EU law bods closer to baking new 'cookie law' after battle MEPs have today voted in favour of moving on with legislation that aims to give users more rights over websites that wish to track them. The highly anticipated vote came after a week of political wrangling by centre-right MEPs, who have said that the ePrivacy regulation as it stands would "stifle innovation". The committee …
You realise that BOTH bodies with powers to pass new laws in the EU are made up (primarily) of elected officials right? The Parliament is made up of MEPs which are elected. The Council is made up of Ministers from EU Member States and guess what....they are either elected or chosen by those elected to represent you in your national Government...
The EU Parliament has no powers whatsoever to pass laws. Sure they vote on things, but neither the vote or anything they say and do is binding on anyone, anywhere. They can't edit, pass, reject or repeal laws. The EU can just ignore (and has frequently) what the parliament suggests by their pointless votes. Ministers appointed by elected officials isn't anywhere near the same as them being elected themselves. Our elected officials have every law and decision scrutinised by the press and public - their position and career hang on every decision they make. EU Council members get to make decisions behind closed doors away from scrutiny and repercussions, you can't even compare the two.
And here you are completely incorrect - the Parliament is equal weight with Council of the EU on passing laws - it is the Commission that is not able to pass laws. The way things work is as follows:
The Commission introduce a proposal which is then reviewed by the Parliament which is either voted forward to negotiation with the Council (as happened today) or not. The Council also review and either accept the proposal as per the Parliament report or offer amendments. In the case of amendments the Trialogue discussions begin at the conclusion of which a final vote is made (again with 50/50 weight between the Council and the EP).
The Commission do NOT pass laws (they put forward proposals and enforce laws) and the Parliament CAN introduce laws indirectly by requesting the Commission to do so.
In many cases Ministers ARE elected members of their national Government and ALL EU laws go through an extensive period of public review and consultation (you seem to be confusing treaties with laws).
Perhaps you should go read a little about how European Politics actually works...
In many cases? But not France, Germany Italy, UK and Spain - the big members. The ones who have actual power.
Requesting the EU Commission to pass a law isn't the same as having the power to do it themselves. They have no power, which is why they have no say on Brexit or any deal. As for European politics I understand it perfectly it all starts and ends with Angela Merkel.
You are a bit thick aren't you? You realise that most UK Ministers are elected MPs right?
Also as I already stated the EU Commission NEVER pass laws - they have no mandate or power to pass laws - all they can do is propose new laws and enforce existing laws. You should probably go and read Art. 255 of the TFEU - whilst you are at it, you could do with a refresher on the Single European Act and the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties which since 1986 have ALL extended the legislative powers of the EP.
As I previously stated - EP now have equal footing with the Council (in almost all cases) when it comes to passing new laws. You should update your knowledge you seem to be stuck in 1980 - but then why let facts get int he way of Eurosceptic bullshit eh?
Or perhaps you could just click No to having a tracking Cookie and then visit the site like normal without having to give up your privacy. As it says in the article "... and ensure that, even if a user rejects cookies, they must be allowed access to the site."
And seriously the thought of having to click on one little button on a page to say yes or no to tracking bothers you? What are you 5?
when every website you ever visit always asks you every time (because you say no), it becomes tiresome, so everyone just says yes to consent just to make the nag go away.
So what exactly this this achieve? It just made everyone give their consent, as the mechanism that was being used to store their preference was also the mechanism they were granting permission to.
> ...they made every internet site annoying overnight...
No, that was website owners, who could have used a much simpler method, namely, nor having the unnecessary cookies in the first place. In most cases, the irritating buttons were only there as part of the campaign to make the law look stupid.
(Like my employers, for example, who insisted all our websites added the cookie banner and button... even sites that didn't use cookies at all.)
Article 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC never required any such thing, it was the adtech industry that came up with that to deliberately piss off consumers in an attempt to undermine the law. I was at the round tables - we offered other solutions and warned that the adtech solution was inappropriate. The Directive required consent - it did not specify how that consent should be obtained and in fact deliberately avoided doing so.
Do try to get your facts right.
The proposals extend rules on telcos to over-the-top services like WhatsApp, give users the right to object to being tracked, and ensure that, even if a user rejects cookies, they must be allowed access to the site.
Telcos are usually paid by users for what they provide, while services like WhatsApp and Gmail are free. For Gmail at least, I think it was pretty explicit from the beginning that the invasion of privacy is what makes the service free. In fact, I think you get an invasion-free Gmail if you pay for it.
I'm not sure what is the percentage of people who care about privacy; I would estimate it's not very big at the moment, and that giving people the choice would mostly result in nothing much changing. But I wonder how much the internet would change if everybody opted out of tracking, and websites were forced to provide them the same services.
No, you don't. Where are private paid options? There is no privacy respecting service from Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc.
This is NOTHING to do with innovation. It's everything to do with immoral abuse of information to suit PERCEIVED need not particularly even of Advertisers, but the Advert agency/publishers (Google, Facebook, Amazon etc). Adverts can be served on the Internet without cookies, serialised clear image pixels, javascript etc. Just a link on an image. Count the image loads and the clicks, anything more is an invasion of privacy and exploitation. Also the current model makes it too easy so serve malware as it's so hard to whitelist / blacklist the stupid quantity of domains used on some sites, just for cookies and javascript for so called analytics (advertising information) and adverts.
Where are private paid options? There is no privacy respecting service from Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc.
I believe if you pay for the professional "Gsuite" tools Google promises not to insert ads or scan your mail for keywords. But since it's mostly stopped doing either of those things in the free version, too, that doesn't mean what it used to.
Big players (universities, enterprise-level companies) can negotiate contracts with Google and get pretty much whatever privacy stipulations they want -- often done for HIPPA or FERPA compliance reasons.
..." and get pretty much whatever privacy stipulations they want -- often done for HIPPA or FERPA compliance reasons."...
I believe the Reg previously reported lawsuits against Google for not being transparent and / or not keeping to the agreed terms etc. Let me know if you need help finding those links...
No, you don't. Where are private paid options?
The G Suite offers Gmail, Docs, etc. for businesses. It's paying, but ad-free:
"Google does not collect, scan, or use your data in G Suite services for advertising purposes and we do not display ads in G Suite. We use your data to provide G Suite services, and for system support, such as spam filtering, virus detection, spell-checking, capacity planning, traffic routing, and the ability to search for emails and files within an individual account."
"No, you don't. Where are private paid options?"
Do you know how to use the internet?
https://gsuite.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/security/?secure-by-design_activeEl=data-centers
"Transparency is part of Google's DNA. We work hard to earn and maintain trust with our customers through transparency. The customer – not Google – owns their data. Google does not sell your data to third parties, there is no advertising in G Suite and we never collect or use data from G Suite services for any advertising purposes."
Essentially, you have the choice, pay for GSuite if you genuinely don't want Google using your data for anonymous data purposes, or use the free services as much as you you like (of which when you add them up, add considerable value, Mail, Calendar, Office, Maps, Photos and so on...)
If true, perhaps its because politicians / legislators are now getting wise to the fact that its THEIR own Privacy at stake too, or kids of elite officials anyway... That's a whole different ballgame from the past decade where it was just seen as affecting facebook-google-snap-whatsapp-insta plebs!!!
For the first time, articles like these worry politicians who fear that abuse of tracking / privacy / cookies threatens their own survival:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-27/that-facebook-quiz-might-not-be-so-innocent
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda-of-a-facebook-quiz.html?_r=1
Most browsers have a preference setting which, when enabled, will send a header asking sites not to track the user. It would be really useful if sites were obliged by law to honour these headers. As it is, many advertising firms just say "Fuck that, we know you don't really mean it. So, since we're not compelled to do otherwise, we're going to track you anyway."
This is all good except the part about requiring access to be maintained even if cookies are disabled.
First, I would assume they are only referring to tracking cookies rather than authorisation cookies, that said, given the lack of technical understanding exhibited by most law makers, that cannot be a given.
Secondly, Yes, you have the right not to accept cookies, but unless it's a government website, they should be under no obligation to serve you content.
As the (general) reasons for tracking visitors is the ability to monitise the information by selling it to third parties or to use it to target your own products one end game could be that consumers pay not to be tracked.
A micro payment of a fraction a cent per visit may well be the way forward.
In a lawful society we do not force people to pay for their rights. If we do that you would end up with a privacy underclass, where only wealthy people can afford to maintain their fundamental rights and poor people have none. This is exactly why GDPR makes it illegal to force people to give up their rights to access digital society.
The entire web as we know it for over 20 years was funded by non-privacy invading contextual advertising (which still to this day remains as a much more successful model than behavioural based ads) so forcing people to be tracked is not only not ok it is a really stupid thing for publishers to do - it benefits no-one other than giant adtech firms as publishers are forced to give up control of their content (they have no idea what ads will appear on their pages, how they will look and whether or not they will offend people) as well as insert multiple middlemen into their audience engagement.
That said, despite the FUD, the law does NOT ban behavioural advertising, it just requires that true consent is obtained and we have to remember here that the definition of consent in EU law has not changed - the definition has existed since 1980 with the introduction of Convention 108.
What has changed is that definition has been explicitly clarified in the context of modern digital services and enforcement is now improving with potential penalties that are high enough to make most organisations think about the risk of ignoring the law.
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