 years ago

You could argue that America is unregulating itself to death.

beenBoutIT2• 7 years ago

Very true, although not with tech.

amelius• 7 years ago

The sad part is that platform economies are mostly owned by US companies, and their internal (inside the platform) markets operate on a global scale. So far we haven't seen much external regulation here.

agumonkey• 7 years ago

Based on the very few readings I had, it seems it's been historical cultural difference from day 1. What's the motto "America innovates ? Europe cultivates" ?

Also, both have value.. I wouldn't bear USA medical system, but I also recognize France administration hell.

SmellyGeekBoy• 7 years ago

Odd comment considering Americans are literally dying due to a refusal to regulate in certain areas - employee rights, healthcare, gun laws, obesity etc.

Small price to pay for "freedom" I guess.

rootusrootus3• 7 years ago

How does regulation help with obesity? And if it does, why are Europeans very nearly as fat as Americans?

Barrin922• 7 years ago

Europe keeps regulating itself to death and america isn’t.

Given that the life expectancy in the US is falling which is unprecedented in an industrialised society, and on average below some second world countries that post has an involuntary morbid spin.

artificial• 7 years ago

Leading cause of death for under 45 in the US is traffic fatalities.

rootusrootus3• 7 years ago

Unprecedented might be too strong a term. It isn't too difficult to find ups and downs of life expectancy in Western European countries.

throwaway4790892• 7 years ago

The innovation you speak of is either completely superfluous or actively harmful to society. No one needs a Tesla or SpaceX, and society would be much better off without Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Apple or Facebook. That you consider these companies, all with a notorious track record of badly treating their employees and mishandling their user's data, as good things, speaks volumes about the mindset of some Americans.

andrenth2• 7 years ago

If what you’re saying was right, these companies wouldn’t have any customers. Clearly society values these companies above zero.

Youden• 7 years ago

I've lived on both continents (and one extra for good measure) and I'm afraid I can't agree.

What I see is that there's plenty of innovation in Europe but it's rarer for companies to become the monstrous beasts that are so well known in America, which might make it harder to see.

Also some of the companies you've listed are genuinely innovative (Google produced the best search engine, SpaceX made reusable rockets work, Tesla made electric cars work, Apple made PDAs work) but others are large because they have limited competition due to being in an expensive industry (it's hard to build a fab and start producing CPUs like Intel or to buy as many distribution centers or datacenters as Amazon) or because they blatantly flaunt the law to the point where they likely couldn't have started in Europe, where regulators have teeth and use them (Uber, Airbnb).

Another difference might be that in America you get one enormous company that does many things while in Europe you get small companies that do one thing each. Google does email, photos, search, YouTube etc., Amazon does retail and cloud and Facebook owns most major social networks. In Europe there are smaller companies that do all of these things, they're just not unified in one enormous organization. That doesn't mean there's no innovation, it just means you have to look in more than one place to find it.

To give some examples of smaller, successful, mission-focused European companies: Spotify does nothing but music, Skype did nothing but voice and video calling (before being acquired), there are a few email providers like Protonmail and Mailbox.org, a few major cloud providers like Leaseweb, Hetzner and OVH, Criteo, a huge AdTech company, Mikrotik which produces networking equipment, uBlox which produces GPS modules. Those are just a few off the top of my head.

ThenAsNow• 7 years ago

The word "Digital" could be eliminated from the headline without loss of accuracy.

TazeTSchnitzel• 7 years ago

The Data Protection Directive and GDPR don't care about whether the privacy violation involves a computer :)

tootahe45• 7 years ago

When you have zero tech companies it's easier to do things that impede tech companies.

StavrosK• 7 years ago

Or when you value privacy.

frankbreetz• 7 years ago

Are you implying there are zero tech companies in Europe?

mantas• 7 years ago

Not zero, but compared to US the state is kinda sad. Quite a few EU startups move to US sooner or later too. Meanwhile vice versa ain't happening. It's one way road for both engineers and companies.

throwaway4790892• 7 years ago

We do have tech companies but we don't let them grow beyond reason and extend their tentacular grip on almost all areas of society. Are you implying it's a bad thing?

shdh• 7 years ago

Regardless of regulations that still doesn't counter the prevalence of American companies in Europe.

Barrin922• 7 years ago

Given that the productivity per capita in France or Germany is maybe 10% lower than in the US, and that those are highly developed countries with centuries of industrial knowledge, you might want to adjust your definition of "tech company" a bit, because if those countries had no technology firms, they'd be quite a lot poorer.

The US has incredibly strong advantages in fields like the semi-conductor industry, but in transportation, pharmaceuticals and aerospace Europe is quite strong. And when you look at hidden champions and the integration of technology into small and medium sized firms, the US heartland has a big problem.

Gpetrium• 7 years ago

Some may argue that to remain competitive in today's environment, some tech companies require a diminished amount of customer privacy, otherwise their foreign rivals will be able to do more and be more successful in the long run.

For the EU, if there is a belief that their tech companies can't out-compete against foreign rivals (Think search engine, social media, cyber sec, etc) and that their data could be used against them in the near future, it may seem intuitive to put privacy checkers to get foreign entities in line with your interests.

AnonymousPlanet• 7 years ago

You mean tech as in internet based, I assume. Technology (in the actual sense of the word) based companies make Germany an economical powerhouse.

The large european companies with a big "stake" in the internet are non-technology based companies like publishers. These publishers hate the internet and they hate Google and Facebook because they see them as competition.

The result is shenanigans like Article 13. Also, the GDPR, with its anti Google and Facebook overtones, has received nearly nothing but applause from these stakeholders. So friction was light when it was pushed through by people who actually cared for the privacy aspects of it.

umanwizard• 7 years ago

The US is behind Western and Northern Europe in almost every facet of development that I can think of, except for GDP per capita. Education, healthcare, social mobility, political culture, news media seriousness, public infrastructure, etc.

The US is also shockingly institutionally paralyzed and unable to make meaningful reforms in any area, even if they are very popular with the majority of voters. The last one I can think of was ObamaCare, which was not a particularly radical change, but felt like it because of how difficult it was to pass.

It's not particularly interesting to ask "why can't we reform digital privacy laws" -- the more interesting general question is "why can't we reform anything".

zanny• 7 years ago

I just listened to a Freakonomics episode about the business of the political party duopoly the other day. How federal politicians operate to preserve their institution first and foremost, and that the continued growth of the political industrial complex only serves to profit the parties at the expense of the democracy.

Fundamentally the US needs constitutional amendments to break the duopoly and return elections to being about people instead of parties, but for that to happen you would need a super majority of state legislatures to force an amendment and that is nigh impossible as well given how state governments are modeled off the federal but don't have the safety valve to try to repair the democracy with competitive and diverse elections - a vast majority of states are functionally ruled by one party with supermajority and in perpetuity and would never propose changes that would harm them federally.

The sea between getting a few members of congress or states to support restoring democracy and having the super-majorities required to actually see it done are so vast and the opposition so wealthy, connected, and influential I've never heard anyone propose a legitimate strategy to see it done, because the damage has already in large part been done - even if a super-majority of citizens agree with reform, that has no influence on the behavior of any legislature they elect. You would need to co-opt one of the major parties in ways their charters expressly prohibit and their incumbents will block.

orbifold• 7 years ago

This is amusing because politicians still try to emulate the US in many respects as do a lot of companies.

moroleth• 7 years ago

Pretty much. I am rather dumbfounded by some of the political debates I read in social media by Americans when many of these have been pretty much solved here in Europe, with respect to healthcare, education, abortion rights, gun control, etc. E.g. there is living proof that you can keep a country going with free/subsidized healthcare or education for almost all of its population, as evidenced by literally every Western country that is not the US, yet this empirical evidence is brushed away by American detractors with utterly bizarre arguments about economic freedom that don't have a foothold anywhere else in the world. I don't know if detractors are being 1) ignorant of living conditions abroad, 2) not willing to change a system that benefits them personally, 3) fully aware of how things are elsewhere but reject it for ideological reasons.

sunstone• 7 years ago

It's because politicians can be more easily influenced with cash in the USA than in Europe. The US supreme court hasn't done any favors in this regard either.

rock_hard2• 7 years ago

Don’t worry, Europe is just as corrupt as any other place in the world...they just do it more elegantly

lone_haxx0r• 7 years ago

Why is Europe so far behind the rest of the world (except China, Russia et al) on digital freedom and freedom of speech?

NightlyDev• 7 years ago

Europe far behind? Europe is the best place in the world when it comes to freedom of speech, consumer rights and press freedom.

jakeogh2• 7 years ago

You can get fined for a dog trick.

solarkraft2• 7 years ago

I think it's a relevant and legitimate thesis that this is in part caused by the origin of the major data capitalists (please explain why they are voted down).

I think it is fairly widely believed that the USA government favors US-american companies. The EU might do this less, but would have a clear economic interest in doing so, so I find this very plausible as well. I don't know how many smaller personal data companies there are in the EU compared to the US, but the major ones you hear about (Google, Facebook) are definitely in the USA.

notacoward3• 7 years ago

I think it all comes down to uniquely American cult of individualism, in two distinct streams that separate and then join together. The first is a general anti-regulatory attitude and distrust of government, assuming that those things are harmful to individual freedom even when they're anything but. The second is treating corporations as people. Put those together and you get a belief that the government shouldn't tie companies' hands with privacy laws.

I'm not here to debate whether those attitudes are right or wrong. That's just my theory on how they answer $question.

braythwayt2• 7 years ago

What if--And I'm just riffing here--what if America doesn't have nearly the cult of individualism that everybody seems to think it has?

What if America has a strong authoritarian inclination, as seen by its extreme focus on patriotism and patriarchal style of Christianity?

What if the "Uniquely American cult of individualism" is (a) Something Americans tell themselves in a "She doth protest too much" attempt to avoid facing an uncomfortable truth, and also...

What if the "Uniquely American cult of individualism" is (b) Propaganda that has been thundered by American Media, Advertising, Political Parties, and especially corporations who use it as a lever for avoiding regulation and oversight.

Such as with health care, where untold sums of money are spent every year explaining that Americans have more choice and want more choice and "control."

Or with guns, where again, untold sums of money are spent every year explaining that Americans want to enforce their own protection from crime.

What if the "Uniquely American cult of individualism" is no more real than the Marlborough Man?

I too am not saying these are the only explanations, but they seem like argument that are worth thinking about rather than taking a knee-jerk position in favour or against.

notacoward3• 7 years ago

Interesting thoughts. I think the part that comes closest to my own beliefs is this:

(b) Propaganda that has been thundered ... as a lever for avoiding regulation and oversight.

I think the belief in individualism is real and sincere. It is also exploited ruthlessly, sometimes - but not always - by those who are moving in the exact opposite direction. Where's the authoritarian message in an ad telling you to be yourself, express yourself, stand out from the crowd, etc.? I don't think one needs to assume mass deception (including self-deception) to explain Americans' behavior. While I wouldn't reject your theory outright, in accord with Occam's Razor I tend to start with the simpler theory until the case for some other is properly made.

tilt_error• 7 years ago

...and you are backed up by the World Values Survey! [1]

[1] http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/images/Culture_Map_2017_con...

jakeogh2• 7 years ago

The GDPR is an attack on memory. Article 13 is an attack on speech. It's interesting to see the urgency of the push to implement them in the US; before it's too obvious what they are really for.

jandrewrogers2• 7 years ago

It is a confluence of many independent factors that cut across culture, economics, history, political structure, and geography. This applies to almost every comparison of Europe and America.

A key difference is in the default definition of what "privacy" is relative to. In America, there is a strong notion of privacy from the government but a much weaker notion of privacy from companies. In Europe, it is the other way around. In the specific case of digital privacy, you are adding economic considerations to the equation which just reinforces the existing status quo on both sides since the America's tech industry is vastly larger than Europe's and therefore has much greater skin in the game.

The political dynamics are different because (1) Americans don't trust governments and especially the Federal government, for complex historical reasons and (2) the majority of legal authority to regulate, tax, etc resides with the individual States, not the Federal government, so relatively few things can be implemented "nationally" in the US. If you model individual States as "countries" conceptually, the political dynamics make a lot more sense.

anoncake4• 7 years ago

If you model individual States as "countries" conceptually, the political dynamics make a lot more sense.

No, not at all. US states being somewhat like countries can't put the USA behind the EU. EU states are countries.

jandrewrogers2• 7 years ago

This distinction isn't nearly a bright line as you think it is, the US is essentially what happens when an EU-like structure has 200+ years to evolve. In the US, States have their own constitutions, legislatures, various legal systems, and almost complete autonomy with narrow exceptions. Around 30% of them operated autonomously as their own countries at various times. Americans have almost no contact with the Federal government, only State governments, and the nature of State governments, laws, and legal systems varies quite widely across the US because they evolved independently.

As a simple illustration, the US has no national ID because the individual States have sole authority for managing the identity of their citizens. Similarly, it is why all contracts denote the State whose legal system has jurisdiction over interpretation of the contract -- there isn't a meaningful Federal jurisdiction over such things. This is also why the US Federal government can't just "pass a law" to do things, what they can actually do is severely limited by what the States feel like allowing them to do. While the States don't flex their autonomy very often these days, almost all power in the US rests with the individual States.

Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

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