My wife recently gave birth. When we arrived at the hospital her contractions were close enough together for her to be admitted. They proceeded to give my wife a 10 page or so consent form to sign. I can't imagine anyone reading that. I also can't imagine them not admitting someone over it.

This, honestly is what i expected AI to challenge heads-on- because that is what its ideal for- little agents arguing for the consumer, the customer, the citizen. In the government offices, these constant advocates could undo all that damage faster then the companies can pile up anti-service moats.

Once I rented an apartment in US, and the documents said that they can make videos, pictures and audio recordings of me and my family, and use it for their own purposes including commercial. I objected, but their position was that no one is going to involve legal department for me, and I am free to go away.

Went to a new doctor. As part of the check-in process, I was asked to "sign" a little digital pad, so, as I was told, they could properly use my insurance. I asked to see the hard copy of what I was signing and they couldn't find one. Then, for some reason, they were unable to print one. I gave up and scribbled my sig with my finger and then was seen by a doctor. It's maddening.

I am that person that reads every line of the contracts I sign, including ToS and PP. I appreciate that I can tell who it rubs the wrong way, because it tells me who will shake my hand without intending to honor their word. It changed the way I write these documents as well, the last ToS and PP I wrote can each be read in a single breath.

Doesn't the right to free association solve this? Don't patronize companies that do this.

> Unfortunately, especially in the US, exercising your rights, or even just reading every paper you're expected to put your name to, not only constantly pisses people off for some reason

Yup. It's particularly sad seeing other people in this very thread talking about how they would "ban this customer for life" just for knowing their rights.

I think it's pathetic that this has become the culture amongst large swathes of Americans - especially ones who consider themselves patriotic. This country was founded in rebellion and the assertion of our rights, and somehow the exact opposite is now the ideal of many citizens now.

Can you cite the especially in the US part? Maybe use Bolivia, Kosovo, and Indonesia as some random global comparisons.

In other words, you'd ban someone because they might notice that you are doing illegal stuff and you might get caught.

Follow the laws and it isn't an issue. I'm pretty sure banning someone for that stuff is probably illegal, too.

How is "you must let customers opt-out of marketing spam" a technicality?

Tell me it’s raining, huh? America is used to yellow rain.

We don't want your business in the EU if this is your attitude to things like this.

You would do no such thing, because if you tried, you wouldn't have a business in the EU anymore.

Frankly, this attitude is pathetic. Absolute loser behaviour.

I don't think you should be doing business anywhere if customers being familiar with the law and knowing their rights scares you. Frankly if you are running a business, you should be familiar with the laws and regulations, doing otherwise - especially when someone points out that your behaviour is illegal - is negligence and punishment with a fine is completely appropriate. Welcome to living in a society.

Processing my personal data in such a way (to ban me from your services pre-emptively) would be a breach of the GDPR and in some member states could involve criminal sanctions.

For example, in the UK we have a very famous case (The Consulting Association (TCA)) where building contractors joined together to build a list of construction workers they didn't want to hire - this was determined as a criminal breach of UK data protection law.

So have at it, I love a challenge...

The risk of getting caught doing business illegally? You really don't give a damn about the illegal part, just getting caught?

I've also read reviews of Greystar properties where the reviewers expressed shock at being forced to consent to such abuse.

sounded exactly like translation error from a German-related lang.

e.g. "to receive offers...is a condition to be in..."

Yea, I don't get it either. Receiving being a condition on membership means (in my understanding) only that non-members can't (shouldn't) receive anything, not that members will or must receive something. Which sounds perfectly normal and sane to me.

Alternative approximate translation: while I urinate on you tell me it's raining.

I actually stopped reading right there and came to the comments because I was really confused.

I grated a bit at an EU company's use of https://www.crosschq.com/ recently.

Seeing that he influenced the creation of the GDPR, the general sense of hopelessness in the rest of the populace, and the failure of the governing body to do it’s jobs - I suppose he is the only person who would be taking people to account.

mildly amusing that the model was instructed to generate it in the style of a "wide angle film still" but it seems to have gone for a painting instead

Just awoid some jurisdictions. Bulgaria is in EU, has all the same access, and has no time for this BS.

Rentals are exactly what I was talking about. Supposedly you can always go to someone else, but we all know in practice we can't just go without housing and if everyone decides you're "difficult," you're SOL.

Earlier this week a potential landlord offered me a lease saying I had already inspected the property and found no issues with it.

I asked for a chance to actually inspect before signing, and even said I would settle for a good quality video walkthrough. They told me the unit was "not available for viewing" because it wasn't finished yet, and by the time it was finished it would likely be taken.

So why did you ask me to sign a contract saying I inspected a property that it's conceptually impossible to inspect??

I asked if they could change that part of the lease. They said they were "unable" due to "demand and interest in the property."

Of course, still not as insane as your story.

Pretty sure that's a violation of fundamental human rights as it's your place of living. Surely that can't be legal, even in the US can it?

It is a translation thing - what they said in Norwegian was that it is required to accept marketing activities if you want to be part of the loyalty club - but the machine translation did it literally instead of changing the structure to match common English.

Yeah sounds like it's backwards , and should be "in order to be a member of the customer club, it is a condition to receive marketing / offers ."

I think the "marketing/offers" means discounts? To be eligible for the discounts or special offers, you have to be a member of the club, and if you are a member of the club you have to be willing to receive the email messages, and somehow under EU law you're entitled to all discounts I guess?

He was an Elkjøp/Elgiganten customer club member. He wanted to keep the club membership and discounts/offers, but stop the marketing emails. Elkjøp’s setup told him the only way to stop the marketing was to cancel the club membership altogether.

To me, Elkjop seems perfectly reasonable here. But EU policy disagrees.

I haven't personally encountered that, but you are free to lodge complaint with your local DPA about it.

That exact language is unlikely to be compliant. If you want to maximize your effect you could make Article 15 request to the company in question, get the list of actual recipients of data (make sure to be ask for this specifically) and then make another request to all of those companies. That will then allow you to possibly make further complaints (e.g. why exactly they didn't send Article 14 information to you, are the legal basis they use actually proper in your case especially if the original one was consent and it was not freely given).

What do you mean? It sounds like he is planning to sue company in question and possibly lodging complaint against Swedish DPA. Norwegian DPA is the one who found case in his favor.

Looking at the report from datatilsynet (Norwegian Data Protection Agency), they cite "multiple reports and tips" as the background. I suspect what happened here is that IMY concluded that this laid outside of their authority, submitted the complaint to datatilsynet and either closed the case and forgot to inform Hanff, or they may have never gotten any response from datatilsynet.

For me it was showing the image and the prompt, but the whole page was unstyled. But when I reloaded the page now, the css loaded also and the prompt is not shown.

I guess the web server was temporarily overwhelmed by traffic resulting in images (like for you) and css files (like for me) not being consistently served to all visitors.

Is it a prompt or accessibility description for screen readers?

There are some state laws - California, Virginia and Colorado, a bunch of others. And the SECURE Data Act currently in Congress. https://statescoop.com/house-subcommittee-secure-data-act-pr...

It was not their responsibility to keep me informed, it was the responsibility of IMY (the Swedish Regulator) to keep me informed.

Stop spying on people.

Absolute nonsense. Any company that was complying with the old Data Protection Directive should have had zero issues upgrading their processes and policies to comply with GDPR there are very few material differences between the two and the previous law existed since 1995 - most of the changes are around accountability (record keeping).

Also cookies literally have nothing to do with GDPR other than the definition of consent - Cookies are governed under and entirely different law which has existed since 2002 (Directive 2002/58/EC).

It bugs me when I see people criticising the law when they actually havent even bothered to research and understand it or even look at the correct law.

You can see the fines the Bulgarian regulator has handed out here:

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

I rather like the system where I live in BC, Canada where things like this cannot be waived, and the government has more or less standardized things like move in/move out inspections through standard forms. You are, of course, allowed to use your own form, but if it doesn't have all of the elements needed to make an inspection form legal it is toilet paper. No reason not to use the official and free form.

Even then, if they got you to sign this paper saying you had inspected it, but they had not made it available for inspection and pressured you to sign or lose it, the inspection would be void as far as the tribunal that handles disputes goes. If they forced you to sign an inspection report for a unit that was not complete at the time of signing it would be open and shut as an invalid inspection. The tribunal here won't allow any claim for property damages if there is not a valid move in inspection, so it really behooves the property owner to make sure the inspection is valid if they want any damages paid for.

Sounds like typical high pressure salesmanship.

As long as they responded in writing, you have proof that the other party agrees the clause is false.

I wonder if a judge would keep that clause in the contract in case of litigation.

For separate but similar reasons, Washington was forced to add to tenant law the proviso that tenants could not waive certain tenant rights, even if consideration was given.

"There's a clause in here that gives some more time for certain repairs, because we're short-staffed, so we will take $50 off of your rent". Nope.

"There's a clause in here that says that your monthly payment will first be applied to late payments, fees, fines, and then your lease payment in that order." Nope.

> and I am free to go away.

This is the crux of the problem when landlords are allowed to form or join an "association" that gets too pervasive.

This was at the heart of the RealPage lawsuits.

I found some shit like that in a gym contract, which I then declined.

I had a similar experience at a bank some time ago. To sign up, you had to sign a digital pad without seeing what you were signing first. You could get a copy mailed to you later. At that future time, I was told, you could you cancel the agreement if you found it objectionable.

Being a bank, this has nothing to do with HIPAA. Just a dark pattern.

Usually, signing things like this won’t particularly hurt you - largely because your inalienable rights are… inalienable. You can’t sign them away, even if some contract says you have.

The flip side of this however is that it’s a very worthwhile pursuit to know consumer protections and what your rights are in the jurisdiction in which you live - and how to enforce them.

Where I live, I unfortunately quite frequently find myself having to go “ok so you want to do the formal process with the regulator then?”, which usually gets them to reconsider - but not always. Three times in the last month I have threatened regulatory action - and of those three, only one chose that path. I have just reported a government agency here to the domestic and EU regulators for failing to fulfil EU FoM treaty rights - and they were even kind enough to put it in writing that they’re ignoring their own domestic laws.

I have yet to lose a case I have brought before a regulator or justice of the peace, and businesses usually only need to do this once, if at all, as it can quite quickly turn a €1,000 dispute into tens or hundreds of thousands of euro of damages and fines. By doing this, following these processes through, I help not just myself but society as a whole.

So - sign away, but have teeth, and know where to bite.

In general, in the US of A, that consent you sign waives your legislated-to-be-guaranteed HIPAA rights.

Specifically, you're typically giving the office's providers and their marketing "affiliates" and your insurance company and its marketing "affiliates" the right to forward around (through any length chains of agreements) your entire medical history associated with enough (research proven as de-anonymizing) details to retarget you personally. And you're typically doing this by accepting a company insurance (in the US) or the provider's reception counter while you're in need of care.

This effectively forced consent is arguably illegal, but as far as I know, untested, so it's standard across the medical system and across omnibus insurance (e.g. company-provided healthcare "plan").

Of course, every touch point is another place your personal history will get stolen and rolled into modern digitally scripted exploitation of your identity and or targeted forms of phish-mongering (a term I made up meaning marketing so personalized you believe it's necessary to sign up for and pay for).

If you have any relationship with the team at your company that procures employee insurance packages, see if you can persuade them to start with the firm's insurance consultant (high end) or broker (low end) and systematically remove every step in the "we can pass along all your info to our affiliates for our own pinky-swear good reasons like making more money off your private info" chain.

In our experience, this added 3+ months to the procurement process as every single provider balked until interacted with by counsel -- and then instantly capitulated.

Our goal was always to give our employees a top tier benefits package, and we consider it a top tier hard-to-match employee benefit to not have random firms and government agencies pawing through your doctors notes, prescription histories, lab results, and enough biographical data to fake your digital twin.

Sadly, most employees -- though none of them are sheeple -- shrug at that for reasons in this thread: no time to fight such pervasive exploitation, especially when it hits them while needing a service as it hit you, or just plain weary of trying. So much easier, and psychically healthier, to just avoid thinking about it. Everyone is resigned.

If a company you consider working for claims "we take your privacy seriously" ask if they got privacy waivers removed on your behalf from all vendor contracts including payroll (does your salary go to 'work number'?) and insurance providers (can your data leave your doctor's EMR?). Odds are, they do not, in fact, take your privacy as seriously as they could.

I'm a traveling healthcare worker, which means every 3 months is both a new contract for work and a new lease for a rental to stay at.

So if I'm not willing to complete several hours of training modules uncompensated and before the start date of my contract, I'm within my rights to refuse. But this violation of most states' codes is common practice, and when I inform a new workplace that I'm not going to do it, they tell me it's "required," and the part they're careful not to put in writing is that my contract will be canceled if I make a fuss (there is almost always a clause in these contracts saying they can cancel any time for any reason).

So just move onto the next job, right? But the market is very feast-or-famine. It's just not smart to assert my rights during one of the famine periods.

Similarly, if I'm not willing to sign a lease for a rental saying my landlord is entitled to seize and sell all of my property for being even a minute late on rent, I've now considerably limited my housing options, which is not good when I have a new job that starts in two weeks. If that landlord then goes and tells all their landlord friends that I'm "difficult," I could be completely fucked.

Sure, it's "solved." It sucks anyway.

I don't know that signing up for a rewards club and then complaining that you're being marketed to is quite the platonic ideal of rebellion you make it out to be.

You're right, it would've been better to say "at least far as my experience in the US."

They are not written by an LLM lol, I have severe ADHD, this is how I write and there is plenty of my material out there spanning the last 20+ years (long before LLMs existed) to illustrate that.

> LLMisms

The word is “cliches”, and they existed long before LLMs.

> I asked if they could change that part of the lease. They said they were "unable" due to "demand and interest in the property."

Was it a paper lease? Because you could always cross out that section before signing, not to mention write in your own addendum. They would probably still balk, but you'd be within your rights to do so.

It doesn’t mean _inside_ the apartment. It means if they decide to film a commercial and you’re walking your dog in the background, they don’t have to ask you.

This is basic security. Cameras around entrances, exits, and common areas have become critical for safety and preventing mail theft.

I'm sure someone smarter than me has a solution. Those papers you're required to sign are generally the result of regulation. Some law got passed that say "you can't share info unless you get signed permission". The person dreaming up the law thought that would be enough to stop getting them to share info. But, even if they cared about privacy, they don't want to increase all their expenses and run their own IT department so they contract out for 3rd party billing, 3rd party document infra, etc etc. Like if they wanted to store your appointment in MS Word 365 or Google Docs, suddenly the regulation kicks in. They're not going build a document sharing platform to get their job done just so they can meet the regs. They're just going to get you to sign that they can do what they need.

As one example, I went to a doctor, he ordered an x-ray. I went over to the x-ray company then back to my doctor. He pulled up the x-ray immediately. He's only able to do that because I signed that he can share my info with the x-ray company and visa-versa.

Again, I don't have a solution. No regulation = he'd probably share my data. But regulation = he gets me to sign so he can legit provide the service, and still shared my data (Because I signed). So all the regs did is make visiting the doctor more annoying, and add $$$$ to push all the paperwork around.

What's interesting about those documents you asked to sign, at least at hospitals, it's not a requirement even though it may appear that way by the interaction. I suspect it's the same for other medical professions as well.

How do you manage the situation socially? I had a very important document with a very expensive professional booked for about 10 minutes. No way I could actually read it in that time - what would you do?

That simply isn't possible - you might like to think you read everything but research has shown that simply reading the terms and conditions of the top 100 websites amounts to a colossal amount of time (if you look at Prof. Lorie Cranor's research on this from around 2008, even back then the cost to the US in lost time was to the tune of trillions of dollars - now, they are much much worse than they were 18 years ago.

The terms and conditions for Tetris on Android were longer than the entire works of Tolkien when combined.

So yes, it would be nice to read all of these things, but we simply do not have the time available to do so.

>I think it's pathetic that this has become the culture amongst large swathes of Americans - especially ones who consider themselves patriotic. This country was founded in rebellion and the assertion of our rights, and somehow the exact opposite is now the ideal of many citizens now.

DHS is putting on the domestic terrorists watch list those people who took parts in the protests. Or at minimum threatens to put. And if you google a bit more you'd see that it isn't limited to ICE. Any dissent is perceived by the current government in a similar "terrorism" way. For majority of population that would completely chill any desire to assert rights.

https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_dhs_on...

"U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and senior Trump administration officials have repeatedly suggested that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building a “domestic terrorists” database comprising information on U.S. citizens protesting ICE’s actions in recent weeks.

...

In recent weeks, DHS personnel and senior officials have repeatedly stated that the agency is engaged in efforts to monitor, catalog, and intimidate individuals engaged in peaceful protests"

Nah this is 100% AI written.

> The reply I received a few days later did me the favour of putting the violation on the record. Their position, in their own words, was that "in order to receive marketing / offers, it is a condition to be a member of the customer club." That one sentence is the whole case. They had taken a right I am entitled to exercise for free and turned it into the price of admission.

I bet pangram would flag it. Humans don’t write like this. ADHD doesn’t cause this style of phrasing.

EDIT: Pangram predictably did in fact find it so: https://www.pangram.com/history/2e549b09-072d-4fe8-a000-e165...

Pretty unsurprising for a modern text like this to be honest. Or as one should say “Those two sections are the whole case. We took a free technology and made it the price of a blog post”.

There is no version of basic security that extends to commercial use of your likeness in their marketing.

Be reasonable.

If it said so in the contract I would not have any issues, something like "recordings of you are available only to authorized security personnel, can be provided to you upon request for a reasonable price covering filtering and other paperwork, and can be shared solely for security and legal purposes".

"I appreciate the opportunity to work on this with you, I need to give this the time that it deserves to make sure I can honor the commitments in the contract."

Always maintain your integrity, a big part of that is honoring your word. Integrity is the only thing you're born with in this life, and if you're lucky you take it with you on the way out. Any person worth getting into contracts with will appreciate the value in that.

Many of them are just "CYA" for the facility/provider. HIPAA allows, for example, providers to share your medical information, for the purposes of treatment, regardless of your consent.

He did say that he read every contract he signs not that he reads every contract some company thinks applies to him without any legal basis whatsoever. You also don't have to use to top 100 websites.

Not GP, but probably ask them to send me the contract ahead of time, and explain that you need time to read it.

It would be nice if ToS were more like open source licenses in which people commonly standardize or template them (or parts of them). That way there's large chunks which are reduced, and a few diffs for what's unusual. I think the problem with this is the fact that sections are not independent.

There are currently 22 US States with comprehensive privacy laws with Louisiana being the latest (their Governor signed just last week iirc) and the 23rd is literally a Governor's signature away (just passed the state senate).

Sorry, I guess. There were no comments here after a couple of hours and I literally felt bad, so I commented without being very exact in my writing. Regardless, great job, and thank you.

Yes this is the difference, they did not allow you to opt out previously, they explicitly said that if you want to be in the club you have to accept their spam. Now they allow you not to accept their spam.

Now they rely on Soft Opt-In (which again might not be valid in your case, if you signed up to their site but didn't actually buy anything the soft opt-in exemption does not apply) so you may still have an actionable complaint here.

Then you could put in anything that looks like a valid email rather than the email of someone you dislike.

My go-to is always their domain, if it works.

It's also worth noting that it's not the first time Swedish DPA has been criticized regarding GDPR complaint handling:

https://noyb.eu/en/gdpr-rights-sweden "GDPR Rights in Sweden: Court confirms that authority must investigate complaints. So far, the Swedish IMY has taken the view that users don’t have party rights in GDPR procedures."

https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-takes-swedish-dpa-court-refusing-pro... "IMY frequently just forwards a complaint to the company that illegally processes personal data - and then immediately closes the case without investigating." (no decision on this as far as I know. A bit surprising since it has been almost 2 years)

Dropping these regulations won't help the competition either.

Regarding information sharing, not quite. Covered entities (term of art in HIPAA), which include providers (and also payers!) including both the lab and your doctor, do not need your permission to share information between them for the purposes of treatment, payment, or operations (commonly, "TPO"). A BAA between a covered entity and a vendor (like an EHR or PACS [viewer for your imaging]) also does not require any patient consent.

There are sometimes things you might not like hidden in the releases you're signing, beyond the run of the mill acceptance of financial responsibility / assignment of benefits, notice of privacy policy acknowledgment, consent to treat.

Are you even legally signing anything if they can't show you the document you are signing?

I am not familiar with the nitty gritty of US law, but under German law that signature would be worthless. Even signing a document you have but are unwilling to read is legally a bit iffy (which is why for things like real estate a notary will read the paperwork to you and ask if you understood it, or why surprising clauses in terms of service are unenforceable). Signing something without being able to know what you are signing would be worth exactly nothing, because you didn't actually knowingly consent to any particular thing, and neither did you have the "meeting of minds" required to form a contract.

> They're not going build a document sharing platform to get their job done just so they can meet the regs.

What is so hard in respecting the spirit of the law?

Many people now have devices with secure storage with them at all times. Maybe it’s time we owned our data and decided who gets it and when.

Obviously this doesn’t work in all situations and for all people, but it’s a start.

You don't know how much it did cost them. Why would you care about how much they gained ? You can't compare something when you have neither value.

Getting consent in a truly compliant way is basically impossible (it should be opt IN, not opt OUT). Though we've trained people to just accept literally everything now.

Official EU website, generally speaking, are not bound by GDPR or ePD. Rather EU bodies are bound by EUDPR. I'm not well-versed on that specific thing, but EDPS and courts have previously found that EC has infringed EUDPR so it wouldn't be weird if their cookie banner was breaking the law as well.

i sent the article to an AI detection tool and it said that 22% are AI generated. (that tool distinguishes between AI generated, AI assisted, and human) it marks the first few paragraphs as such. i have no idea how accurate that tool generally is. it is clearly failing here. (part of the reason for checking articles is to learn how reliable those tools are, not to gather evidence against a writer)

what could help though is if you could find a way to have your articles proof read by someone else to at least weed out some of the more difficult to read constructs, like this one:

any Consent Management Platform (CMP) which sets a cookie for anything other than cookies which are not strictly necessary that the user has consented to

i would write that as:

any Consent Management Platform (CMP) which sets a cookie that is not strictly necessary but that the user has not consented to

i had to read your version three times to make sure i understood it correctly.

And it would be within the landlord’s right to move on to the next renter in their queue.

Thank goodness you read the contract they signed and provided competent legal expertise throughout the process.

That is probably why it is in there, and probably how it would be used in practice. But these types of documents are almost written to be as broad and ask you to give up as many rights as possible.

It does mean on the property and including inside facilities.

Maybe that's at the gym or by the pool, and maybe you're actually not comfortable becoming a swimsuit model.

That is already allowed.

Oh right, that's not so bad. Isn't that just being part of modern society? It would be nice to opt to never be recorded but also, it's outside.

> do not need your permission to share information between them for the purposes of treatment, payment, or operations (commonly, "TPO")

In fact, for the purposes of treatment, providers can share that information, even if you explicitly refuse, as needed.

> It doesn’t mean

Oh man if I had a pound for every time I've had a corporate dogsbody try to invent meanings of legal wording that doesn't actually exist and gaslight me...

They are usually so passionate about it too. A simple "ah ok cool so you can add that word to the document" really annoys them.

The other classic is just "it's just standard wording". Well yeah McDonald's is also "standard" food for many people but I massively disagree with that too

The current government? Don't let partisanship blind one to how dumb things are. The Occupy Wallstreet protests were extensively surveilled and harassed [1], and it was a vastly more peaceful protest movement. Had it gained more traction there's a 100% chance Obama would've happily greenlit COINTELPRO [2] 2011. Such actions were already being effectively carried out in any case.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Government_...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Oh I’m well aware.

It’s reprehensible and I am demanding accountability from my elected politicians. The only way we’ll see someone answer for these crimes, though, is if enough Americans give a shit to get off their fucking asses and actually put people into office who will bring change.

Pretty sure nobody is worried about peaceful protests.

No, the sentence order has nothing to do with it. "It is a condition to be a member of the club (in order) to receive marketing offers" and "In order to receive marketing offers, it is a condition to be a member of the club" mean the same thing. The problem is that the explicit markers of purpose ("in order to...") and requirement ("condition") appear to have been applied to the wrong things. If you rearrange them, they'll still be applied to the wrong things.

Cliches in general did, llms created new ones even though you may not be adept at recognising them

Haha they are cliches, yes. But a specific type of cliche that is unique to current language models.

> That one sentence is the whole case

This example, for instance, is more uniquely LLM than mere common cliche.

Good luck finding a landlord that would agree to your terms.

That sounds a lot like a rationalization desperately grasping at "surely it's not as insane as it sounds, what it _must_ mean is ... "

I would want to read and perhaps get legal advice before relying on that interpretation - and before finding I signed over rights to my landlord to make candid porn of me and all his other tenants.

Well the document didn't say "public spaces". I also think they meant public spaces, but it wasn't in the documents.

Even then, I do not consent to work as an unpaid actor even in public spaces. I'm ok to be it at conferences, organized coworking parties -- no problem. But my living space when I don't suspect it -- hell no.

If it didn’t say it, it doesn’t mean it.

There are many dollars in between.

It probably would be unenforceable in the US too, given you have no opportunity to know what you're signing, but you'd probably have to drag it before a court to settle that, and US companies know that no* individual is actually going to do that over what ultimately is (likely to only be) a minor inconvenience.

* Within margin of error

I do wish this was an option for some data, but emergency care would be an absolute shit show. People can't even remember passwords let alone keep track of keys and devices.

Becauae "spirit of the law" doesnt exist. It is a saying used by people when they want to do something that isnt in the law. You dont see lawyers, judges or law makers use the phrase.

Can i withdraw consent later? So, attend the interview (to maximise my chances of being offered the job), and then after the application process withdraw consent?

> an absolutely terrible supervisory authority that do literally nothing

Are they allowed to do anything? Generally these sorts of bodies get their rights from some superior body, and they don't necessarily get carte blanche.

That's a bit more complex.

Everyone is free to make a tip to DPA. However DPA is free to decide if they want to start their own investigation based on that unlike when you make Article 77 complaint.

There isn't a lot of case law around the threshold of Article 77. The text says "if the data subject considers that the processing of personal data relating to him or her infringes this Regulation". If read completely alone one could make argument that since you didn't consent no processing occurred -> you do not have right to make an Article 77 complaint.

However when taking the in account the goals and purpose of GDPR as well as recital 141 I would argue otherwise. To be specific recital 141 says "if the data subject considers that his or her rights under this Regulation". CJEU also often refers to GDPR's objective of ensuring high level of protection of fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons. I feel that ex post requirement would be quite contrary to that.

Due to this my personal stance would be that just offering invalid consent choice where refusal has negative consequences is something that violates data subject's rights even if processing didn't occur and would be eligible for actual Article 77 complaint rather than just tip to DPA.

[EDIT] Also, there is Article 82 path via damages. In your case you could potentially argue that you suffered damages (like lost wages) due to company's invalid consent requirement. This, however, is generally a lot harder and more expensive path. Depending on how legal costs are allocated in your jurisdiction you could also end up with judgement where you need to pay your opponent's legal costs if you lose.

For Article 82 claim you almost definitely will need a lawyer.

Someone with tinnitus hears tones that aren't there, that doesn't make them adept at hearing tones. You will reply some analogous comment about deafness, but here's the thing: tinnitus is much more common than deafness.

> cliche that is unique to current language models

If it's something humans don't do and unique to certain programs, then "cliche" is probably not the correct term.

"I read the article, but it was full of improperly-escaped HTML entity references, how cliche."

Lmao at the absolute ego behind that wording

Much easier to find one that won't notice the markup, though. You think they read the contracts any more carefully than most people?

It isn't really that onerous, they aren't expecting you to do anything.

Rather, they want the right to film commercially on their own property without getting consent of everyone walking by. Many years ago a local casino was being used for a movie shoot, there were signs at the door saying that they're shooting a movie in here, if you're inside the casino it's possible you'll show up in the background of a shot. By entering you agree to this. An apartment can't do something like that because not entering is not a realistic option, so they're putting it in the rental agreement instead.

> before finding I signed over rights to my landlord to make candid porn of me and all his other tenants.

If the law says you cannot do XYZ, your landlord can state otherwise in whatever verbiage but that's all void.

This is why good consumer protection laws exist, in a well functioning society there things you sign are to protect the landlord from bad renters (don't pay, cause a nuisance etc). The law in general should protect you as the tenant from a bad landlord.

Like with criminal fraud?

While we cannot be sure what Elkjøp exactly told him, the Norwegian DPA's findings included following:

* Published benefits: https://web.archive.org/web/20220613175535/https:/www.elkjop... (e.g. "Rabatt på en rekke av våre tjenester utført i varehus", i.e. something like "Discount on a number of our services performed in warehouses")

* Conditions to join, i.e. to receive the benefits (DPA's translation):

* You may be contacted electronically (e.g via SMS and e-mail), via phone and mail with personal offers and other relevant information

* Collect and analyse information about you and your customer relationship.

* Create a customer profile, in order to provide more relevant information and a better service.

* You have to be minimum 15 years old and you can choose to leave the customer club at any time.

So to get the discount you would need to consent to being contacted for "personal offers and other relevant information".

They actually are bound by the ePrivacy Directive due to jurisprudence (EU bodies must comply with CJEU rulings).

I actually wrote to the EDPB on 25th May 2018 (the day GDPR came into effect) and forced them to make their own website compliant with the ePrivacy Directive (I still have the email thread, it was quite an interesting discussion).

I also filed a complaint against the Court of Justice on October 1st 2019 within minutes of them publishing their Judgment on the Planet49 case (C-673/17) because their own website didn't comply with the judgment - they fixed it within 18 minutes.

So yes EU institutions get it wrong sometimes, but they generally fix it quickly when they are informed. I currently have a big case ongoing with the EDPS against the European Commission and the European Parliament for hosting live streams directly on social media instead of the official live streaming platform setup for EU bodies (on the basis that forcing people to engage on social media is a breach of fundamental rights because it allows those platforms to infer special category data (political interests and others depending on the topic of the live stream).

EDPS just actually updated me this week that they have concluded their side and are now waiting on the final responses from the Commission and Parliament.

So yes, the rules do work, but you have to be pro-active, armchair activism doesn't work.

Gonna need you to expand on that, because I don't see how that sentence is “uniquely LLM” at all. It feels pretty typical for legal people speaking informally.

Contracts don't and can't override laws.

Am pretty sure he's right. I rent out my house, and it is very illegal for the landlord to record video inside the house (or even of the driveway). You are infringing the privacy of your tenants and is a huge no-no.

Yeah, if you accidentally recorded families walking through their homes unclothed, this could land a landlord in jail.

Zero trust device, with emergency channels pre-trusted. Like, the ambulance service is known to your device and can already suck your blood type and whatnot. And the police your name and emergency contacts. Or whatever schema with a similar idea. There's the technology to do this already, but we're lacking awareness and initiative.

Yes they obviously do use it?

> Becauae "spirit of the law" doesnt exist. It is a saying used by people when they want to do something that isnt in the law. You dont see lawyers, judges or law makers use the phrase.

This is dependent on jurisdiction. Some countries (e.g. the USA) do not consider spirit/intent (anymore), as the judiciary has repeatedly ruled that the letter of the law, as written, is what matters, regardless of whether it meets the intent of what the law was written to achieve.

There are other countries in the world, outside of the USA, that do not work this way.

Lmao at the absolute ego behind that wording >Gonna need you to expend on that Sure boss everyone here is just waiting for your commands to meet your every need

I would like to see that thread if possible just out of curiosity.

I looked a bit into EUDPR and the earlier 45/2001 regulation (EUDPR came in effect in December 2018 so a bit later than GDPR). EUDPR explicitly imports Article 5(3) of ePD (via Article 37) and thus whatever case law there is around it. The earlier regulation seems to do this more indirectly (references in recitals), but EDPS view from 2016 is that it effectively does import Article 5(3) as well.

Personally I haven't dealt with EU institutions so far. On general public sector side I did recently seek some clarifications from Finland's Ministry of Justice regarding one of their websites and their responses weren't exactly reassuring.

I asked for the GDPR Article 15(1) information regarding single visit (i.e. information about processing, not actual copies of data) and it took them almost 3 months to give official response. Even after that time they, for example, failed to identify if they are actually the controller or not for some of the processing (Cloudflare challenge). And their stance is that analytics (Matomo) does not need Article 6 legal basis at all, i.e. they seem to think that anonymization step itself is not processing.

Which is exactly the point - under Article 21 of the GDPR every person has a legal right not to be subjected to direct marketing so any forced direct marketing is unlawful and consent cannot be bundled (it must be specific under the GDPR) so bundling consent to direct marketing along with consent to join the Club is not lawful.

Which is why my next step is litigation.

In normal states not. But there you have the very popular political system called fascism, where contracts override laws.

> And the police your name and emergency contacts.

Hell no. The fuzz ain't getting my info without reasonable, articulable suspicion that I have committed, am committing, or am about to commit a crime, or if I'm pressing charges and need to ID for that process.

The contract terms could very well have actually had a meaning that included filming inside the apartment. The existence of other laws overriding the contract isn't actually the same thing as the contract not having that invasive meaning.

I agree but please, provide citations instead of a question mark, to make what you believe is obvious actually in fact obvious.

Intent is expressed through drafter's notes or explanations. "Spirit" is somerhing else, something made up later by people who had nothing to do with th3 creation of the law.

But if laws can override contracts (which presumably they can), then contracts can appear to establish permissions/restrictions that are illegal. At least one contract I've signed includes something about the rest being enforceable if any part of it isn't enforceable. Perhaps that helps to contain actual mistakes, but I assume employers use it to persuade employees that they're bound by illegal non-compete clauses, for example.

> Which is exactly the point

The point in this subthread is that your article says the opposite of what you appear to have meant. You don't provide anything other than what is apparently a very bad English translation. The rest of the article makes it pretty clear that you meant to write something different, but it threw me for a loop when I read it and clearly I am not alone.

This is why, when I'm reporting my translation of something in a foreign language, I tend to include the original text too.

You can’t make a contract that breaks the law, it doesn’t work that way. It’s unenforceable and doesn’t hold up in court.

Otherwise, you could just make contracts anytime you wanted to break the law for any reason.

> New combinations of circumstances — that is, new cases — constantly call for the application, which means in truth the extension of old principles; or, it may be, even for the thinking out of some new principle, in harmony with the general spirit of the law, fitted to meet the novel requirements of the time.

Law And Public Opinion In England, page 361 -> https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.40146/page/n38...

> At least one contract I've signed includes something about the rest being enforceable if any part of it isn't enforceable.

Which is funny, because if it worked like that - that any unenforceable demand in it made the whole thing invalid - then presumably the clause asserting the opposite would also be invalid.

That doesn't even make any sense. Fascism is generally about top-down enforced control, whereas contracts are heavily decentralized. The world where you'd have contracts override laws would be some sort of extreme anarcho-libertarian society, which is rather the opposite of fascism.

The parent comment was about an accident where you're unable to give any details yourself. Maybe when you're under a truck you'd like your folks to know what happened to you, right? But again, such are implementation details. First let's have that zero trust device, then we can be negotiate who gets to see what and when.

I think the question mark is good enough for such an absurd claim. If the author cares they can find quotes with no effort

> The letter of the law and the spirit of the law are two ways of interpreting rules or laws. To obey the "letter of the law" is to follow the literal reading of the words of the law, whereas following the "spirit of the law" is to follow the intention of why the law was enacted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law

No it means that if parts of a contract are found to be unlawful or unenforceable, the rest of the contract still holds.

Edit: in other words, you're not legally bound to unlawful parts of a contract.

The problem is that it creates a vector for illicit access to the information, and if that vector exists, it will be abused.

I'd rather have society deal with the problems that come with not knowing who's under the truck than the problems that come with state surveillance.

I don’t see any?

I don't think so?

This is my understanding, too. Sorry if that wasn't clear in my earlier comment.

However, I also believe that unenforceable parts of a contract have no effect, except in the minds of the parties to that contract. My suspicion is that contracts are sometimes drafted with this in mind.

It's not about what you want nor is it about exacting revenge. The end goal is simply a marketplace where a given behavior isn't happening. Appropriately structured fines should accomplish that.

That's what you heard in school, defending the US style of fascism as "democratic".

Fascism was a scheme to keep the old aristocrats turning industrialists to keep control of the state, whilst still keeping it under the democratic name. This was devised in the US in the 30ies and then in the old states also. Heavily supported by the US industrialists. Without them the fascism movement had no chance.

The US scheme of fascism came up with cooperate contracts overriding state laws, also pleasing the Chicago crowd, with decentralized control. At the will of the cooperations, who know better than the government of course. That's why Rockefeller could gun down strikers without any repercussions. That's why the Railroad Commission could call state military to gun down independent oil cooperations which undercut prizes of the industrialists. That's not liberalism, that's pure fascism/cooperatism/aristocratism.

It is always a good sign of modernity and relevance when the half an article's citations are to either the bible or the Talmude. And who can forget the legal touchstone that was the 1975 Systems Engineering Conference ... in Vegas.

Huh. Any idea if it's individual fines or total fines that are capped? It never occurred to me before.

Anyway this is all purely academic. 99% of violations aren't going to increase profit by more than the maximum fine (or even anywhere remotely near that) thus it seems to me that the law has sufficiently broad coverage for addressing a behavior that does not directly result in physical injury.

The only relevant part there was the definition, which I quoted to you. If you prefer a different one, have this one.

> the spirit of the law - noun phrase

> the aim or purpose of a law when it was written

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20spirit%20of...

> This was devised in the US in the 30ies

Fascism first evolved in Italy, where Mussolini and his Partito Nazionale Fascista took power in 1922.

It's a nice theory, but only works if the company gets caught and fined enough times to make a difference. Even a zillion dollar fine is useless if the law isn't applied. Also, when the fine comes out of corporate coffers, not individuals' pockets, there is less incentive to comply with the law. If you really want results, fines should come out of management's personal bank accounts, not to mention some jail time.

"Corporatism" not "cooperatism" though, right?

Nothing wrong with cooperatism I think.

That's pretty far from the usual views of fascism. Generally fascism can be seen as a form of right wing collectivism organizing all of society into one big hierarchy, with industrialist somewhat below the top and subservient to political leadership. In a fascist society political decrees override both laws and contracts. This means that fascism is inherently centralized and that what companies receive state support depends on who are political favourites at the moment. E.g. a fascist state might support the independent oil companies if it felt the established industrialists were getting too influential, i.e. classical divide and conquer.

By the way, I'm not claiming the things you describe didn't take place for the reasons you claimed. I just don't think it's accurate to describe it as based on fascism.

If they had even temporarily impounded the car it probably would cost the driver more than the ticket, since exotic cars are likely to get damaged when towed.

Note that driving laws are entirely at the state level in the US, and this was California, which is among the most driver-friendly places in the (already driver-friendly) US. There are places in the US where the license could have been suspended for this (though typically with a duration measured in days, not years).

Rich and retired are very different thing. A CEO can be out hundreds of millions due to a long prison sentence, but most fines don’t scale nearly that far.

Sure, if the regulator doesn't move to enforce then the law won't have any effect but at least to me that sounds like a problem with the government as opposed to a justification for draconian penalties.

Targeting management seems like a tactic that should only be employed where great urgency exists such as life threatening danger. I don't think marketing material is anywhere close to qualifying.

I hate my inbox being inundated with spam as much as the next guy but that doesn't mean drawing and quartering the perpetrators is justified.

I call it fascism, even if the US ur-fascist favored the French and German model, over Mussolini. Mussolini was pro-union, and of course all other fascists are contra-union. That's their biggest goal, denying workers rights.

But the US implemented all the subsequent fascist governments until today. If in Europe, Asia or Latin America's.

Oops, sure