> When BICS acquired TeleSign in 2017, it began to fall under the partial control of BICS' parent company, Belgian telecom giant Proximus. Proximus held a partial stake in BICS, which Proximus spun off from its own operations in 1997.
> In 2021, Proximus bought out BICS' other shareholders, making it the sole owner of both the telecom interchange and TeleSign.
Curious how the article's headline goes out of its way to emphasize "US vendor" when the puppet masters in the underlying corporate structure are entirely Belgian.
There's a ton of these anti-fraud data collection companies. That industry (plus marketing/credit card data) is probably the lowest hanging fruit to find privacy violations, much more so than the usual GDPR targets you often hear about.
Maybe they can do the location tracking ones too that western police regularly buy.
This tongue-in-cheeck dig on China may actually mean something if it weren't for the fact that the social credit system, as depicted by the media, doesn't actually exist. It's wholly an invention of the media to project our own fears on. This article goes in-depth about what the actual situation is: https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/social-credit-system/
The bigger story is why people are so receptive to such stories, and why the media keep writing them, even though they're false.
It was actually a tongue-in-cheek dig at a near future ... and one that is likely here already.
While you dismiss the stories, I think they point to exactly how insidious it is.
The 'social credit system' is not one overarching system. Which leads to you and the Spectator to dismiss it, it will be the analysis of accumulated data that, in effect, amount to the same thing.
Your comment that the social credit system 'doesn't actually exist' is woefully naive. No disrespect.
You did caveat that by saying 'as depicted by the media'. And, in general, you would be right. But, in this case, the stories that are pedalled by the media (99% unintentional, I'm sure) serve as a useful metaphor for the wider public that don't scratch the surface of these topics.
That's a horrible way to communicate, but in the absence of any other education, I'll take it. Citizens should rightly be very cautious of anything resembling, or amounting to (in aggregate), a social credit system. My gut says you'd agree.
Your response reads to me as that which I already pointed out: the "Chinese social credit" myth is appealing not because it's factually true but because it's something we use to project our fears on.
You dread the prospects of the myth coming true in your home country. Okay, fair. But you are also saying that that dread justifies making false, exaggerated or distorted assertions about China because the end (combating the myth from becoming true) justifies such means. That I disagree with.
I am Chinese. China has been demonized enough in this cold war already. China shouldn't be collatoral damage in your fight against the myth from becoming true. Such myths have real consequences for Asian people even living outside China. Anti-Asian violence is at an all-time high because the public is fed daily with the narrative that China is some evil empire that's out to get all of us. This creates an environment of paranoia in which real people get hurt. Chinese scientists abroad are being harassed because they "could have links to the CCP" or other bullshit like that.
Sure, protest against the prospects of the myths, that's fine. But that's no excuse for misrepresenting China. One can, and should, protest against the prospects of social credit while also acknowledging that the story about China is largely false.
As I implied, communication via "myth" is horrible. But that is reality. I don't support it, but you can either direct that myth or be the victim of it.
With regards to China, as I said, the social credit system is already well advanced (in the aggregate). Similarly, it is where I am - in the UK. People who ignore it are just comfortable in our situation and are not yet feeling the consequences. Some, at the margin, already are.
Lastly, and I would hope the following is obvious ... but right minded people are not against the bulk of Chinese people who are families just getting on with their lives. But, it's the usual story. I have very serious issues with the Chinese state as an authoritarian machine, it's policies, it's actions. I will not support it on many things, and will call it out. Just as I will not support specific Chinese people who support that state apparatus. And we're not talking about myth here.
Generalised prejudiced, violence, racism is unacceptable ... criticism of the state, and those who support it, is fair game.
When my government does things I don't support, I absolutely castigate them. I'm pleased I can just about still do that (though our right to protest is slowly being eroded here). Just as I would attack the Chinese government. The UK is demonized abroad in areas and I accept that also. This is global politics. You can hide from it, or accept what it is. Sorry, we can't pussy foot around about what lipstick each country is wearing or the impact on people. That has, and will happen. It's incredibly difficult to avoid.
This is why it is odd to me. You seem interested in the view of Chinese abroad than the actual wrong itself. That's lame to me.
Let's get to it. Let's talk about the Uyghurs. I'm interested in your views on state treatment of them. Or is that a misrepresentation too?
I have been asked by moderators not to talk too much about China on HN. Since it seems like you are interested in genuine discussion, I would like to invite you to reach out to me by email. You can find my contact info through my HN profile.
The author of that article grew up in China and likely has familial ties there, one could argue that those factors discourage them from honest criticism
Credit score has a regulated scoring system. It's all based on your debts, and repayment of said debts. You're not going to lose credit score based on your vote.
It’s true that lending is heavily regulated in the US. However I know for a fact that there are startups here that are designing credit scores for foreign markets in developing countries that include all sorts of factors that we would consider bad in the US.
What exactly is wrong with that? How else would you expect to quantify the risk of lending money to some foreign individual? Without such a score, the result is simple: you don’t lend money.
If the score can includes factors that increase the odds of positive ROI, that is better for the lender. There is no incentive to make a “biased” score as that would create a market opportunity for someone else. Scores are built to whatever is allowed by regulation or lack thereof.
Or, (how it works here), I show them my employment contract and they look at my current debts. If the income:debt ratio is too risky for them ... they say no. It's a bit more invasive for other forms of income (foreign/capital gains/self-employment) in that they want to see bank statements for the last three years and take the average amount coming in as you income. There are no magic scores, or hidden factors. It's just, 'can you afford to feed yourself and pay your mortgage if you buy this house.'
Will you? We don’t know. It’s not unheard of for people to make lots of money and also avoid paying debts. And thus we need to know your payment history.
Similarly, even if you have a poor debt to income ratio, it might not matter much if you have a long history of always paying your debts on time no matter what. And that’s how poor people get to have nice things.
This seems like semantics. Presumably they're taking these factors and putting them into some kind of calculation which probably outputs something like a... score.
Maybe what you are criticizing is a particular input in that calculation? I notice you don't mention repayment of past debts, for example.
That score doesn't follow you your whole life. There are some files in many countries that list failures to pay off debts, but their access is extremely controlled and subject to verification.
My "credit score" exists for 30 minutes while my bank gets my proof of income and ID, and that's it. In the same way, my landlord does not get access to any of these files, because it's none of his business. It is illegal to keep track of individuals like this. In the US, this incentivizes keeping individuals in poverty, and its ease of access means that it is easy for any predatory lending institution to explicitly target people with low credit scores. It creates de facto castes.
I got in a motorcycle accident at 18, and had to learn to walk again. You know what I couldn't do during that time? Pay my bills because I couldn't work. You know what I can't get despite making six figures these days? A decent credit card, a car, or a house. I have to pay cash, because going bankrupt at the literal beginning of your life, follows you for life.
Sure, the inputs are gone, but the evidence is there. When you go bankrupt and finally get back on your feet and can get credit again, there are only certain types of credit you can get. Eventually, the original negative inputs go away, but the types of credit still tell the same story. It can take decades before you are able to wipe away most of the evidence and get treated with some modicum of trust.
>Nor does any score in the US - none of the inputs, even bankruptcy, last more than several years.
Ah, it's all good then, the completely arbitrary score handled by private companies reselling data on your every move only exists for seven rolling years.
>Your reliability in paying definitely seems like it would be their business.
Nope. It's law enforcement's business. If I do not pay, they go see the police, and a judge will handle it if necessary.
As shown in the three panels, credit scores are distributed over the entire support for all three income groups, and, apart from the distribution of the high-income group having a larger mass at the high end of the distribution support, the shapes of the histograms of high- and middle-income groups are broadly consistent. Indeed, even among the high-income consumers, a significant mass of consumers have credit scores lower than 680, commonly known as "nonprime" or "subprime" borrowers.
That it doesn't matter if Johnny-seven-figures has a bad credit score. It's a non issue to him. Booh hoo he can't borrow to buy a Bugatti Veryon. The lower your income, the worse a credit score affects you. It's reverse means testing, where a bad credit score means you get into loans with higher interest rates which you cannot repay, which gets you worse rates that you cannot repay, etc.
Because there are lots of factors that are unjust as criterion for moneylending. (This is how you get redlining, for instance).
For instance, if people in location X tend to be bad at paying back their loans, I still don't think it should be legal to purchase location data from some weather app and then incorporate the amount of time someone's phone spends in location X into some creditworthiness score. One might argue that allowing this practice makes credit more accessible for everyone else because we don't have to comingle with all the people in location X, but I still think it should be a prohibited practice (and it is - in the US).
In developing countries with little regulatory sophistication, the law is simply not ready to deal with these things - they are busy dealing with murders, drug dealing, etc., not consumer finance.
You state that it makes credit more accessible to everyone else yet don’t really cite any reason why discrimination based on location is inherently bad.
The truth is it isn’t. Anything that helps the lender feel they are reducing their risk in lending will allow them to accept lower interest rates.
Of course, for a person that has no choice but to be in location X, this sucks as the data will suggest lending money to them at a higher rate due to greater perceived risk, but it’s tough to argue with data.
You realize location can easily be a proxy for protected classes such as race?
And suppose a location has been found with above average risk. To compensate, we increase interest rates in that area... making it more likely that people are unable to repay their loans, making the area more risky, increasing interest rates... the risk estimation algorithm essentially becomes part of enforcing and maintaining existing economic inequality.
The only reason we don’t take race as a factor in credit scores is because it is illegal, not because it wouldn’t lead to more optimized outcomes.
If members of a certain race consistently don’t pay debts in a way that is statistically significant, then it would be prudent to lend to them at higher interest rates due to perceived risk. Sounds racist, but reality has no obligation to conform to our ideas of racial equality. Races can develop habits and cultures amongst themselves that produce certain emergent behaviors. I think arguing against this just makes you seem naive.
In the above example, you are more than welcome to ignore race and lend money to everyone at the same interest rate regardless of race, but I predict you will see worse returns. Reality is what still exists even if you close your eyes and ignore the data.
if those at a particular location _indeed_ have higher risk, then what's wrong with having a higher interest? Are you saying that a business must lend at a lower interest rate, for some sort of social justice and equality?
If those people at said particular location _actually_ does not have higher risk, but is only higher due to their location association (e.g., their job is secure, etc), then an enterprising lender could find that out, and thus get the business from those people at a lower interest rate. This would be a form of arbitrage - they will steal marketshare from another lender who is unwilling to lend at the lower rate.
> The lending of money is the root cause of so many of modern society's ills.
There have been many attempts to ban lending. The result is always a fairly non-functioning economy.
For example, in most businesses, there is a disconnect between when the payroll must be paid, and accounts receivable get paid. This disconnect is taken care of by having a line of credit. You pay the payroll on credit, and pay off the credit when accounts receivable get paid.
Alternative: maintain a reserve of money so that you can honor your obligations on time. People hate that because they can't stand to watch a pile of money just sitting there doing nothing. No, they just have to "efficiently allocate" that money no matter what.
What's ironic about your statement is most people who dislike capitalism complain about rich people "hoarding" money, and that money should be "liberated" and put to use.
You, on the other hand, want rich people to hoard money.
The money is not really liberated, it is duplicated. When that money is put to use by lending it out, it literally creates new money out of nothing. There's money in your account and that same money is simultaneously lent out to others. This massively inflates the money supply, devaluing the currency. Printing of currency is insignificant next to the power of loans.
It's why things like startups are a low interest rate phenomenon and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the real reason why there were massive layoffs the second the US federal reserve raised interest rates: less loans means less free money for corporations to spend.
> You, on the other hand, want rich people to hoard money.
Of course. I too would like to be able to hoard money. Right now it would be irrational to do so since it would be inflated away to zero. We should all be able to simply amass wealth without having to perpetually chase investments to protect against the inflation caused by the sheer existence of those same investments.
> The lending of money is the root cause of so many of modern society's ills.
No, the root cause is scarcity, which also manifests in other ills.
Lending is simply one strategy sometimes used when scarcity happens.
For example, consider a lone shipwrecked man who starves to death on a desolate island. That isn't a tragedy of lending--which is not merely absent but impossible--but a tragedy of scarcity.
You have a point but we don't yet have the means to fix scarcity itself yet. In a post scarcity society there would be no need for an economy to begin with, lending would not even need to exist.
Loan companies could model a population's exact historical credit risk by combining extensively detailed loan data, right? But they can't use that calculated credit risk to issue loans because it probably contains off-limits attributes like gender, race, religion, etc.
What about developing their "clean" model by minimizing errors between it and the actual model? The clean model wouldn't contain any regulated inputs but will be as close as you can get to the real thing.
That depends on what "as close as you can get" means, using just those data points. And whether there's extremely overfit training on recent forbidden parameters with a huge number of degrees of freedom, or whether you have the exact opposite.
Social score is also not shot put someone's ass. It's calculated based on your criminal record and some other factors. Seems like, as per Wikipedia, it's mostly focused on company social credit scores.
"...and some other factors." Nice handwaving. From your own link:
> In addition to dishonest and fraudulent financial behavior, there has been proposals in some cities to officially list several behaviors as negative factors of credit ratings, including playing loud music or eating in rapid transits,[68] violating traffic rules such as jaywalking and red-light violations,[76][83] making reservations at restaurants or hotels, but not showing up,[86] failing to correctly sort personal waste,[96][97][81]
Only credit scores are regulated. Other rating companies that keep track of who got arrested, or who got evicted have no such regulations. And the ratings agencies that expand upon the credit reporting, like The Work Number, are outside of the laws/regs governing credit scores.
Right, what we trade in regulating the score, we lose in data privacy since all credit scoring systems have no problem fucking around with your data giving it to whoever asks even though there is a tremendous amount of information attached.
No, it's based on a lot more than that, like how long you've been in the system, and average age of account. This is why you can be radioactive despite never having missed a payment on anything -- because you never carried debt.
Correct, if you have no credit history then financial institutions are not as confident in your ability to pay back loans. This is not remotely comparable to reducing people's social credit for associating with political undesirables.
I wasn't making the comparison, I was correcting a misrepresentation you made about the US credit scoring system only penalizing you for not paying debts.
And as written, someone that didn't already know about it would make a false inference about what kind of people would be marked as radioactive. I was pre-empting that (very likely) false inference. The fact that you didn't explicitly say the false thing (or that you can cleverly read "based on debts" to mean some non-obvious thing) doesn't obviate the need for that clarification.
Also Americans: relentlessly, publicly proclaim in large numbers that the president is a fake and a pedophile, all while rightly being extended credit, voting, renewing drivers licenses, traveling internationally, and making (apparently lifelong) friends at relevant conspiracy-theory conventions
Is there evidence that anything remotely analogous to that level of freely expressing disapproval of national leadership can happen in China?
If not then the word "dystopian" properly belongs where you put it, and Americans should work tirelessly to avoid becoming that.
The political orientations you describe don't threaten or oppose the political system, it's part of it and leveraged by the ruling capitalist class as its defenders. A better question to ask is, how does publicly voicing and acting with _real_ opposition get treated in the US? That's way more dystopion. See COINTELPRO for a historical example. Its modern equivalents which has only intensified the hunt for real, opposition does have extremely dystopian tendencies, through cencorship and political persecution.
The example I gave had adherents who broke into the U.S. Capitol Building and got in close physical proximity to members of Congress, some of whom hid in offices.
Some number of these same adherents were hit with charges ranging from seditious conspiracy (I think four Oath Keepers) to trespassing. Those charges were processed through the court system like any other charge. Journalists interviewed them pre- and post-verdict. AFAICT they said exactly whatever came to their minds in these interviews. Someone did a long form interview with the Qanon Shaman guy while he served his time, which is interesting to listen to.
Again: do we have anything remotely analogous in China where we know what happened to the adherents through ongoing interviews? If not, then on what grounds do you argue the U.S. is more dystopian?
> See COINTELPRO for a historical example.
Bing actually gives results we can publicly read and discuss about that. From what I recall Bing is forced to give zero results for Tank Man in China. Saying that the latter is less dystopian doesn't make sense.
The dystopia in the US has mostly to do with the scale of global surveillance, that way surpasses anything any other country is doing, including China, the oppressive legal system that incarcerates an unjustifyably high proportion of the population, adversarial and racist "policing" of the citizenry, their global and unusually brutal military aggression and coercion, and economic inequality, even forced upon other "vassal" countries through various political and economical means. So I don't think China is anywhere comparable to the US in this regard.
That being said, what we're discussing here is the manner of which political dissidence is allowed domestically. Political dissidence is just not allowed in the US to any real extent. People attacking the democratic party are not dissidents of the capitalist system. Republicans themselves as representatives of the capitalist political system are just as vile, and I suspect many of them are privately jubilant about the same extremes the most right-wing conspiracy theorists raves about. Doesn't mean that both Republicans and Democrats stand shoulder to shoulder against the menace of real political dissidence. It is actively being suppressed into nothing.
In decades prior to now it has existed, but it has been systematically and super-judicially been suppressed in violent and non-violent ways. Today, all american-owned social media plays along, and follows US intelligence orders to the letter, as they are required by law. Most politically disturbing media content comes from other countries nowadays, and the US has been quick to outright van and cencor foreign social media, and anti-US voices on american social media.
Obviously polital dissidence it's not allowed to a wide extent either in the US or China. But people in the west generally don't recognize how propagandized the western narrative is, even weaponized, and how global social media is a central part of it.
Of course no american social media, or product, like Bing will be allowed to conduct such information warfare in China. But remember that VPN servives are widely available in China which circumvents the domestic rules. Those are still allowed to operate. The US has actually recently ruled VPN usage as liable to get you prosecuted for terrorism or aiding terrorism.
By the way, do you have any idea how many hundreds of billions of dollars are yearly poured into creating negative media content about China and esp. the Tianamen Square incident (which happened 30 years ago), directly from the US state? I.e. propaganda for the world to consume?
It's by now well documented that Americans will take any kind of authoritarian inhuman abuse as long as it's being done by a corporation of unelected people.
They'll even aggressively defend it as long as its to enrich a few stockholders.
The person (no name, no home address, personal id #) who controls phone number 555-1234 has a fraud score of X. It's amazing to me that this is a GDPR violation. What a poorly designed rule.
I think the thing that is relevant here is that, as opposed to what life was like at the end of the 18th century, there are now corporations that are so large and powerful that they can control many levers of what it means to participate in society in today's age, and thus constitutional freedoms should apply to them as well.
For example, much has been written on HN about how credit card companies essentially control what is acceptable for online content (at least online content that one might pay for). It may be correct as to "the letter of the law" that these companies shouldn't have to abide by freedom of speech or association, but the fact on the ground is that there are nearly no other options if the 4 main CC companies decide they don't want to allow you to take payment (please don't let this devolve into a discussion about crypto...)
The US already recognizes this when it comes to credit bureaus - the 3 major bureaus are highly regulated and the types of information they are allowed to collect, use and share is explicitly detailed. I see no reason why phone companies should get a free pass.
It violates the right to due process and to face one's evidence and accusers. I don't find it particularly relevant that the ruling class hides behind a facade of privatization to perform this abuse, and frankly that excuse should be wearing very thin these days, especially in light of the recent IG report concluding very clearly that the government performs exactly the abuse I just described and especially in light of the Twitter files.
In what way is this a violation of those rights? The right to face your accusers arises from the sixth amendment and applies to criminal cases being prosecuted by the government. Due process comes from the fifth amendment and, again, only applies to actions by the government.
You can be upset that this is happening, and that it is legal, but there are no constitutional rights in play here.
What is the value in claiming inherent rights - and many across the world will quibble on just what items would be in that set - when there is no natural mechanism to defend those rights anyway?
An appeal to authority will only get you so far in an ungoverned state of nature.
And when it comes to non-governmental data collection businesses in the US, we are in just that state. There's no constitution saying we should have any rights to privacy against them. I think we should have that right; but it would take a law to actually make them respect that.
But the GDPR, like the Constitution, is a written artifact; pre-GDPR "recognition" of any of those rights, any "inherent" nature of them was not doing anything.
Yeah so the government has implemented payola schemes to subvert those items. Again, I'm glad that this isn't quite so mysterious and difficult to comprehend for policymakers in the EU.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about with payola schemes.
This is a comment on an article about how an international company violated EU law. The US government (the only organization bound by constitutional law) was never involved in any way.
The idea that only the government has the power to abuse political power and ruin your life is quite out dated.
These days large, monopolistic corporations have similar powers, and you don't get any recourse. Imagine getting banned from Google and Facebook/Meta services because they used some some wacky reputation scoring -- you could still live a normal life of a 1780s homesteader, but you're probably not going to live a functioning modern life.
It's a bit disingenuous to argue that the constitution only limits government powers -- which might be true, but that's exactly the problem: the US government has been allowing private companies to become so powerful and ubiquitous that they are exerting undue influence on people's lives even more-so than proper government institutions.
The only thing that apparently seems to prevent this from devolving into a dystopian scenario is personal moral backbone of some founders of these tech companies. It's not hard for me to imagine a much more corrupt world where politicians in Washington routinely emails CEOs of $BigTech and make some backroom deals that only benefits the parties involved. (pretty sure it happens, but it could happen much more often) Given how cozy CEOs of "private companies" and politicians are together, it's really disingenuous to claim that we shouldn't be alarmed when unregulated monopolistic companies are free to do whatever they want because "they aren't the government".
I was going to say that people in 1700s didn't envision "private" companies from being as powerful as governments, but then I remembered the East India Companies of the era. What's the difference of "companies" and "governments" when the functions they perform become indistinguishable?
Arguably, the fourth amendment, though this would be a rather large departure from its current interpretation. The fourth amendment states that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…” It does not state from whom these violations may not occur, so this clause would not be limited to violations being performed by the government. Therefore, this could be interpreted just as a limitation of the government against violating this right, but also the allowance of the government to prevent other violations.
This is only a right in a court of law. Unfortunately, people can accuse you of rape on a college campus and you have no right to see the evidence against you even though the consequence is being marked as a rapist for life (you won't go to prison for a Title IX conviction, but it'll show up if you ever reapply to college, it shows up for the Bar Association, and on security clearance investigations).
It's a clear-cut end-run around the constitution, particularly so in the case of state schools, but trying to address this will have you touching a third rail with enough power in it to fry your political aspirations forever.
Hopefully someday, someone will successfully argue that the government _not_ enforcing the constitutional bill of rights in a civil setting is the same as a criminal setting.
People voluntarily interact and should be able to use whatever criteria they want when doing that. As for twitter files, the problem is the government involvement and coercion.
I didn't actually see anything in the Twitter files to be concerned about. It looked like ordinary coordination between government and a private service provider.
What in the Twitter files are people supposed to be upset about? I think I might be missing the proper rubric to fill outraged about it.
Even Twitter's own lawyers have admitted nothing in the Twitter Files shows evidence of government coercion, censorship or wrongdoing[0]. Basically Elon Musk is just delusional and the people who bought into it lack any capacity for critical thinking.
> It violates the right to due process and to face one's evidence and accusers.
Due process is from the government when they accuse you of a crime. In this case, the government is not attacking your privacy and there are no accusers.
> Constitutional rights generally refer to what the government can and cannot do to a person.
...no? A constitutional right is one established in the constitution or inferred from the language of the constitution. That's it. Maybe in the US you're focused on the rights in respect to your government, but people have other rights. For example, in my country, I have the constitutional right to go on strike, and my employer is forbidden from retaliating. I also have a right to freedom, property, security, and freedom from oppression. Again, no one, neither the government nor my fellow citizens nor corporations can infringe on these rights.
The US constitution is indeed made to tell the govt. What it can or cannot do, not what the people can do. That's why the 10th amendment boils down to "If we don't mention it here, defer to State laws".
Now, there are indeed federal laws imposed onto the people but those are not in the constitution.
The title literally says it's GDPR violation, presumably an issue because the parent company is Belgian.
It probably doesn't violate US laws because the US doesn't have Constitutional privacy protections or much in the way of toothy privacy law. But many of us think it should. Before someone replies with 'lobby for changes to the law then,' that's exactly what I'm doing - working to build a sufficiently large constituency for such change that it will be able to exert some political leverage.
Totally, I was just pointing out that the US constitution has nothing to do with a foreign based multinational violating European laws.
I actually don’t think this is something that belongs in the US constitution simply because the constitutional process is slow, and, apparently, open to wild interpretation by the courts. I would love a privacy focused law like GDPR in the US
If "stuff that I want" means "not having my rights violated by the government," yeah. (Compare to federal officials who think "Constitutional rights" means "obscure blue laws we have to work around.")
But if you really want to get specific, I would like for our government to take action based on the recent IG report outlining how they use private companies to gather dirt on us and subvert our constitutional rights. Perhaps they can refer to EU regulations which address similar concerns.
>Constitutional rights generally refer to what the government can and cannot do to a person.
So the constitution only protects your human rights(life, privacy, no discrimination) from the government? in USA you need other laws to protect your rights from other people and companies ?
Yes, the thing that it refers to constituting is the US government. It is a tech spec for the government.
There is a lot of discussion about the amendments to the US Constitution, but the original US Constitution doesn't even say anything about rights. The amendments are implemented as limitations of the powers of the government.
All of the other legal rights that the US congress grants are just called "laws". For instance, the legal right to be free from racial segregation at a public business is not in the Constitution, it is part of the legal code, alongside other laws that the people (and businesses) have to follow.
> All of the other legal rights that the US congress grants
The US government doesn't grant any rights. We already have all of them at birth. The government may affirm them but it isn't a higher authority giving anything to anyone.
That’s not necessarily true. The government grants the right to a free public education, for example.
So-called positive rights are not something you’re born with, as opposed to negative rights, which are things you’re protected from the government taking away.
You are born with the rights to be President of the US, but the constitution takes it away if you aren't born a US citizen. Before the constitution did that, literally anyone could (all the first presidents of the US weren't born US citizens, for example).
Any right you can imagine, you are born with them. Then some legal document either affirms them, removes them, or ignores them.
So I am born with the right for privacy and a company that would track my internet surfing is abusing my rights? Unless there is a law that will grant this companies the right to track?
Something feels weird, there is no list of all human rights? so is there a right to free internet and a free phone? How can I check if that right exists or not ?
All those rights exist, even the right to kill someone exists. We write laws to affirm or deny them. For example, a law may be written to deny the right to kill, except in very specific circumstances (self-defense, war, executions, etc).
You have the right to privacy and the EU affirms that, some US states affirm it as well.
That's wrong. The constitution says any natural born US citizen or any person who was a citizen at the time of ratification of the Constitution is eligible to be POTUS.
This was rather difficult to research with naïve Google searches, so correct me if I am wrong, but it would seem that rights may flow from more than one source.
We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. (We already have all of them at conception, not merely birth!) Those are the types of rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The government can't revoke them because they are, by nature, God-given and inalienable and don't come from anyone but Him.
Then there are rights which can be granted as concessions from the government, whether it is Federal, State, or other. I'm not sure; perhaps the right to vote is one of these "non God-given" rights because voting itself stems from the nature of democracy and not an inborn trait of mankind. There seems to be the right of privacy, but I'm not sure if this could be described as "God-given"; it's rather a new concept, and Christian doctrine doesn't make a particular pronouncement on whether this is a thing to be protected.
And other entities besides governments can grant rights, of course. If you join a club, you could be granted the right to vote for the board of directors, or the right to attend socials and meetings. I have certain rights as the member of fraternal organizations. Your landlord or HOA has granted you certain rights, of course: the right to use the pool and laundry room are definitely not "God-given" but they are certainly concessions made because you're a paying tenant.
I highly encourage you to read the text of them for yourself - Constitutional rights are mostly defined in the first 10 amendments to the constitution (all ratified together) as well as the 13th -15th (post civil war) amendments.
These are the text of them:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Amendment VII
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
AMENDMENT XIII
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
*Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.
AMENDMENT XV
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude--
Section 2.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The plain text of the constitution, while interesting, is of no use for driving real world behavior without the centuries worth of interpretation and precedent set by the Supreme Court.
I got so many responses, so i do not want to ask everyone, but what defines and guarantees your rights (that are not about government) ? Regular by state laws?
In my country Romania the constitution is much larger, much more rights and obligations are defined but probably because is newer and modern(like it is in the constitution that men and women will be paid the same for same work)
In the US some human rights are guaranteed directly by the constitution (some forms of slavery are not allowed, the right for women to vote). Others are guaranteed by federal laws (pay discrimination between sexes is a federal law). Yet others are defined by court rulings around specific laws (famously, your right to know certain rights when you are arrested. The thing you see on American TV: "You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney..." is a side effect of a court ruling). Still other rights come from State specific laws or constitutions (Abortion, notoriously, is a right that is no longer guaranteed federally, but is now delegated to the states.)
The US is pretty complex, and actually has one of the older governments in the west (Europe included) despite being a relatively new country. One thing to keep in mind is that the US was originally conceived as something much closer to the EU than as it's own country. The US government was originally MUCH more limited, and the individual states had much more power.
In most other places too. The GDPR law is exactly this. It isn’t in the founding document of the EU, it’s a different law to “protect your rights from other people and companies”. This is a good thing: generally you want a government framework document to be relatively static and hard to change for stability reasons, and you want laws to be much easier to pass, revoke, amend, etc… as situations change.
This is not true, many countries have a human rights component in their constititution, e g. the first 10 articles of the German Grundgesetz (but many others). The exceptionalism in the US that considers the US constititution the pinnacle of lawmaking and superior to all other constitutions, is quite baffling. Yes it was the first and really it's influence can't be overstated, but the thought that more recent ones could not learn and improve on it, is puzzling.
> To be strictly accurate, Germany doesn’t have a constitution since a constitution must be voted in directly by the German people according to the Grundegesetz.
yawn
Not this argument again. It has been refuted time and again:
I’m not saying that it doesn’t act or serve in the same capacity as a constitution, all I’m saying is that it is, strictly speaking, not a constitution, by its own definition of a constitution.
I don’t speak German, so I can’t comment on the argument in your link. To the best of my understanding: the document itself defines what a constitution would be, and lays out the requirements for ratifying it, which haven’t been met.
I would appreciate if you could clarify for my own knowledge, but please don’t bother if you are going to add sarcastic comments like “yawn”
My apologies for my reaction; I was under the impression you might be a member of the far-right Reichsbürger movement who are maintaining that the current German federal republic is illegitimate and US-controlled, the Grundgesetz is not a valid constitution and therefore Germany "does not exist" (whatever that means), et cetera.
> the document itself defines what a constitution would be, and lays out the requirements for ratifying it, which haven’t been met.
It does neither, no.
It states the requirements under which it can (not must) be replaced, and it's a favorite party trick of people trying to delegitimize Germany to pretend that somehow means the current state isn't legitimate.
While I disagree with the idiots arguing that the BRD is not a legitimate state, I have to say the linked document somewhat skirts the issue that the members of the Parlamentarische Rat indeed considered that there should be a new constitution which should be voted on by the people after the reunification.
The fact that this did not happen was the subject of significant debate and in the view of many at the time a missed democratic opportunity.
> The EU Council has decided its controversial position on the Freedom of the Media Act, according to which journalists should in principle be monitored with state trojans.
> On Monday, 65 press and civil rights organizations called on the EU Council of Ministers in an open letter to use the planned media freedom law to effectively protect journalists from surveillance, for example with state Trojans. But the calling was in vain. The panel of government representatives of the member states on Wednesday outlined its line on the Media Freedom Act, according to which their security agencies are allowed to spy on media representatives for reasons of "national security", among other things. This would also undermine source protection.
> Draft legislation published by EU leaders that would allow national security agencies to spy on journalists has been condemned by media and civic society groups as dangerous and described by a leading MEP as “incomprehensible”.
1. As the other comment mentions, this is a Belgian company
2. Following the common argument in USA/China/TikTok debates, won't EU citizens be safer with their private data in the US than in the EU, far away from their own governments?
Privatize everything: surveillance, background checks, social credits, health scores, beauty scores, financial scores, work scores, etc. That's the best way to appear democratic, while blaming other autocratic, authoritarian regimes for how evil the latter are.
I'm surprised speeding tickets haven't been privatized yet. Get a device installed in your car that monitors the speeds of cars around you. If someone violates the speed limit your car reports them to the authorities and then you get a "cut" of the ticket. Great way to make some extra cash while ignoring the fact that everyone is getting pitted against each other as a way to stay distracted from all the crap the ruling class does...
"Many members of the general public assume that the cameras are property of the locality in which they are used and that the funds received go back into the community. The truth is that less than 20 percent goes to the municipality while the remaining goes to the service provider." [1]
The problem with that logic is, because the EU was a good global citizen (at one point), everyone has reciprocal treaties to allow extradition and cross-border charges. And the GDPR actually applies to any website accessed by EU citizens so banning EU IP addresses still leaves you open to the case where an EU citizen residing in the US has a GDPR claim against you. Maddening, but that's the reality of this silly law.
You realize is you ban this kind of service, fraud rates are going to multiply 10x in the EU, and new, very inconvenient barriers to fraud will be put in place.
I'd like to see one (1) person harmed by any of the data sharing that TeleSign has done here in the history of the company.
There will be multiple persons that didn't get the loan or mortgage they applied for, as their reputation score was deemed to low due to data quality issues.
Depending on how the risks of no/low score are weighted, and how wrong the inaccurate score is, a person may very well be more harmed by no score than by a low score. An inaccurate score might have to be massively off the mark to make a person worse off than no score at all. In the US for example, people with no credit history often get interest rates as high or higher than people with a relatively low credit score.
Of course from a privacy & data protection standpoint this doesn't make silently and secretly profiling customers okay. The solution is probably something more like a transparent opt-in system that has easy access for the customer to review their data and decide which pieces of it are included.
In the US, the balance is skewed a bit more towards secrecy, and it's not opt-in either. However you can with only modest difficulty check your credit score & information used to calculate it, and challenge parts of it that you think are inaccurate.
And we can only reason that they are not. As parent correctly implies, the purpose is risk reduction. A well implemented system will accept false positives, as we saw with the recent Amazon doorbell debacle.
Sorry, but in this case it absolutely does. The alternative would be, for example, to request ID verification when signing up for a freaking TikTok account. Because that’s what you’re going to get if you prevent fraud prevention.
I totally understand that most people don’t realize how big of an issue online fraud is, but believe me: it is a MASSIVE problem with a lot of unforeseen consequences. There are so many angles to fraud in online services that it’s baffling to see with what new ways scammers and fraudsters come up with every day. So yes, this is something that totally justifies the means.
> The alternative would be, for example, to request ID verification when signing up for a freaking TikTok account
What's wrong with this? When I buy booze in Germany on Amazon for example this is already how it works, you verify your age with your national ID (which has support for a "eID" schema).
The big advantage is that the dedicated company doing the processing is by law required to delete all data after verification, so no commercial third party actually ever gets or can sell your identification data. That's way more secure and private than handing TikTok or other foreign companies your means of identification.
We would be living in a vastly more secure world if random companies only ever got a yes/no that you initiate by a dedicated, audited actor on your soil. And it basically eliminates fraud as well.
You're absolutely right. And if companies are not allowed to do fraud detection using reputation scores, they'll simply treat everyone as a potential fraud, and raise rates accordingly.
> Sorry, but in this case it absolutely does. The alternative would be, for example, to request ID verification when signing up for a freaking TikTok account. Because that’s what you’re going to get if you prevent fraud prevention.
That sounds wonderful to me. Crack down on the shills and charlatans...
> In 2021, Proximus bought out BICS' other shareholders, making it the sole owner of both the telecom interchange and TeleSign.
Curious how the article's headline goes out of its way to emphasize "US vendor" when the puppet masters in the underlying corporate structure are entirely Belgian.