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Search - "unlawful"
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Although it might not get much follow up stuffs (probably a few fines but that will be about it), I still find this awesome.
The part of the Dutch government which keeps an eye on data leaks, how companies handle personal data, if companies comply with data protection/privacy laws etc (referring to it as AP from now on) finished their investigation into Windows 10. They started it because of privacy concerns from a few people about the data collection Microsoft does through Windows 10.
It's funny that whenever operating systems are brought up (or privacy/security) and we get to why I don't 'just' use windows 10 (that's actually something I'm asked sometimes), when I tell that it's for a big part due to privacy reasons, people always go into 'it's not that bad', 'oh well as long as it's lawful', 'but it isn't illegal, right!'.
Well, that changed today (for the netherlands).
AP has concluded that Windows 10 is not complying with the dutch privacy and personal data protection law.
I'm going to quote this one (trying my best to translate):
"It appears that Microsofts operating system follows every step you take on your computer. That gives a very invasive image of you", "What does that mean? do people know that, do they want that? Microsoft should give people a fair chance for deciding this by themselves".
They also say that unless explicit lawful consent is given (with enough information on what is collected, for what reasons and what it can be used for), Microsoft is, according to law, not allowed to collect their telemetrics through windows 10.
"But you can turn it off yourself!" - True, but as the paragraph above said, the dutch law requires that people are given more than enough information to decide what happens to their data, and, collection is now allowed until explicitly/lawfully ok'd where the person consenting has had enough information in order to make a well educated decision.
I'm really happy about this!
Source (dutch, sorry, only found it on a dutch (well respected) security site): https://security.nl/posting/534981/...8 -
The world makes no fucking sense.
In 2013 I had a manager approve a couple days' leave coz my son was having medical issues.
He was super nice about it and told me I could take as much time as I needed. I said, a couple days is enough. I took Thursday and Friday off. I took two days.
On Monday, an emergency meeting was held with the CTO (it was a small company, it went me -> manager -> C suite). I was told that a production deployment happened on Friday that fucked up a few clients' systems and that it had cost said clients hundreds of thousands dollars and are now suing the company.
Turns out on Friday, lead developer was also given the day off for whatever reason and I was being scolded because as the next senior developer, it was my responsibility to review code and make sure shit like this doesn't happen.
I agreed (and still agree) but also explained I had already filed leave weeks prior and I wasn't informed about dev lead's absence. Sure I could've checked my messages but my kid was in the hospital and I was busy. Still I couldn't help but feel a little guilty.
Manager holds a separate meeting with me and talks me into just writing an apology note in the email chain and he'll do the rest of the talking for me and make sure I get minimal punishment. I trusted him, he was the one who found me and brought me into the company (I know, I was naive).
So I wrote the email. It was a small note. I apologized for not checking messages and explained my situation again and mentioned I would've definitely checked if I was informed that the lead dev would be away.
Another meeting was held the next day and after pleasantries the Manager started with this, "Ok so we've all seen the email and understand that this was all Angry's fault right?".
Now, we're not native English speakers and Manager doesn't really do well with grammar. I was alarmed by what he said but wasn't angry because I was pretty sure that's not what he meant. I'm sure he meant to say that "Angry feel's guilty but his actions were understandable given the circumstance" or that he forgot a "not" in there and really meant "not Angry's fault". Surely this is what he meant to say. Right?
But then the rest of the meeting went on and I was unceremoniously let go. Immediately for "failing to accomplish my tasks and costing the client 100Ks of dollars". I wasn't even given a chance to say anything else.
The meeting ended and since we were both in the office, Manager approached me with exit papers and a check (~1200 USD)--it was my month's pay. I was asked to leave that day and was told I didn't need to come back. No handovers, no knowledge transfers, not a even a documentation of open projects I was handling.
I realized I just was made the scapegoat by a management screwup that costed our clients a lot of money.
Of course, I wrote the CEO multiple emails the next couple days. I also cc'd the CTO. No response.
A couple of weeks pass, I get another job at a cool company and i promptly move on.
I write this story now because I just found out today that in 2016, Manager was let go by the company for **sexual harassment**. Apparently, he actually did it too according to friends I still had within the company.
Here's where it gets fucked up. He turns and sues the company for unlawful termination and I guess to avoid a long legal battle? the company settled. They fucking settled and handed this man 2 Million PHP (at the time about 40k USD).
2 fucking million. Life changing money around here. And he got it by being a slimy piece of shit.
The world makes no fucking sense.10 -
The German constitutional court (BverfG) declared many part of the law regulating the German secret agency "Bundesnachrichtendienst" (Federal Intelligence Service; BND) for unlawful and unconstitutional.
The key points:
- The freedom of press and the right for privacy are human rights, not just for Germans
- Uncontrolled and targetless, without protection for e.g. foreign journalists
- No independent control institution
- Lawmakers completely did not mention why they see a reason why human rights can be restricted, but intentionally did not respect them
- There must be specific reasons to give data to other countries' secret agencies
Sources (in German):
- https://spiegel.de/netzwelt/...
- https://golem.de/news/...
-9 -
Now that prick that was my business partner did something really really stupid: he hired a collection agency to make me pay an invoice that was not even due! Of course, this is completely unlawful but this agency is now threatening to sue me if I don't pay because I promised to pay a part of the costs. Well, that promise was indeed made however at a later moment in time mr. Prick signed a contract at the notary office agreeing to take all costs on him. Collection agency says my earlier promise is what matters but I don't believe that is true.
Oh well, mr. Prick's website has been unreachable most of the day. This unreproducable, weird behavior will keep on popping up the next couple of days, weeks or even years. That happens when mr. Prick doesn't know the domain is still owned by me. So yeah, go fuck yourself, prick.4