I have a feeling all these FTC cases like this and the ones against big tech companies will all be dropped in a couple of months with just a little greasing of the wheels from these companies that are under investigation.
Why should we have piecemeal, extra-legal policies that only favor special interest groups? It's nice that they protect the privacy of church goers, but they can still geofence my neighborhood to estimate my income bracket among other invasions. It's well past time for comprehensive data protection laws rather than a hodgepodge of special treatment policies for whoever the executive wants to curry favor with.
We really need a leak of tracking data on Congresspeople going to compromising places to make this happen.
A really good book on this topic is Byron Tau’s Means of Control. His contention is that this surveillance data has made NSA warrantless wiretaps old news. Cops don’t need to do the spying themselves, they can simply buy the info.
I am of the opinion that at this point, Americans only believe we are less surveilled than people elsewhere. It’s not visible so people forget about it. Yet it is so deeply embedded into the government that it will never be removed.
There's the old saying that "we are free only as much as we don't have guns in our face telling us we're not". The reigns placed on our freedom are just unrecognized by the vast majority of people so they feel they have more freedom than what they might appreciate.
I’m not entirely sure if I understand the point you’re making, but let me try an analogy.
We are all forced to buy a car. There is no one with a gun to our head forcing such a purchase, or a law specifically requiring you to buy a car. But nevertheless the laws are structured so that everyone realistically must buy a car, whether they want to or not.
If you chose not to buy a car then your life will be dramatically more expensive and difficult to live, because of the network effects of this requirement.
So while you are technically free to not buy a car, realistically you are forced to do so.
> If you chose not to buy a car then your life will be dramatically more expensive and difficult to live, because of the network effects of this requirement.
That depends where you live. In Chicago, for example, your life will be simpler and less expensive if you don't own a car.
I don't understand this as a blanket rule either. My life is dramatically less expensive because of not having a car. I don't have to fill it with gas. I don't have to carry insurance. I choose not to have a car, and while somethings are less convenient it does not prevent me from existing. I have an ebike and it suffices for everything thing that is a necessity for me. For the other things, rental for a weekend away is very much a thing.
Now, for people that choose to live in the further reaches of suburbia where things are not nearly as close, then cars become more of a need. But that is a decision when location to suburbia or further was made.
Eh, eventually there is a network effect and much of everything needs a car.
If you happen to live in one of the numerous cities in the US that has a hollowed out core, you need a car even if you live downtown. And often the cities that have vibrant walkable downtowns are expensive to move to.
Eh, I lived for 7 years without a car in suburbs. Granted the local market, and I specifically mean market vs supermarket, was a 5 minute walk from me, the supermarket was a 30 minute walk if I felt fancy that night, and Amazon delivered.
I will grant that I was within walking distance of the last stop on the local metros subway system so maybe some people wouldn’t consider that the suburbs, but it was considered so for the city.
Also just broke 20k miles last week on my vehicle I bought in 2021 after moving to the countryside so it’s not like ive
this sounds like not the US. in the vast majority of the US traditional markets/small groceries are effectively extinct and illegal to build new in a financially sensible way.
I don’t have enough data to give you an answer one way or another but this was New England and we have a lot of things that are common for us but weird for the rest of the country by dint of being where colonization efforts were good enough to be started and built up, but not so bad that they are worth replacing.
Examples include individual shops that used to be called markets which are not farmers markets or supermarkets, basements in all/most homes, and town halls being an expectation of normal governance rather than a newsworthy event
Any city with a "downtown" is in 2024 going to have uber/lyft, probably bus services of some sort, and there's always cycling. Groceries and supplies can be delivered to your door. There is less need for a car today than there has been in a long time.
You’re still forced to participate in car culture if you use Lyft/Uber/Instacart, you’ve just added middlemen and increased the cost even further.
This comment comes across as incredibly privileged, to be honest. Most people must drive to work. Asking them to use Uber for such a purpose is just… it’s kind of infuriating.
laws are structured? or just the cumulative impact of societies decisions.
humans are social creatures, of course if everyone else has a car it is going to be inconvenient for you to not have one. this is not a solvable problem
The problem is that corporate interests pushed for a car-centric society. You can't point to consumer choice as a justification for the current system, when we were given little choice to begin with.
It might seem like a moot point in San Francisco where there is free public transit, but in cities like mine, there is an intentional lack of alternatives, in order for cars to be leveraged as a self-reinforcing socioeconomic class boundary.
Maybe in your specific case, that is cities with poor public transit, but the US is massive and has always required some form of long distance travel. One can make arguments for corporate interests in expensive gas-guzzlers, completely eliminating the small and medium sized automobiles, or for corporate-backed government decisions in new city infrastructure being less accessible without a car, but we have a car-centric society here because they are physically required for the majority of Americans to get from A to B, and there is literally no way of fixing that.
What I said is obviously correct, especially historically, and you pointed out exactly why: medium travel, which is far more prevalent than simply modern suburbia. Have you even been outside a city? Take a quick glance at history and you will see just how crucial private transport for medium-long distance is in America. Horses and buggies have been a mainstay before the car. Rail is simply too inflexible to support medium travel in sparsely populated areas. And medium travel is what I would classify most rural Americans are from their nearest grocer. Long distance via train, that makes sense. A centralized rail system, such as subway, in a city also makes sense to cover medium distances. However, we already have the infrastructure to handle medium distances without new expensive rails, that being highways. The cost to fit rails across the entire US would be enormous, and that’s ignoring the long term costs such as staffing and maintenance.
In my small town, we have roughly 125 people. We are, roughly, 35 minutes away from the nearest grocery store, or about 40 miles. Too long to walk or bike in a reasonable time. You could use a motorized bike but the amount of food for a family would be unwieldy. The only viable solution is to drive via car, because you need the trunk space. And both options to get there require roads. Now, let’s suppose we magically replaced highways for rails. What happens is simple: either the government is bleeding immense amounts of money orchestrating train rides to places where no one is regularly using it, or certain less populated areas are underserved.
> but we have a car-centric society here because they are physically required for the majority of Americans to get from A to B, and there is literally no way of fixing that.
The majority of Americans trying to get from A to B are driving less than 60 km/day, a distance which trains can cover pretty damn fast.
For longer travel you could have high speed trains on both coasts' corridors, very few people are traveling NYC -> LA on a regular basis, most people will travel on their surroundings (500-1000 km).
You could have a multimodal system covering the most important urban corridors, rural places would almost always need cars due to the low density but it's a big fat lie that the USA is car-centric because it's the only solution for its size.
The only reason you are a car-centric country in 2024 is because of incentives for the car industry, the design of your cities being stuck in car-centric mindset from the 1950s-1960s.
You don't need to give up cars completely, you just need infrastructure to not require a car for people traveling around your major urban centres. High speed rail corridors between Seattle - Portland - San Francisco - Los Angeles - Las Vegas - Phoenix, another corridor from Boston - NYC - Philadelphia - Baltimore - DC branching out to Pittsburgh - Cleveland - Detroit - Chicago. With those you cover a lot of the major economic centres.
China is also massive and they've managed it.
Except for some new shiny skyscraper, the USA feels more backwards each time I visit, like the country is stuck in the 1980s-1990s and refuses to be updated to how a modern country can be in 2024.
> The problem is that corporate interests pushed for a car-centric society
I'd say it's more NIMBY interests than corporate interests.
The US, in contrast to Asia and Europe, builds sprawling suburbs, consisting only of single-family houses, with no multi-story apartment complexes and no other services/infrastructure in walking distance.
Most people would tell you that they don't want things to be this way, but will actually complain about proposals to make things better.
If you build apartment complexes, you can fit more people in a smaller area, which makes public transit a lot more economical. Add the fact that you don't need to go anywhere far at all for a lot of things, like grocery shopping for example, and that makes you need a car a lot less.
It's also worth considering that the US has been constantly rich for the last century or so, it has been far less affected by the second world war, dictatorships and communism than Europe and Asia, which made cars a lot less of a luxury, and hence made public transit a lot less of a necessity.
Leveraging cars as a self-reinforcing socioeconomic class boundary is a direct consequence of all of this, but also one more (self-reinforcing) reason why people need cars. You just can't do that sort of thing in Europe, if there are well-off people without cars, you can't assume that well-off people have cars, so well-off people will keep not having cars, and so it goes.
It's more like, you think you are free, because from birth society and CorpGov condition you to operate within an accepted status quo, and incentives are structured in order to support that.
But the moment you question the status quo, or try to go against it, you find yourself targeted by corporate and social violence. You might lose your job, the respect of your peers, your family, house, car or more.
Here is an easy example:
A portion of your tax money is funding genocide and anti-democratic military coups in Israel and other countries.
If you decide (as any rational citizen should) to no longer pay income tax knowing that you lack any discretion over how it is spent, and you decide to demand a more transparent and restricted tax system, then the government will threaten you with economic hardship and even prison. They will surveil and discredit you if you receive any modicum of notoriety, just as they do to sociopolitical activists and protestors.
You won't be able to operate a business while opposing income tax laws, and thus conscious political action is relegated to the elite, who don't need to work, and the poor, who already don't significantly benefit from the system. The rest of the working class is forced to play ball, or lose everything.
That's not freedom, even if it looks like Freedom™ to a certain class of bootlickers who are conditioned to maintain the status quo, even if it means turning on their neighbor.
The car industry has been lobbying congress and locales for 50+ years. Laws like jaywalking were at the behest of car companies, and that alone makes walking legally very difficult in nearly any area with a downtown.
The lack of subsidies certainly don't help. Neither does the insatiable appetite for new cars.
Ironically, outside the US I managed to live until the age of 41, before I caved in and got a driver's license. Instead, I got around by train, tram, bus, bicycle, feet and taxi. I would argue, that in a society not designed to require a car, you are not really forced to.
If you're a heterosexual white male, you probably won't notice them. You'll also probably not care for that any non-heterosexual white male might feel differently. For everyone else, we have loads of examples of how not free they are at times. Heaven help you if you "fit the description".
If you can't think of any specific examples on your own, then you're just not really trying very hard.
Try driving while not white in certain cities and see how free you feel. Try being a naturalized citizen or first gen to see how free you are in certain cities. Try being a female and looking to make your own health care decisions in certain states. Are these less vague allusions enough for you?
Freedom does not mean the opposite of being in jail. There's a lot of freedoms that are taken away from people purely based on race/sex whether you want to call it baiting or not. They still exist as problems.
No, not at all. For example, plenty of white people feel unwelcome in areas — but neither group is prohibited and in both cases the experience is generally a) in their own head because nobody thinks about other people and/or b) cultural because there’s members of that community who don’t experience the same.
> Try being a female and looking to make your own health care decisions in certain states.
When your rights intersect another’s rights is always a matter of law — I’m not free to kill others outside legislated confines, either.
> There's a lot of freedoms that are taken away from people purely based on race/sex whether you want to call it baiting or not.
Then you should list some, rather than give vague and untrue grievance narratives.
Quoting what you heard off your telescreen is not convincing. For one, what “certain cities” are you even talking about? Are you referring to blacks being pulled over in black-majority crime-heavy areas? And I have never heard of stigmas against naturalized citizens. As for the vague allusion to abortion, I’m not allowed to kill a baby after it comes out, so why should it be legalized for the mother to? Especially when, if she doesn’t want a child, she can simply get an IUD, or simply take birth control and morning afters?
Most of it these days is less about being intelligent enough and more about whether you're positioned to encounter or hear about a "chilling effect" [1]. Historians will probably only ever be able to debate order-of-magnitude estimates of how many students gave up protesting because of the Kent State shootings, or how many writers "self-censored" because of PRISM/XKeyscore [2], or how many people decide not to exercise their Second Amendment rights because they don't want to risk being categorized as "armed" in a police encounter [3] [4].
One example that's a bit more concrete is the combination of pre-trial detention and plea bargains. These form, in effect, a punishment for exercising one's right to a fair trial, a punishment that exists because our court system is quite far from having the capacity to properly handle the sheer volume of prosecutions that occur [5].
As an attorney, I find your plea bargain argument unpersuasive. Major themes in the criminal justice system are acknowledgment of guilt and acceptance of responsibility. These are going to work against you after spending a year claiming you didn’t do it if the jury decides you did.
I would say it's more like the American people are so propagandized in favor of free markets and enterprises and so poisoned at the notion of the Government doing literally anything that they utterly don't care about how thoroughly and completely our freedoms have been subsumed by capital interests, as long as they aren't "big government me no like."
Government death panels? Orwellian, literally 1984, communist, socialist. Your insurance company refusing to cover your cancer treatment? Well that's the free market bub, can't argue with it. Sorry you're gonna die.
Like I'm being hyperbolic, sure, but I am being that hyperbolic?
if there is a cancer treatment that is covered by Canadian Medicare but the government chooses not to cover you for whatever reason (world is in triage, etc. etc.), you cannot pay out of pocket for that care.
right, because it is illegal to pay for care in Canada outside of the system. i didn't say that Canada had some global anti-private care enforcement power
If the services aren’t available to anyone due to resource issues that’s not the same as a death panel deciding you’re simply not worth covering. If there is a shortage, resources have to be allocated somehow whether or not there is a public option.
Which isn’t available for some people under the public option - if it is ever covered by Canada Medicare, then it is illegal to pay privately.
> If the services aren’t available to anyone due to resource issues that’s not the same as a death panel deciding you’re simply not worth covering.
Resource issues because they don’t have the funding to pay for additional care of this type. Allowing private funding pushes the demand curve out and increases quantity supplied of the scarce resource.
Your link does nothing to disprove the scenario I am describing because I was describing a covered cancer procedure that the govt can use discretion to block you from purchasing in Canada.
In any system with a limited resource you will need some way to triage care and allocate it appropriately.
In a private system, those with money can prioritize themselves over those without it. In the US this results in huge numbers of people who lack basic care, and a small group of people who can pay large sums for care with diminishing returns. Consequently, Americans live shorter lives than Canadians.
What you are describing is a law that prevents a person from paying to skip other people in line. It seems like a pretty good idea to me.
we long ago figured out that queues, price caps, and shortages are a very bad system of delivering resources to people. i don’t understand the insistence that we do the same for the most life saving resources of all.
regardless, we have moved on to this argument because the original point is absolutely true: public systems intrinsically make it illegal to seek care out of the system.
There was no “death panel” involved with Archie Battersbee though. He had a Glasgow coma level of 3, the literal lowest (which is proportional to survival odds), and didn’t even have a pulse for over 40 minutes. He was most likely dead by the time his mother found him, and was certainly dead at the hospital. If memory serves his brainstem was even beginning to suffer from necrosis before they pulled treatment.
+1 Your eyes don’t open for any reason.
+1 You can't speak or make sounds.
+1 You don’t move in response to pressure.
So you get points for existing, and the tests can include causing pain (pinch ear, press nail bed, knuckles to chest [depending on jurisdiction]) to make someone have movement.
However, while GCS of 3 is the bottom of the GCS chart, it's not the only measurement used.
"Conclusions. We believe that patients with blunt head injury presenting with a GCS score of 3 should be treated aggressively. Our results showed that 50.8% of these patients survived their injury and 13.2% achieved a good functional outcome at the 6-month follow-up." - NIH
My favorite part of GCS: Emergency care books say "don't worry you don't have to memorize this, you'll always have a chart", yet calculating it exactly is on 2 different US emergency care national exams.
The point is not that there's a literal death panel, but instead the healthcare committee trampled over the rights of parents and individuals. If they want to bring their children overseas for treatment, the white coats should get the fuck out of their way. By the logic of the other commenters, "My body my choice" is only for political causes you believe in amirite?
Some people might be against regulating private data collection on principle, but I would imagine far more people are simply unaware of it. And even if they are, it’s pretty damn hard to opt out of, and the harms are pretty abstract.
Unless you can demonstrate concrete ways in which it even inconveniences someone, it’s gonna fall pretty low on most people’s priorities.
> I am of the opinion that at this point, Americans only believe we are less surveilled than people elsewhere.
I'm not sure who believes that (Hollywood/any cop tv show would have you believing the opposite), but I'm also skeptical that these data brokers are only brokering US data.
> (Hollywood/any cop tv show would have you believing the opposite)
Hollywood and cop TV would have you believe that "zoom, enhance" is a legitimate means of surveillance. I suspect most educated Americans avoid framing their understanding of surveillance around CSI and SVU.
On the other hand, the number of public cameras has exploded in the past decade. Even moderately small towns are likely to have Flock cameras on every major road in and out of town and at major intersections, allowing police to track who is coming and going.
We had a bank robbery here recently and the getaway car was captured on the bank's outside cameras, and using Flock the police quickly localized where the car was to within a few square blocks. They found it within hours and arrested a suspect. In this case it was a good ending, but it's not hard to imagine how this could be misused, or mistakenly put an innocent bystander under suspicion.
Combine this with most private businesses and many homes now having cameras watching activity on or about the property, and I'm not sure most people realize the extent to which they are surveilled in 2024.
> You spoke out at a town hall meeting and now the mayor wants to run you out of town, or worse.
What you’re describing doesn’t sound like a technology problem. It sounds like a people problem or a political problem. Technology can’t solve that. It is functionally equivalent to a person telling the mayor what you said.
I’m still in favor of it though. Safety is a high priority for me and the US is much more dangerous than I’d like. I’m much more worried about criminals than the government.
> It is functionally equivalent to a person telling the mayor what you said.
I think the implication is that ubiquitous cameras and other surveillance technology would make it easier for the mayor to have you harassed until you leave town.
In an incredibly tiny city nearby they’ve had public CCTV for decades. They even broadcast them. Me and my siblings would watch for my grandma or parents to come back from shopping.
Maybe this helps make your point [0]. The data purchased and
aggregated so seamlessly now that standardised 'one-click' software
similar to X-keyscore (Locate X) is widely available for tracking
citizens.
Well, if you follow legal cases as I do, you know that isn't true! We are surveilled just as much as everyone else, save for maybe the UK, but we're even getting pretty close to that!
> Despite understanding that precise geolocation data is sensitive information that requires consumers’ consent, Respondents fail to take reasonable steps to confirm consumers consented to Respondents’ collection, use, or sale of this data and consumers do not, in fact, consent to the collection, use, and sale of their location data by Respondents.
Is there some actual law that this is based on? I am sympathetic to arguments that this should be a law, and is sketchy and gross, but the legal requirement of active consent for geolocation data seems to be something the agency is just declaring to be true and daring lawsuits to challenge.
> seems to be something the agency is just declaring to be true and daring lawsuits to challenge
I'm pretty sure that this is exactly how it's supposed to work. Federal agencies like the FTC have (had?) the authority to make rules and reinterpret existing rules with the force of law.
In the (present) US government, it really can't work any other way. Without this sort of autonomy, any action by the FTC, EPA, etc would require congressional approval, which would mean that they effectively would never be able to function at all. Law moves far, far too slowly. FTC needs autonomy to go around the law to react to rapidly changing markets and technologies. Notionally their actions should be codified by Congress after the fact, but Congress is incapable of doing anything useful within 20 years.
Especially after recent supreme court decisions, which I support, Congress has to give an agency specific authority within defined boundaries in order to make regulations which have the force of law.
Congress doesn't have to get down to the very specifics (like for example emissions standards numbers for cars), but it does have to be specific enough (can't say: EPA, you're responsible for environment stuff, make whatever laws you feel like).
The legislation charges the FTC with preventing unfair business practices, defines what it means by unfair, and then gives authority to address these things through administrative actions or the courts.
1) Congress members are (generally) not experts outside of law and will probably leave out some word somewhere and then the new regulation gets overturned as the court rules it not in the agency's purview because congress forgot one thing.
2) Congress has been ineffective almost to the point of complete deficiency in the past 10 years, and will likely not pass many new regulations requiring specificity.
IANAL the tech developed and then laws started to form.. slow walking the laws took over due to internal law enforcement and intelligence agency desire to use the data. Tech companies brutally compete with winners emerging controlling billions in cash flows. Both US political parties are completely complicit behind closed doors. "motivated individuals" by the tens of thousands built the tech and drank the kool-aide, reaping many mini-millionaires (reading right now?) $0.02
great, so look for EULA/ToS updates soon to be released by all of the other players in this area with explicit permission granted hidden behind legalese weasel words
It's based on Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair and deceptive practices. The vast majority of "FTC cases" you read about are Section 5 cases.
Honda sold their users' data for 26 cents per car.
Hyundai sold their users' data for 61 cents per car.
Whether or not that data is used to affect insurance premiums is hard to ascertain, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone somewhere in the world was affected by it.
> without obtaining verifiable user consent for commercial and government uses.
and if they did obtain it, this data should have trackable provenance, should be revokable, and there should be payment and royalties to the user for its use and continued use
unless you plan on making it DRM protected, how else do you make data revokable? it's just text that can at worst be screen scraped into whatever format they want/need. plus, as we all know, DRM encryption keys tend to have a way of being broken or discovered or whatever other method of being rendered useless.
we can just copy a regulatory regime seen in other industries: non-compliant offerings are outright illegal and anyone trading in it can be sanctioned outright, while compliant offerings have this feature set.
the feature set can have a standardized way of tracking provenance, which the user can look at and revoke its compliance if desired, by signing a cryptographic signature that produces the expected address that approved consent to begin with. the same address's public key would be used for royalty payment. there are many examples of this working in standardized ways in some networks.
How's that working out? I know companies have spent a lot on GDPR compliance and you occasionally hear some headline number of company y fined z amount (which usually then disappears on appeal), but are people actually any less tracked as a result?
That's kind of what I was driving at since a law with no real enforcement is not really worth having. Leaving laws so vague because the tech is still too new to really know how it will be used is also a bad excuse. If the adtech industry could not have survived with strong privacy laws, then it's not an industry that society needs.
> The companies can retain historic location data if they ensure that it is deidentified or rendered non-sensitive or if consumers consented to the use of their data.
They left a loophole, sounds like nothing will change.
Yes, her term as chair technically ended in September. Trump is expected to pick someone who aligns more toward his and JD Vance's goals regarding big tech.
He was basically the only person in the cabinet who did so.. Elon is not a fan, writing on November 1st that “she’ll be fired soon” so it’s safe to say she’s out.
This did not go far enough.
Why is there a class action lawsuit for Cliff bars and not for scummy location data harvesters.
I am curious whether they sold only segments or device level data and whether you could identify an individual
This is the best question here. The FTC can still make and enforce regulations. But the regulatees can now take those enforecements to federal judges who may modify or vacate the enforcement action, or even the regulation itself.
The loss of chevron does not end regulation. It creates a morass of inconsistent and inexpert judicial inturpretations. It was the worst supreme court decision in decades.
> It was the worst supreme court decision in decades
That's saying a lot considering that the presidential immunity decision is going to create the same kind of uncertainty surrounding presidential conduct which is likely not going to be resolved for decades.
Judges aren't perfect and they aren't completely apolitical. If they were, we wouldn't need appeals courts and SCOTUS.
With Chevron in place, that imperfection was somewhat managed by deferring to the experts in the executive branch who were tasked with implementing the rules provided by Congress.
Without Chevron, a non-expert judge has to decide whose experts they believe.
Additionally, the removal of Chevron opens to doors to a massive number of cases that likely wouldn't be filed under Chevron. So, we're also adding caseload to an already overburdened justice system.
But experts aren't perfect either... I'm not sure how good of an argument this is if it just boils down to trusting a different set of experts and believing one is somehow inherently better than another? Or maybe I misunderstand.
The whole point of having a regulatory agency is that you hire full-time experts in the field and rely on them to build a coherent and stable system of rules and enforcement. As one of the regulated parties, this gives you some solid ground to stand on.
If this can all be second-guessed in court, then it becomes more of a crap shoot based on a series of judges’ rapport with the selected experts du jour, who are selected primarily based on the suitability of their opinion, rather than their expertise.
Nothing. That was the case with the ATF bump stock ban a few years ago - eventually it was deemed executive overreach. But, the bar for proving that was higher with Chevron in place (went to appeals, where without Chevron it could go either way in district court based on a single judge's opinion).
If you believe the government is usually wrong or often acting in bad faith, you might applaud the overturning of Chevron.
If you think the executive should be allowed to implement the often vague directives from Congress without fear of being overwhelmed in court, then you might think the overturning of Chevron will kill the government’s ability to function.
Personally, I’m not keen on the end of Chevron. But it probably isn’t going to lead to complete dysfunction either.
You don't have to think most people are murderers to make murder illegal.
If the regulator is wrong or corrupt 1% of the time, it's good that the victims have legal recourse. The existence of that recourse will also make the regulators more likely to do honest work.
You can't blindly rely on people with power to always do the unselfishly correct thing. Such power corrupts, and there needs to be a somewhere to turn when that power is abused.
There already was somewhere to turn. Chevron based rules could always be explicitly modified by new legistlative directives. Additionally, courts still had final say and could strike down agency regulations if they were based on unreasonable interpretations of federal law.
This ruling is a power grab by the court that says congress must write explicit rules and can't delegate authority to agencies to determine how to execute a mandate. The ethics rules and enforcement structure for those rules are much more strict for employees of government regulatory agencies than for the supreme court justices. If you are concerned about power corrupting, this seems like a very bad decision.
Fair question... with Chevron, the experts in the executive were just presumed to be acting in good faith, particularly in the face of vague legislation.
The bar to overturning those executive rules is now potentially much lower.
Take the ATF's bump stock ban (overturned prior to Chevron being killed, IIRC)...
- Congress has effectively banned machine guns (for normal people to own)
- ATF decides bump stocks make machine guns
- Bump stock owner sues ATF, claiming they overreached
- Courts initially upheld ATF rule (deferring to ATF experts)
- Appeals courts overturned lower court ruling, claiming bump stocks don't meet the definition spelled out by Congress.
As much as I hate it, the appeals court is technically correct. The law passed by Congress was narrowly tailored and bump stocks don't meet that rule.
So, this was a case where Chevron was actually "worse" than "no-Chevron".
But, it's easy enough to imagine the reverse. Congress says "hey EPA, make the air clean!" with little or no guidance on the mechanism they want followed. EPA does its best, but now gets sued by any big industry that wants to pollute. With Chevron in place, implementing that vague law is still possible. Without it, EPA does it's best and often ends up losing to the other side's experts (and very likely the various districts decide differently, leading to inconsistent application of the law across the country, until/unless SCOTUS takes a case).
The simple answer is to require Congress to write detailed laws. But, that's not really possible (given the scope of the government). And exacerbated by the dysfunctional state of affairs we've seen in Congress these last few decades.
I'm not sure what's worse... inconsistent rulings, or a central authority with possibly ulterior motives (which might also change every few years). Perhaps they're in a way, the same thing?
Either way, neither option sounds particularly favorable to me.
> It was the worst supreme court decision in decades.
Probably one of the best in decades... Seriously how did we get to the point that hacker news of all places is fondly dreaming of a near presidential dictatorship where rule making doesn't even need the legislative branch.
I definitely see it as the worst. We only have three branches of government, which one is best suited to handle minor regulation? There are three possible answers and none have the expertise to be competent. The argument for delegating areas of expertise made itself decades ago.
Your argument is completely non nonsensical... Congress is still free to delegate as much or as little as it wants to the Executive. The only thing the removal of Chevron did was prevent agencies from claiming additional authority over things Congress gave them no role in.
Its cute how people give Republicans credit for anything, really.
Its not like the agencies could just do what they want prior - they generally had to follow the policies with freedom to interpret vague laws, and its up to congress to pass more clarifying laws.
The Chevron doctrine overruling wasn't taking power away from the executive branch, it was a backup plan if Democrats won, the Supreme Court can have power against the incoming administration. It should be pretty evident that the Republican Justices are solely in MAGA territory, considering Trump vs US ruling.
It doesn't really remove the discretion within the executive branch agencies. They still have to do some level of interpretation of what Congress really wanted.
Removal of Chevron effectively means a judge then gets to second-guess that interpretation. Previously, they were supposed to defer to the SMEs in the executive.
The same way agency did before Chevron. Chevron has only existed since 1984. Most of our core food, drug, air, etc regulations all predate it. They just have to use the authority explicitly granted to them rather then making shit up.
Congress currently has, and always has had, control of regulatory agencies. There are many ways this works. In many cases, congresses created the agencies by legislation so they can simply change the powers of the agency. If they don’t like a regulation, they can pass a law overriding the regulation. If they didn’t like an agency using chevron a certain way, they can, again, pass a law. They can also withhold monies from the agencies or restrict the use of those monies.
I get that passing laws is hard but that is one of the reasons to have agencies!
As I skim that it just feels like a pile of shit that does nothing but create a few jobs to make reports. It doesn't bind the management. They can literally go do the same thing tomorrow.
Oh wait... "Gravy Analytics is now part of Unacast!"
Why isn't Unacast a party? Where is the monetary fine?
Yeah government doesn't want to end the surveillance. They want to access it. This action serves that purpose and also makes more work for bureaucrats and lawyers. It's a real win-win from a DC perspective.
Are we skimming the same thing here? Section II explicitly binds the management and prohibits sale of precise sensitive location data. This is a consent decree - not sure what the FTC banning a company would look like exactly - using your example, Unacast would be bound by the terms of the decree. FTC's shuttering a line of business for these companies and requiring guardrails (which sure, might create jobs for reporting but...those data governance jobs for this type of data specifically should probably exist?), seems like an ok remedy imo. For context:
> "II. Prohibitions on the Use, Sale, or Disclosure of Sensitive Location Data
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Respondents and Respondents’ officers, agents, and
employees, whether acting directly or indirectly, must not sell, license, transfer, share, disclose, or otherwise use in any products or services Sensitive Location Data associated with the Sensitive Locations that Respondents have identified within 90 days of the effective date of this Order as part of the Sensitive Locations Data Program established and maintained pursuant to Provision III below."
I really wish we would stop being distracted by what corporations are doing with our data, and shift the focus to what governments are doing with it.
It's true of course that corporations often collect and sell this data to the government, so we should focus instead on the data collection at it's source - on our devices. However the data is collected, and whoever collects it - the government will get and use it for their own purposes.
Corporations just want to sell you more stuff. The government wants to control you.
Here's a few previous threads (about "Venntel" or "Gravy Analytics" specifically),
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25288341 ("My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants", 170 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24896456 ("CBP Refuses to Tell Congress How It Is Tracking Americans Without a Warrant", 98 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32689862 ("[Here's] The Manual for the Mass Surveillance Tool Cops Use to Track Phones", 96 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24709347 ("The IRS is being investigated for using location data without a warrant", 80 comments)
I have a feeling all these FTC cases like this and the ones against big tech companies will all be dropped in a couple of months with just a little greasing of the wheels from these companies that are under investigation.
Why should we have piecemeal, extra-legal policies that only favor special interest groups? It's nice that they protect the privacy of church goers, but they can still geofence my neighborhood to estimate my income bracket among other invasions. It's well past time for comprehensive data protection laws rather than a hodgepodge of special treatment policies for whoever the executive wants to curry favor with.
We really need a leak of tracking data on Congresspeople going to compromising places to make this happen.
>It's well past time for comprehensive data protection laws....
Oh, for horror! That might mean more banners on websites....
A really good book on this topic is Byron Tau’s Means of Control. His contention is that this surveillance data has made NSA warrantless wiretaps old news. Cops don’t need to do the spying themselves, they can simply buy the info.
I am of the opinion that at this point, Americans only believe we are less surveilled than people elsewhere. It’s not visible so people forget about it. Yet it is so deeply embedded into the government that it will never be removed.
There's the old saying that "we are free only as much as we don't have guns in our face telling us we're not". The reigns placed on our freedom are just unrecognized by the vast majority of people so they feel they have more freedom than what they might appreciate.
> we are free only as much as we don't have guns in our face telling us we're not.
Is this actually an old saying?
It's at least thirty minutes old.
i might have butchered the actual saying, but the gist is there
I’m not entirely sure if I understand the point you’re making, but let me try an analogy.
We are all forced to buy a car. There is no one with a gun to our head forcing such a purchase, or a law specifically requiring you to buy a car. But nevertheless the laws are structured so that everyone realistically must buy a car, whether they want to or not.
If you chose not to buy a car then your life will be dramatically more expensive and difficult to live, because of the network effects of this requirement.
So while you are technically free to not buy a car, realistically you are forced to do so.
Is that approximately what you mean?
> If you chose not to buy a car then your life will be dramatically more expensive and difficult to live, because of the network effects of this requirement.
That depends where you live. In Chicago, for example, your life will be simpler and less expensive if you don't own a car.
I don't understand this as a blanket rule either. My life is dramatically less expensive because of not having a car. I don't have to fill it with gas. I don't have to carry insurance. I choose not to have a car, and while somethings are less convenient it does not prevent me from existing. I have an ebike and it suffices for everything thing that is a necessity for me. For the other things, rental for a weekend away is very much a thing.
Now, for people that choose to live in the further reaches of suburbia where things are not nearly as close, then cars become more of a need. But that is a decision when location to suburbia or further was made.
Eh, eventually there is a network effect and much of everything needs a car.
If you happen to live in one of the numerous cities in the US that has a hollowed out core, you need a car even if you live downtown. And often the cities that have vibrant walkable downtowns are expensive to move to.
Eh, I lived for 7 years without a car in suburbs. Granted the local market, and I specifically mean market vs supermarket, was a 5 minute walk from me, the supermarket was a 30 minute walk if I felt fancy that night, and Amazon delivered.
I will grant that I was within walking distance of the last stop on the local metros subway system so maybe some people wouldn’t consider that the suburbs, but it was considered so for the city.
Also just broke 20k miles last week on my vehicle I bought in 2021 after moving to the countryside so it’s not like ive
this sounds like not the US. in the vast majority of the US traditional markets/small groceries are effectively extinct and illegal to build new in a financially sensible way.
I don’t have enough data to give you an answer one way or another but this was New England and we have a lot of things that are common for us but weird for the rest of the country by dint of being where colonization efforts were good enough to be started and built up, but not so bad that they are worth replacing.
Examples include individual shops that used to be called markets which are not farmers markets or supermarkets, basements in all/most homes, and town halls being an expectation of normal governance rather than a newsworthy event
Any city with a "downtown" is in 2024 going to have uber/lyft, probably bus services of some sort, and there's always cycling. Groceries and supplies can be delivered to your door. There is less need for a car today than there has been in a long time.
You’re still forced to participate in car culture if you use Lyft/Uber/Instacart, you’ve just added middlemen and increased the cost even further.
This comment comes across as incredibly privileged, to be honest. Most people must drive to work. Asking them to use Uber for such a purpose is just… it’s kind of infuriating.
laws are structured? or just the cumulative impact of societies decisions.
humans are social creatures, of course if everyone else has a car it is going to be inconvenient for you to not have one. this is not a solvable problem
The problem is that corporate interests pushed for a car-centric society. You can't point to consumer choice as a justification for the current system, when we were given little choice to begin with.
It might seem like a moot point in San Francisco where there is free public transit, but in cities like mine, there is an intentional lack of alternatives, in order for cars to be leveraged as a self-reinforcing socioeconomic class boundary.
Maybe in your specific case, that is cities with poor public transit, but the US is massive and has always required some form of long distance travel. One can make arguments for corporate interests in expensive gas-guzzlers, completely eliminating the small and medium sized automobiles, or for corporate-backed government decisions in new city infrastructure being less accessible without a car, but we have a car-centric society here because they are physically required for the majority of Americans to get from A to B, and there is literally no way of fixing that.
> and there is literally no way of fixing that.
This is obviously incorrect from a quick glance at history.
Long distance travel in the US used to occur primarily by train. Short distance travel used to occur by walking and streetcar.
Now, with suburban sprawl (a relatively recent phenomen), we have something we could call medium distance that is filled in some areas by light rail.
We now also have other options for very long distance travel: aircraft.
What I said is obviously correct, especially historically, and you pointed out exactly why: medium travel, which is far more prevalent than simply modern suburbia. Have you even been outside a city? Take a quick glance at history and you will see just how crucial private transport for medium-long distance is in America. Horses and buggies have been a mainstay before the car. Rail is simply too inflexible to support medium travel in sparsely populated areas. And medium travel is what I would classify most rural Americans are from their nearest grocer. Long distance via train, that makes sense. A centralized rail system, such as subway, in a city also makes sense to cover medium distances. However, we already have the infrastructure to handle medium distances without new expensive rails, that being highways. The cost to fit rails across the entire US would be enormous, and that’s ignoring the long term costs such as staffing and maintenance.
In my small town, we have roughly 125 people. We are, roughly, 35 minutes away from the nearest grocery store, or about 40 miles. Too long to walk or bike in a reasonable time. You could use a motorized bike but the amount of food for a family would be unwieldy. The only viable solution is to drive via car, because you need the trunk space. And both options to get there require roads. Now, let’s suppose we magically replaced highways for rails. What happens is simple: either the government is bleeding immense amounts of money orchestrating train rides to places where no one is regularly using it, or certain less populated areas are underserved.
> but we have a car-centric society here because they are physically required for the majority of Americans to get from A to B, and there is literally no way of fixing that.
The majority of Americans trying to get from A to B are driving less than 60 km/day, a distance which trains can cover pretty damn fast.
For longer travel you could have high speed trains on both coasts' corridors, very few people are traveling NYC -> LA on a regular basis, most people will travel on their surroundings (500-1000 km).
You could have a multimodal system covering the most important urban corridors, rural places would almost always need cars due to the low density but it's a big fat lie that the USA is car-centric because it's the only solution for its size.
The only reason you are a car-centric country in 2024 is because of incentives for the car industry, the design of your cities being stuck in car-centric mindset from the 1950s-1960s.
You don't need to give up cars completely, you just need infrastructure to not require a car for people traveling around your major urban centres. High speed rail corridors between Seattle - Portland - San Francisco - Los Angeles - Las Vegas - Phoenix, another corridor from Boston - NYC - Philadelphia - Baltimore - DC branching out to Pittsburgh - Cleveland - Detroit - Chicago. With those you cover a lot of the major economic centres.
China is also massive and they've managed it.
Except for some new shiny skyscraper, the USA feels more backwards each time I visit, like the country is stuck in the 1980s-1990s and refuses to be updated to how a modern country can be in 2024.
> The problem is that corporate interests pushed for a car-centric society
I'd say it's more NIMBY interests than corporate interests.
The US, in contrast to Asia and Europe, builds sprawling suburbs, consisting only of single-family houses, with no multi-story apartment complexes and no other services/infrastructure in walking distance.
Most people would tell you that they don't want things to be this way, but will actually complain about proposals to make things better.
If you build apartment complexes, you can fit more people in a smaller area, which makes public transit a lot more economical. Add the fact that you don't need to go anywhere far at all for a lot of things, like grocery shopping for example, and that makes you need a car a lot less.
It's also worth considering that the US has been constantly rich for the last century or so, it has been far less affected by the second world war, dictatorships and communism than Europe and Asia, which made cars a lot less of a luxury, and hence made public transit a lot less of a necessity.
Leveraging cars as a self-reinforcing socioeconomic class boundary is a direct consequence of all of this, but also one more (self-reinforcing) reason why people need cars. You just can't do that sort of thing in Europe, if there are well-off people without cars, you can't assume that well-off people have cars, so well-off people will keep not having cars, and so it goes.
Uh no. Most people do want large single-family homes. Maybe you’ve heard stories about the real estate market over the last 10 years?
It's more like, you think you are free, because from birth society and CorpGov condition you to operate within an accepted status quo, and incentives are structured in order to support that.
But the moment you question the status quo, or try to go against it, you find yourself targeted by corporate and social violence. You might lose your job, the respect of your peers, your family, house, car or more.
Here is an easy example:
A portion of your tax money is funding genocide and anti-democratic military coups in Israel and other countries.
If you decide (as any rational citizen should) to no longer pay income tax knowing that you lack any discretion over how it is spent, and you decide to demand a more transparent and restricted tax system, then the government will threaten you with economic hardship and even prison. They will surveil and discredit you if you receive any modicum of notoriety, just as they do to sociopolitical activists and protestors.
You won't be able to operate a business while opposing income tax laws, and thus conscious political action is relegated to the elite, who don't need to work, and the poor, who already don't significantly benefit from the system. The rest of the working class is forced to play ball, or lose everything.
That's not freedom, even if it looks like Freedom™ to a certain class of bootlickers who are conditioned to maintain the status quo, even if it means turning on their neighbor.
It's extremely possible to live in Boston (or some surrounding areas like Cambridge or Brookline) without a car. I did for 6 years.
The emphasis should be on Boston not extremely, there are few cities in America you can live without a car or be considered an outcast without one
And that is an incredibly expensive place to live.
I still remember the Alewife and Braintree...
> But nevertheless the laws are structured so that everyone realistically must buy a car, whether they want to or not.
Do you mean lack of government subsidies supporting better public transportation? Or something else?
The car industry has been lobbying congress and locales for 50+ years. Laws like jaywalking were at the behest of car companies, and that alone makes walking legally very difficult in nearly any area with a downtown.
The lack of subsidies certainly don't help. Neither does the insatiable appetite for new cars.
Do you know anyone who has ever been cited for jaywalking?
Ironically, outside the US I managed to live until the age of 41, before I caved in and got a driver's license. Instead, I got around by train, tram, bus, bicycle, feet and taxi. I would argue, that in a society not designed to require a car, you are not really forced to.
Do you have some concrete examples of these reigns placed on our freedoms that most people apparently aren't intelligent enough to realize?
If you're a heterosexual white male, you probably won't notice them. You'll also probably not care for that any non-heterosexual white male might feel differently. For everyone else, we have loads of examples of how not free they are at times. Heaven help you if you "fit the description".
So… no?
Just race and sex baiting with vague allusions, but not actually a specific example when asked…?
If you can't think of any specific examples on your own, then you're just not really trying very hard.
Try driving while not white in certain cities and see how free you feel. Try being a naturalized citizen or first gen to see how free you are in certain cities. Try being a female and looking to make your own health care decisions in certain states. Are these less vague allusions enough for you?
Freedom does not mean the opposite of being in jail. There's a lot of freedoms that are taken away from people purely based on race/sex whether you want to call it baiting or not. They still exist as problems.
> Are these less vague allusions enough for you?
No, not at all. For example, plenty of white people feel unwelcome in areas — but neither group is prohibited and in both cases the experience is generally a) in their own head because nobody thinks about other people and/or b) cultural because there’s members of that community who don’t experience the same.
> Try being a female and looking to make your own health care decisions in certain states.
When your rights intersect another’s rights is always a matter of law — I’m not free to kill others outside legislated confines, either.
> There's a lot of freedoms that are taken away from people purely based on race/sex whether you want to call it baiting or not.
Then you should list some, rather than give vague and untrue grievance narratives.
It boils down to who have the right and what the exceptions are.
Sometimes I found it funny seeing people feeding fish to octopus, calming they are sentiment, and supporting abortion.
Surely no sane person would think "Octopus > Baby > Fish". We are just inconsistent, and never admit we are that inconsistent.
Quoting what you heard off your telescreen is not convincing. For one, what “certain cities” are you even talking about? Are you referring to blacks being pulled over in black-majority crime-heavy areas? And I have never heard of stigmas against naturalized citizens. As for the vague allusion to abortion, I’m not allowed to kill a baby after it comes out, so why should it be legalized for the mother to? Especially when, if she doesn’t want a child, she can simply get an IUD, or simply take birth control and morning afters?
Most of it these days is less about being intelligent enough and more about whether you're positioned to encounter or hear about a "chilling effect" [1]. Historians will probably only ever be able to debate order-of-magnitude estimates of how many students gave up protesting because of the Kent State shootings, or how many writers "self-censored" because of PRISM/XKeyscore [2], or how many people decide not to exercise their Second Amendment rights because they don't want to risk being categorized as "armed" in a police encounter [3] [4].
One example that's a bit more concrete is the combination of pre-trial detention and plea bargains. These form, in effect, a punishment for exercising one's right to a fair trial, a punishment that exists because our court system is quite far from having the capacity to properly handle the sheer volume of prosecutions that occur [5].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
[2] https://pen.org/report/chilling-effects/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
[5] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/26/plea-bargainin...
As an attorney, I find your plea bargain argument unpersuasive. Major themes in the criminal justice system are acknowledgment of guilt and acceptance of responsibility. These are going to work against you after spending a year claiming you didn’t do it if the jury decides you did.
Well... I think the NSA should be abolished!
Not just police... the NSA as well.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-i...
I would say it's more like the American people are so propagandized in favor of free markets and enterprises and so poisoned at the notion of the Government doing literally anything that they utterly don't care about how thoroughly and completely our freedoms have been subsumed by capital interests, as long as they aren't "big government me no like."
Government death panels? Orwellian, literally 1984, communist, socialist. Your insurance company refusing to cover your cancer treatment? Well that's the free market bub, can't argue with it. Sorry you're gonna die.
Like I'm being hyperbolic, sure, but I am being that hyperbolic?
You can always pay out of pocket for healthcare. "Government death panels" are death panels because it is illegal to seek any other care/recourse
There was never any proposal for any system that bans people from paying for their own care :|
You’ve been duped.
if there is a cancer treatment that is covered by Canadian Medicare but the government chooses not to cover you for whatever reason (world is in triage, etc. etc.), you cannot pay out of pocket for that care.
You would also be free to travel to another country to pay for that care.
right, because it is illegal to pay for care in Canada outside of the system. i didn't say that Canada had some global anti-private care enforcement power
Unfamiliar with Canadian healthcare but I can’t find anything to back that up. This link says you can buy private insurance to cover what isn’t covered by their public option: https://canadianvisa.org/blog/immigration/are-you-covered-ho...
If the services aren’t available to anyone due to resource issues that’s not the same as a death panel deciding you’re simply not worth covering. If there is a shortage, resources have to be allocated somehow whether or not there is a public option.
Which isn’t available for some people under the public option - if it is ever covered by Canada Medicare, then it is illegal to pay privately.
> If the services aren’t available to anyone due to resource issues that’s not the same as a death panel deciding you’re simply not worth covering.
Resource issues because they don’t have the funding to pay for additional care of this type. Allowing private funding pushes the demand curve out and increases quantity supplied of the scarce resource.
Your link does nothing to disprove the scenario I am describing because I was describing a covered cancer procedure that the govt can use discretion to block you from purchasing in Canada.
In any system with a limited resource you will need some way to triage care and allocate it appropriately.
In a private system, those with money can prioritize themselves over those without it. In the US this results in huge numbers of people who lack basic care, and a small group of people who can pay large sums for care with diminishing returns. Consequently, Americans live shorter lives than Canadians.
What you are describing is a law that prevents a person from paying to skip other people in line. It seems like a pretty good idea to me.
we long ago figured out that queues, price caps, and shortages are a very bad system of delivering resources to people. i don’t understand the insistence that we do the same for the most life saving resources of all.
regardless, we have moved on to this argument because the original point is absolutely true: public systems intrinsically make it illegal to seek care out of the system.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10118619/bc-cancer-agency-wait-ti...
There is no such thing as "government death panels" under any proposed universal healthcare system.
Je suis Alfie Evans, Charlie Gard, Archie Battersbee.
There was no “death panel” involved with Archie Battersbee though. He had a Glasgow coma level of 3, the literal lowest (which is proportional to survival odds), and didn’t even have a pulse for over 40 minutes. He was most likely dead by the time his mother found him, and was certainly dead at the hospital. If memory serves his brainstem was even beginning to suffer from necrosis before they pulled treatment.
For context a GCS Score of 3 is:
+1 Your eyes don’t open for any reason. +1 You can't speak or make sounds. +1 You don’t move in response to pressure.
So you get points for existing, and the tests can include causing pain (pinch ear, press nail bed, knuckles to chest [depending on jurisdiction]) to make someone have movement.
However, while GCS of 3 is the bottom of the GCS chart, it's not the only measurement used.
"Conclusions. We believe that patients with blunt head injury presenting with a GCS score of 3 should be treated aggressively. Our results showed that 50.8% of these patients survived their injury and 13.2% achieved a good functional outcome at the 6-month follow-up." - NIH
My favorite part of GCS: Emergency care books say "don't worry you don't have to memorize this, you'll always have a chart", yet calculating it exactly is on 2 different US emergency care national exams.
The point is not that there's a literal death panel, but instead the healthcare committee trampled over the rights of parents and individuals. If they want to bring their children overseas for treatment, the white coats should get the fuck out of their way. By the logic of the other commenters, "My body my choice" is only for political causes you believe in amirite?
I have heard proposals to allow the government to compete with private insurance on the free market (the public option/Medicare for all).
I have never heard a serious suggestion for the government to ban private insurance in the US.
Even in “communist” China where the government negotiates drug prices, people can buy private insurance.
Well it has already been implemented in Canada which is the country that most resembles us out of any
Some people might be against regulating private data collection on principle, but I would imagine far more people are simply unaware of it. And even if they are, it’s pretty damn hard to opt out of, and the harms are pretty abstract.
Unless you can demonstrate concrete ways in which it even inconveniences someone, it’s gonna fall pretty low on most people’s priorities.
> I am of the opinion that at this point, Americans only believe we are less surveilled than people elsewhere.
I'm not sure who believes that (Hollywood/any cop tv show would have you believing the opposite), but I'm also skeptical that these data brokers are only brokering US data.
> (Hollywood/any cop tv show would have you believing the opposite)
Hollywood and cop TV would have you believe that "zoom, enhance" is a legitimate means of surveillance. I suspect most educated Americans avoid framing their understanding of surveillance around CSI and SVU.
On the other hand, the number of public cameras has exploded in the past decade. Even moderately small towns are likely to have Flock cameras on every major road in and out of town and at major intersections, allowing police to track who is coming and going.
We had a bank robbery here recently and the getaway car was captured on the bank's outside cameras, and using Flock the police quickly localized where the car was to within a few square blocks. They found it within hours and arrested a suspect. In this case it was a good ending, but it's not hard to imagine how this could be misused, or mistakenly put an innocent bystander under suspicion.
Combine this with most private businesses and many homes now having cameras watching activity on or about the property, and I'm not sure most people realize the extent to which they are surveilled in 2024.
This is a global trend.
"Public camera" (as in state/city owned) is the least of my worries -- I know who I should sue when the data are leak.
Many camera just put all footage on in some unsecured server in China or public S3 bucket .
> "Public camera" […] is the least of my worries
Even here in HN there is a blithe dismissal of the import of constant surveillance.
What happens when they come for you, though? You spoke out at a town hall meeting and now the mayor wants to run you out of town, or worse.
> I know who I should sue when the data are leak.
Sure, and from Equifax et al we know what you’ll get - a year of free credit monitoring.
I would love examples showing that I should be less cynical.
> You spoke out at a town hall meeting and now the mayor wants to run you out of town, or worse.
What you’re describing doesn’t sound like a technology problem. It sounds like a people problem or a political problem. Technology can’t solve that. It is functionally equivalent to a person telling the mayor what you said.
Maybe a better example would be the facial recognition software quickly becoming ubiquitous https://www.npr.org/2023/01/21/1150289272/facial-recognition...
I’m still in favor of it though. Safety is a high priority for me and the US is much more dangerous than I’d like. I’m much more worried about criminals than the government.
> It is functionally equivalent to a person telling the mayor what you said.
I think the implication is that ubiquitous cameras and other surveillance technology would make it easier for the mayor to have you harassed until you leave town.
In an incredibly tiny city nearby they’ve had public CCTV for decades. They even broadcast them. Me and my siblings would watch for my grandma or parents to come back from shopping.
Medina? https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/cameras-keep-track...
I disagree that Americans don't base their views on TV, fictional or otherwise. I wish I had your optimism.
Maybe this helps make your point [0]. The data purchased and aggregated so seamlessly now that standardised 'one-click' software similar to X-keyscore (Locate X) is widely available for tracking citizens.
[0] https://www.404media.co/email/f459caa7-1a58-4f31-a9ba-3cb53a...
Well, if you follow legal cases as I do, you know that isn't true! We are surveilled just as much as everyone else, save for maybe the UK, but we're even getting pretty close to that!
> Despite understanding that precise geolocation data is sensitive information that requires consumers’ consent, Respondents fail to take reasonable steps to confirm consumers consented to Respondents’ collection, use, or sale of this data and consumers do not, in fact, consent to the collection, use, and sale of their location data by Respondents.
Is there some actual law that this is based on? I am sympathetic to arguments that this should be a law, and is sketchy and gross, but the legal requirement of active consent for geolocation data seems to be something the agency is just declaring to be true and daring lawsuits to challenge.
> seems to be something the agency is just declaring to be true and daring lawsuits to challenge
I'm pretty sure that this is exactly how it's supposed to work. Federal agencies like the FTC have (had?) the authority to make rules and reinterpret existing rules with the force of law.
In the (present) US government, it really can't work any other way. Without this sort of autonomy, any action by the FTC, EPA, etc would require congressional approval, which would mean that they effectively would never be able to function at all. Law moves far, far too slowly. FTC needs autonomy to go around the law to react to rapidly changing markets and technologies. Notionally their actions should be codified by Congress after the fact, but Congress is incapable of doing anything useful within 20 years.
This puts a bit of a weird spin on it.
Especially after recent supreme court decisions, which I support, Congress has to give an agency specific authority within defined boundaries in order to make regulations which have the force of law.
Congress doesn't have to get down to the very specifics (like for example emissions standards numbers for cars), but it does have to be specific enough (can't say: EPA, you're responsible for environment stuff, make whatever laws you feel like).
For example the origination of the FTC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_Act_o...
The legislation charges the FTC with preventing unfair business practices, defines what it means by unfair, and then gives authority to address these things through administrative actions or the courts.
There are two downsides to this new methodology:
1) Congress members are (generally) not experts outside of law and will probably leave out some word somewhere and then the new regulation gets overturned as the court rules it not in the agency's purview because congress forgot one thing.
2) Congress has been ineffective almost to the point of complete deficiency in the past 10 years, and will likely not pass many new regulations requiring specificity.
Too bad.
The solution to Congress being ineffective is not strengthening the executive to make law.
I don't want to live in a country ruled by bureaucracy driven by a dictator.
Federal agencies have discretion, sure - but it's not unlimited discretion.
IANAL the tech developed and then laws started to form.. slow walking the laws took over due to internal law enforcement and intelligence agency desire to use the data. Tech companies brutally compete with winners emerging controlling billions in cash flows. Both US political parties are completely complicit behind closed doors. "motivated individuals" by the tens of thousands built the tech and drank the kool-aide, reaping many mini-millionaires (reading right now?) $0.02
great, so look for EULA/ToS updates soon to be released by all of the other players in this area with explicit permission granted hidden behind legalese weasel words
Click-thru EULA's can be done away with with the flick of a pen.
Please, then flick the pen and make this improvement for all of society. What? It's actually not that easy. Okay then, thanks for playing
It's based on Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair and deceptive practices. The vast majority of "FTC cases" you read about are Section 5 cases.
I would like to see action against car makers like Honda and Subaru and Ford for selling location data from the car’s GPS
Don't forget Hyundai, too.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61711288/automakers-sold-...
Honda sold their users' data for 26 cents per car.
Hyundai sold their users' data for 61 cents per car.
Whether or not that data is used to affect insurance premiums is hard to ascertain, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone somewhere in the world was affected by it.
> without obtaining verifiable user consent for commercial and government uses.
and if they did obtain it, this data should have trackable provenance, should be revokable, and there should be payment and royalties to the user for its use and continued use
>should be revokable
this data will self-destruct in five seconds?
unless you plan on making it DRM protected, how else do you make data revokable? it's just text that can at worst be screen scraped into whatever format they want/need. plus, as we all know, DRM encryption keys tend to have a way of being broken or discovered or whatever other method of being rendered useless.
nothing to do with DRM
we can just copy a regulatory regime seen in other industries: non-compliant offerings are outright illegal and anyone trading in it can be sanctioned outright, while compliant offerings have this feature set.
the feature set can have a standardized way of tracking provenance, which the user can look at and revoke its compliance if desired, by signing a cryptographic signature that produces the expected address that approved consent to begin with. the same address's public key would be used for royalty payment. there are many examples of this working in standardized ways in some networks.
Not everything has to be a tech solution. Legislate that companies must delete the data and punish them if they don’t. Much like GDPR.
How's that working out? I know companies have spent a lot on GDPR compliance and you occasionally hear some headline number of company y fined z amount (which usually then disappears on appeal), but are people actually any less tracked as a result?
That's kind of what I was driving at since a law with no real enforcement is not really worth having. Leaving laws so vague because the tech is still too new to really know how it will be used is also a bad excuse. If the adtech industry could not have survived with strong privacy laws, then it's not an industry that society needs.
> The companies can retain historic location data if they ensure that it is deidentified or rendered non-sensitive or if consumers consented to the use of their data.
They left a loophole, sounds like nothing will change.
> if consumers consented
The consumer has a phone, they obviously consented - hardly passing through the eye of a needle.
I wish they would take action on collecting data
How nice of the FTC to do this.
I mean, it won't matter come January 21st, but it's a nice thought.
Are these Lina Khan’s final days?
It's when an administration that thinks that any and all regulations are job-killing and burdensome takes power, with a Congress and SCOTUS to match.
Yes, her term as chair technically ended in September. Trump is expected to pick someone who aligns more toward his and JD Vance's goals regarding big tech.
Regarding people who were mean to Big Don, no matter what industry or whether they in fact have a right to be mean to Big Don *
Vance was praising her
He was basically the only person in the cabinet who did so.. Elon is not a fan, writing on November 1st that “she’ll be fired soon” so it’s safe to say she’s out.
Vance was also calling Trump "America's Hitler" at one point.
This did not go far enough. Why is there a class action lawsuit for Cliff bars and not for scummy location data harvesters. I am curious whether they sold only segments or device level data and whether you could identify an individual
Off the gravy train for them! (Sorry)
How can the FTC make any enforceable rules now that Chevron is gone?
This is the best question here. The FTC can still make and enforce regulations. But the regulatees can now take those enforecements to federal judges who may modify or vacate the enforcement action, or even the regulation itself.
The loss of chevron does not end regulation. It creates a morass of inconsistent and inexpert judicial inturpretations. It was the worst supreme court decision in decades.
> It was the worst supreme court decision in decades
That's saying a lot considering that the presidential immunity decision is going to create the same kind of uncertainty surrounding presidential conduct which is likely not going to be resolved for decades.
See also Citizens United.
Not of this decade and didn't result in years of litigation to figure out what the 'precedent' meant.
Even worse than near-blanket immunity for the President? I guess we'll find out in January!
But yeah, the inconsistent rulings from the bench will be a total dumpster fire.
Why do you think there will be inconsistent rulings? Wouldn't any such case be accompanied by subject matter expert opinions and testimony?
Judges aren't perfect and they aren't completely apolitical. If they were, we wouldn't need appeals courts and SCOTUS.
With Chevron in place, that imperfection was somewhat managed by deferring to the experts in the executive branch who were tasked with implementing the rules provided by Congress.
Without Chevron, a non-expert judge has to decide whose experts they believe.
Additionally, the removal of Chevron opens to doors to a massive number of cases that likely wouldn't be filed under Chevron. So, we're also adding caseload to an already overburdened justice system.
But experts aren't perfect either... I'm not sure how good of an argument this is if it just boils down to trusting a different set of experts and believing one is somehow inherently better than another? Or maybe I misunderstand.
The whole point of having a regulatory agency is that you hire full-time experts in the field and rely on them to build a coherent and stable system of rules and enforcement. As one of the regulated parties, this gives you some solid ground to stand on.
If this can all be second-guessed in court, then it becomes more of a crap shoot based on a series of judges’ rapport with the selected experts du jour, who are selected primarily based on the suitability of their opinion, rather than their expertise.
What says the full-time experts won't have the "wrong" opinions?
Nothing. That was the case with the ATF bump stock ban a few years ago - eventually it was deemed executive overreach. But, the bar for proving that was higher with Chevron in place (went to appeals, where without Chevron it could go either way in district court based on a single judge's opinion).
District court ruling can't also be appealed?
Yes, that’s happened with the bump stock ban.
If you believe the government is usually wrong or often acting in bad faith, you might applaud the overturning of Chevron.
If you think the executive should be allowed to implement the often vague directives from Congress without fear of being overwhelmed in court, then you might think the overturning of Chevron will kill the government’s ability to function.
Personally, I’m not keen on the end of Chevron. But it probably isn’t going to lead to complete dysfunction either.
You don't have to think most people are murderers to make murder illegal.
If the regulator is wrong or corrupt 1% of the time, it's good that the victims have legal recourse. The existence of that recourse will also make the regulators more likely to do honest work.
They already had recourse, as demonstrated by the over-turning of the ATF bump stock ban.
The level of basic ignorance of this stuff is absolutely mind-boggling.
Guys… if the government tells you to do something and you disagree, you could always take them to court.
I applaud your patience.
You can't blindly rely on people with power to always do the unselfishly correct thing. Such power corrupts, and there needs to be a somewhere to turn when that power is abused.
This is why I like the Chevron decision a lot!
Sure, but judges have power too. As do companies with large budgets.
It’s a balancing act and I fear overturning Chevron shifts the balance to far in the other direction.
There already was somewhere to turn. Chevron based rules could always be explicitly modified by new legistlative directives. Additionally, courts still had final say and could strike down agency regulations if they were based on unreasonable interpretations of federal law.
This ruling is a power grab by the court that says congress must write explicit rules and can't delegate authority to agencies to determine how to execute a mandate. The ethics rules and enforcement structure for those rules are much more strict for employees of government regulatory agencies than for the supreme court justices. If you are concerned about power corrupting, this seems like a very bad decision.
Fair question... with Chevron, the experts in the executive were just presumed to be acting in good faith, particularly in the face of vague legislation.
The bar to overturning those executive rules is now potentially much lower.
Take the ATF's bump stock ban (overturned prior to Chevron being killed, IIRC)... - Congress has effectively banned machine guns (for normal people to own) - ATF decides bump stocks make machine guns - Bump stock owner sues ATF, claiming they overreached - Courts initially upheld ATF rule (deferring to ATF experts) - Appeals courts overturned lower court ruling, claiming bump stocks don't meet the definition spelled out by Congress.
As much as I hate it, the appeals court is technically correct. The law passed by Congress was narrowly tailored and bump stocks don't meet that rule.
So, this was a case where Chevron was actually "worse" than "no-Chevron".
But, it's easy enough to imagine the reverse. Congress says "hey EPA, make the air clean!" with little or no guidance on the mechanism they want followed. EPA does its best, but now gets sued by any big industry that wants to pollute. With Chevron in place, implementing that vague law is still possible. Without it, EPA does it's best and often ends up losing to the other side's experts (and very likely the various districts decide differently, leading to inconsistent application of the law across the country, until/unless SCOTUS takes a case).
The simple answer is to require Congress to write detailed laws. But, that's not really possible (given the scope of the government). And exacerbated by the dysfunctional state of affairs we've seen in Congress these last few decades.
I'm not sure what's worse... inconsistent rulings, or a central authority with possibly ulterior motives (which might also change every few years). Perhaps they're in a way, the same thing?
Either way, neither option sounds particularly favorable to me.
administrative agency employees are much more political than judges
The political appointees, sure.
But the career bureaucrats? I’m not convinced.
Source: Believe me
"can now take" isn't really accurate.
You could always appeal the rulings from federal agencies in court and that's how we lost chevron [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...
> It was the worst supreme court decision in decades.
Probably one of the best in decades... Seriously how did we get to the point that hacker news of all places is fondly dreaming of a near presidential dictatorship where rule making doesn't even need the legislative branch.
I definitely see it as the worst. We only have three branches of government, which one is best suited to handle minor regulation? There are three possible answers and none have the expertise to be competent. The argument for delegating areas of expertise made itself decades ago.
Your argument is completely non nonsensical... Congress is still free to delegate as much or as little as it wants to the Executive. The only thing the removal of Chevron did was prevent agencies from claiming additional authority over things Congress gave them no role in.
I think you meant not non non non non non nonsensical
Its cute how people give Republicans credit for anything, really.
Its not like the agencies could just do what they want prior - they generally had to follow the policies with freedom to interpret vague laws, and its up to congress to pass more clarifying laws.
The Chevron doctrine overruling wasn't taking power away from the executive branch, it was a backup plan if Democrats won, the Supreme Court can have power against the incoming administration. It should be pretty evident that the Republican Justices are solely in MAGA territory, considering Trump vs US ruling.
Chevron eliminated discretion regarding how an agency interprets what powers it has been given if the law is unclear about such things.
It does not eliminate the ability to make and enforce rules if those powers/rules are clearly within the scope of the law.
I have no idea about this FTC decision on this second point but agency lawyers tend to be pretty careful about such things.
It doesn't really remove the discretion within the executive branch agencies. They still have to do some level of interpretation of what Congress really wanted.
Removal of Chevron effectively means a judge then gets to second-guess that interpretation. Previously, they were supposed to defer to the SMEs in the executive.
Thankfully our court system isn’t already extremely overburdened, so this is going to go really well.
The same way agency did before Chevron. Chevron has only existed since 1984. Most of our core food, drug, air, etc regulations all predate it. They just have to use the authority explicitly granted to them rather then making shit up.
Ah to live in a time that congress could make laws… swoon
Congress currently has, and always has had, control of regulatory agencies. There are many ways this works. In many cases, congresses created the agencies by legislation so they can simply change the powers of the agency. If they don’t like a regulation, they can pass a law overriding the regulation. If they didn’t like an agency using chevron a certain way, they can, again, pass a law. They can also withhold monies from the agencies or restrict the use of those monies.
I get that passing laws is hard but that is one of the reasons to have agencies!
Chevron was not carte blanche either.
we'll see when it gets challenged
"FTC Bans Location Data Company" no not really.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2123035gravyana...
As I skim that it just feels like a pile of shit that does nothing but create a few jobs to make reports. It doesn't bind the management. They can literally go do the same thing tomorrow.
Oh wait... "Gravy Analytics is now part of Unacast!"
Why isn't Unacast a party? Where is the monetary fine?
Yeah government doesn't want to end the surveillance. They want to access it. This action serves that purpose and also makes more work for bureaucrats and lawyers. It's a real win-win from a DC perspective.
Are we skimming the same thing here? Section II explicitly binds the management and prohibits sale of precise sensitive location data. This is a consent decree - not sure what the FTC banning a company would look like exactly - using your example, Unacast would be bound by the terms of the decree. FTC's shuttering a line of business for these companies and requiring guardrails (which sure, might create jobs for reporting but...those data governance jobs for this type of data specifically should probably exist?), seems like an ok remedy imo. For context:
> "II. Prohibitions on the Use, Sale, or Disclosure of Sensitive Location Data IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Respondents and Respondents’ officers, agents, and employees, whether acting directly or indirectly, must not sell, license, transfer, share, disclose, or otherwise use in any products or services Sensitive Location Data associated with the Sensitive Locations that Respondents have identified within 90 days of the effective date of this Order as part of the Sensitive Locations Data Program established and maintained pursuant to Provision III below."
Huh. It was ok the last 4 years but not next year.
Said in response to literally every law, regulation, or enforcement action ever.
I really wish we would stop being distracted by what corporations are doing with our data, and shift the focus to what governments are doing with it.
It's true of course that corporations often collect and sell this data to the government, so we should focus instead on the data collection at it's source - on our devices. However the data is collected, and whoever collects it - the government will get and use it for their own purposes.
Corporations just want to sell you more stuff. The government wants to control you.
This is false. Corporations want to make money. A big way to do this is to sell your data to governments.
Another way is to use your data to help them become a monopoly and/or manipulate you.
It’s not “sell more stuff”, it’s “assist governments and extract money by any means, including robbing you”.