Posts by Doctor Syntax 42530 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"it is supposed to fall on its sword for being the victim?"
You have a bank account containing a thousand of your local currency units. The bank is robbed and can no longer return your deposit. But I take it you don't care because it was the bank that was robbed, not you.
The fines are based on several criteria according to the GDPR and ICO policy. Firstly the GDPR lays out maximum fines. Secondly the ICO makes a decision based not only on the nature of the event but also on the approach of the offender. A non-cooperative business is going to see much bigger fines. It appears that Marriott were cooperative but their self-serving statement and intention to challenge the fine leads me to think that top management have not learned their lesson and the fine should be bigger and if I were a potential customer I'd maybe look elsewhere.
"I fail to understand how the ICO can properly punish a USA corporation for failing to protect the data of (for example) USA citizens stored in the USA"
It can't. As far as the ICO or any EU regulator is concerned it can lose millions of US citizens' data every day of the week providing none of them are EU residents. That's the criterion: EU residence.
"As an EU based company they're nailed for not looking after EU citizens data"
The fact that they're an EU company doesn't affect the issue although it would make non-payment a bit easier to deal with. Nor does their being multiple entities which don't, in this case, firewall legal
liabilities. The salient fact is that EU residents' data was involved.
We take the privacy and security of guest information very seriously and continue to work hard to meet the standard of excellence that our guests expect from Marriott clearly we failed so we think the punishment is appropriate.
Wouldn't that actually be more encouraging to potential customers than the transparently untrue garbage? Contrition is more convincing than bluster.
"We as a society just need to have that conversation and decide where we want the balance to be"
We had that conversation several centuries ago and came up with a good answer, the presumption of innocence. The conversation that's needed now is about why it's being ignored so often.
"wasn't good enough just because you usually had to try twice to plug it in"
Not just that. Having got it plugged in you found it had the wrong micro-connector on the other end. So did all the others within sight. When you found the right cable you then found it didn't work anyway. It was a faulty cable.
"Downtime is now absolutely killing and guaranteed to be 4 times as long, but since the beancounters originally calculated you don't need spares, you can't have spares."
You then point out the revised cost/risk situation and that the only way to mitigate this is to replace the equipment now, before it fails and this time why not buy the spares.
"Likewise, when I used Murphy in Yorkshire way back when I got odd looks"
Maybe they were just giving you odd looks on principle.
Over here we also use Murphy to trap unwary seekers after umbrage. A comment such as "Murphy have dug up the road again" is apt to flush out those who take umbrage on behalf of Irish labourers. Then we can point out that the Murphy Group are well known public infrastructure contractors.
"During the meeting with Polequaptewa, Blue Stone executives asked that Polequaptewa 'turn over' all of the data needed to hand the IT, web design and marketing over to the third party external companies,"
I'd have thought he could have done a fair amount of damage quite legally by just resigning on the spot depending on how well - or not - it was all documented. It'd probably have cost them a packet just to have the outsourcers get up to speed.
Automation for industrial production requires a different mind-set from office applications. People in the early days of the personal computer had that mind-set because they were the sort of people who tinkered with stuff and a soldering iron was as much part of their lives as a keyboard.
Then the personal computer became the PC that approach became a minority interest and as MicroSoft became Microsoft they had no time for those who were their customers in the early days - the new market was much bigger. That mind-set has been lost.
I'd like to think they'll also evaluate their policies re opt-in/opt-out.
E.g. this morning I tried to phone Hotpoint spares. Their pre-recorded rigmarole was that we might spamyou with post or phone unless you opt-out. That's a breach of GDPR right there. I didn't get as far as opting out, however; I gave up on their appalling ACD.
"Is it me or does that note read like the outgoing head of Group IT was an Airline Ops guy, not an IT guy?"
Should it surprise anyone? It's the management attitude that a good manager doesn't need to know anything about what they're managing. That's why we get to call them manglement.
Several factors to consider here.
Firstly< offences committed after GDPR applied up until 31st Oct will presumably have to be dealt with under GDPR, just as offences committed pre-GDPR but dealt with after GDPR applied were fined under the old regulations.
Secondly, if HMG wants to avoid problems for businesses which need to process data of EU residents then they'll need to achieve equivalence which means keeping GDPR-equivalent regulation in place. Whether such sanity will prevail is anybody's guess.
Thirdly, the current DPA implements GDPR so if the numpty in residence, whoever he may be, doesn't like that he'll have to replace it or repeal it.
Fourthly, post-Brexit, I presume any fines won't be shared with other EU countries so they may be less to take into account of fines which an EU regulator might apply. Alternatively the maximum sum of EU & UK fines could be 8%. That should make boards think.
"that powder you strongly suspect to be bits of ground-up teeth"
But probably dental stone, plaster of Paris which sets particularly hard. I used to visit a dental supplier in Belfast to get supplies of it which we issued to Scenes of Crime Officers.*
Eventually it transmogrified into a combined dental supplier and video hire shop, VHS being a new thing. I asked the owner which was the more profitable line. He didn't actually say but it turned out he wasn't happy about the amount of cash he had to tie up in stock for the video side.
*Handy tip for mixing small amounts of plaster: if you store it in plastic bags just add water to the bag and mix it by palpating the bag (oooh-er Missus!). We issued it in one pound bags with the instruction to add a pint of water per bag. You could practically guarantee an empty beer bottle near any crome scene to act as a measure.
I see the building industry caught up a few decades later with bags of ready-mix mortar with hose attachments. What a pity I never patented the idea.
From what the report says their problem is wth Mozilla making it more difficult for them to do what HMG is telling them to do. Perhaps they think that having a go at the govt. directly is a bit too risky. Having a go at an EU directive is more likely to win them brownie points with either of the current contenders or with Corbyn should the worst come to the worst.
Sadly they have longer form than that. The mention of a south London site prompted me to do a bit of checking. The buildings that held my old department have gone which I knew about. So, it appears, has the building that replaced them and so has the department, in fact a whole bunch of science departments. Even my old hall of residence. All the property seems to have been sold out to developers.
Bastards!
His father had a few novel ideas too. One was to stiff customary tenants of manors in royal hands for many years' worth of rent to confirm their tenancies. The manorial records were seized and gone through with a fine tooth comb and if there were any departures from what the auditors considered to be customary rents the tenants were accused of fraud.
My area was one that suffered. It's not surprising that it came out solidly for Parliament when his son had a bit of trouble.
