Obama to beef up laws on privacy and data breaches

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30779848

by escapologybb • 12 years ago

60 52 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

tempodox• 12 years ago

One will require companies to let customers know within 30 days if their personal information went astray in a data breach.

What, we will know when the NSA grabbed our data, then? Too good to be true...

DINKDINK• 12 years ago

The laws absolutely scream to be mocked.

glaslong• 12 years ago

I'm sure they'll come up with some great alternative interpretations of the wording.

"In this case, no 'personal' information was lost at all, because after 30 days, all of the data had been effectively made public." - NSA

rayiner4• 12 years ago

The law is aimed at commercial loss and identity theft stemming from data breaches. Whatever you think of the NSA, there's not a high risk its going to start selling data it collects on the black market for use in identity theft.

Spearchucker• 12 years ago

And when the NSA acquires, for example, German data and gives it to an American competitor? That satisfies the commercial loss objective, from an American point of view.

rockyleal• 12 years ago

How is that distinction relevant? I want my data not to be with NSA as much as I want it not to be with hackers or marketers. In some ways, even moreso.

tessierashpool• 12 years ago

I think this is only true in the short term. Enormous stretches of the Russian and Eastern European mafias are made up of ex-KGB who went into business for themselves when the Soviet Union fell.

Imagine the private criminal opportunities that will become available to the NSA after 20 years of Moore's Law and bulk data collection.

swombat2• 12 years ago

Whatever you think of the NSA, there's not a high risk its going to start selling data it collects on the black market for use in identity theft.

That's a big assumption considering you're talking about an agency which openly flaunts the law or lobbies it out of existence as needed (thereby showing very little respect for the rule of law) and whose individual agents have shown very variable levels of judgement in the use of those systems (e.g. the LOVEINT stuff).

On the contrary, I think that once that data is in the possession of a large amorphous non-accountable organisation with relatively few checks and balances, it is inevitable that said data will end up on the black market. Why wouldn't it? There's money to be made.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

I think this is to wash away the NSA stuff while making it look like Obama cares about your privacy - even though this law only applies to private companies, not himself/the government.

If he really cared about privacy he'd at least try to reform the ECPA.

coldcode• 12 years ago

Obama isn't able to beef up much with Congress voting on the laws first. That might prove difficult given the current makeup of Congress.

drzaiusapelord2• 12 years ago

Congress doesn't seem to be shy about passing national security legislation. That often trumps partisan politics.

I think we've entered the age where we can no longer ignore our national IT infrastructure shortcomings. As someone who has had more than a few sysadmin jobs, and at a couple places you've heard of, its incredible how little security matters, how poorly software is written, how few developers can write secure code, and how management can force IT to make boneheaded implementations that bite everyone in the ass later.

I would love to see a HIPAA-type regulation for all businesses, encryption everywhere, force change of default credentials, etc. The wild west days of the internet need to come to an end.

vasquez• 12 years ago

No thanks. I can see this kind of legislation turning any online presence into a horribly expensive bureaucratic nightmare while accomplishing fuck-all security-wise. (At best.. Given current governments' track record, any privacy act would be all about stomping on people's privacy.)

I'd rather not be subjected to (and pay for) more security theater, or see every small business out there drown in a paper mill suitable for the fortune 500s.

We are already liable for any gross misconduct.

Arnor4• 12 years ago

I worry about the regulations being wrong or becoming wrong over time then being very difficult to change. What happens if we are legally obligated to engineer a system in an insecure manner and we can't fix it without a series of bureaucratic moves?

If sweeping regulations do come along, I hope there's a strong push for them to be loose or amiable enough to avoid these problems. For now, though, I'm skeptical.

icehawk2193• 12 years ago

The cynic in me thinks that's the entire point. Things like this an the free community college are great but he has to be going into it with confidence that it'll never happen under the current climate. For the community college proposal I'd go so far as to say it can't work in America at all because American's don't care about each other enough to support something like that. But now that he's at the second half of his second term he can at least propose these things and go out saying "I tried ...".

jarin• 12 years ago

I'm not so sure that Americans don't care enough about each other to support the community college proposal. I haven't really heard any opposition to it from any of my friends or acquaintances. In fact, it's actually quite difficult to argue against. The GOP-controlled Congress is going to have a pretty hard time building support for opposition to the proposal, although I'm sure they'll figure out some way to do it.

jerf• 12 years ago

One can argue that the problem is that we've cared too much, not that we don't care at all. The biggest argument I've heard against it from various sources is just "Where's the money going to come from?" Individually everything the government is doing could be fantastic and wonderful, yet the whole can still end up being a bad idea when the whole turns out to be unaffordable. Of course it's wonderful if we don't have to consider costs, but we do.

I could also argue that if 4 year colleges have even in part become so expensive because of all the subsidized money available that bringing subsidized money to the community college will have an "unexpected result" so expected that one could hardly call it "unexpected" anymore.

cryoshon2• 12 years ago

You're entirely right, it is the entire point of his proposals.

Why else would he be floating proposals he knows can never pass, except to be winning cheap gains from the suckers who don't see it for what it is? A president proposing a huge program like free college for everyone without controlling Congress is basically talking to a wall.

Obama is trying to help the Democratic party with its stagnant voter base problem. The people who would regularly vote Democrat have moved far to the left of the Democratic mainline and are tired of seeing nothing come out of the Democratic party, meaning that they no longer have any motivation to vote for Democrats-- not to say they are voting for Republicans either.

Sure, you're going to say Obamacare came out of the Democracts-- but the left leaning segment of the Democratic base didn't want Obamacare, they wanted single payer, and Obamacare fell horrendously short of that. This election was a wakeup call for the Democrats, and indicated to them that they have lost their base to the more radical members of their party like Elizabeth Warren.

Thus, we see the Democrats attempt to show people that they still have big ideas, because they are incapable of showing people that they have big actions.

snowwrestler• 12 years ago

The truth is probably somewhere in between. Obama can't be maneuvering for re-election, of course, but can try to set things up for the 2016 elections.

But good legislation does not just magically appear in Congress. Many government programs got a big boost from the President "calling for them"--national parks, for example, or the moon landings. These were not new ideas when Roosevelt or Kennedy spoke about them, but speaking about them helped generate the public momentum for Congress to act.

The U.S. was the first nation in the world to provide free, publicly funded education through high school. It was implemented locally, but it was an idea that was discussed and promoted nationally. The idea of free education is a powerful one in the U.S. culture.

And many community colleges are already heavily funded by state and local governments; making them totally free might not be as big a step as it seems on paper.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Obama isn't able to beef up much with Congress voting on the laws first. That might prove difficult given the current makeup of Congress.

Policy change can be sudden and radical, but durable shifts in political priorities often start with legislative proposals, which build support for the idea in the public consciousness, which translate into pressure on elected politicians, which turn into policies -- maybe not this year, and maybe not until after several election cycles.

But if you never propose anything that won't pass today, you never move things in the direction you prefer.

Dirlewanger• 12 years ago

More placebos.

Another will attempt to give people more control over what can be done with the data companies gather about them.

Key word is attempt. One can be sure Google and friends will be lobbying hard for no such control, and if something does perchance pass, it won't be for years whatever it is is implemented and will be purposely difficult to reach.

returnofdjedi3• 12 years ago

Okay,guys,any solutions to the current scenario?

Arnor4• 12 years ago

This conversation is important. It's a bit disappointing that we see legislation instead of dialogue. The initiatives here sound kind of knee-jerk and rather difficult to enforce.

Companies should be held accountable for the data they collect and how it is used. Most TOS are unconscionable. I'm sure some of the folks here read the entire TOS of every web service they use, but I've never met a person in real life who does. I think a framework for TOS that is basically just a check box "Do you collect: A, B, C" "Do you distribute: X, Y, Z" could be really useful. There could be some pretty cool strategies between web sites and browsers to help users determine what the site is doing and whether they want to proceed.

This is a time for a dialogue that builds a working framework, not a burst of legislation that pacifies the public and accomplishes at best a couple of short term goals.

returnofdjedi3• 12 years ago

For that we would need all companies to come together and accept a new legislation.I don't see that happenning soon?

Arnor4• 12 years ago

Which part requires everyone agreeing? Building a working framework or having a dialogue?

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

It's a bit disappointing that we see legislation instead of dialogue.

Legislative proposals are part of dialogue. You can talk all day about generalities and get nowhere, having specific proposals to discuss -- and either criticize or propose alternatives to -- is what moves the dialogue forward.

Arnor4• 12 years ago

It can, but I don't think these will. It looks like this dialogue is already framed in "regulation vs no regulation" without much depth. I think that a long drawn-out discussion among professionals would be more effective (if slower than) sound-byte politics.

maerF0x0• 12 years ago

This is the grand dichotomy of government ethics. Its ok to enforce rules on others, but not themselves. They uphold neither privacy, nor attack data breaches from the NSA, for example.

closetnerd• 12 years ago

I'm quite certain that all my consumer rights are sufficiently protected by the actual bill of rights.

Moreover, my concern is that these laws will give government even more oversight into the management of user data, and therefore the data itself, in order to enforce the laws.

Zikes• 12 years ago

Yep, plenty of laws in place already.

It's the enforcing of those laws that's currently lacking, and I don't see this fixing that at all.

bsimpson• 12 years ago

Obama to beef up laws on privacy and data breaches

I hate headlines like this. The President is a figurehead. He can't really do anything (shy of directing federal agencies not to enforce certain laws) without Congressional action.

diminoten• 12 years ago

Executive orders beg to differ.

Admittedly, the next guy can just come in and get rid of those orders, but it's not like he can't do anything.

It's also powerful if the President says, "All federal agencies are no longer allowed to use Google or Microsoft until they comply with these new privacy standards."

wtbob• 12 years ago

The actual headline is more accurate: 'Barack Obama calls for stronger data privacy laws' (at the time that I'm writing this it is 'Obama to beef up laws on privacy and data breaches').

The President of the United States is not able to 'beef up' federal laws; he can execute the ones that exist and call for new ones to be passed.

Obama to beef up laws on privacy and data breaches

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