SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
Your company has suffered a data breach. The law requires you to fall on your sword, and—at considerable time and expense—provide a government-scripted breach disclosure notice to your customers, including the facts and circumstances surrounding the breach, how it happened, what data was breached and, more importantly, what you are doing about it.
Irrespective of the costs of the breach itself, the government-compelled disclosure may cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in disclosure costs alone, not to mention the reputational and other costs associated with this compelled speech. To make matters worse, the government-ordered speech does little in and of itself to make consumers safer or better protected against hackers.
[...] The data breach disclosure laws are clearly government-compelled speech. The government has a good reason for wanting companies to make such disclosures, but such reasons may not be "compelling" and the disclosure may not be the least intrusive means of achieving the government's objectives. Under the EU's GDPR regulations, the disclosure is made to the government privacy entity, and only where that entity believes it necessary is a public disclosure made.
In essence, the Supreme Court has found a right of commercial entities not to be required to make notifications and disclosures because they have a first amendment right not to be forced to do so.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:46PM (5 children)
I'll believe that when I see a corporation go to jail.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday July 05 2018, @05:05PM (4 children)
I'd prefer to see a corporation get the death penalty. Simply dissolve the corporation for some egregious violation of law.
Instantly investors lose out. CEOs and other CXX are out of a job. Other people out of a job. Serious consequences.
The result: EVERYONE will start to hold corporations more accountable (investors, CXX's, legislators) long before things go off the rails.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 05 2018, @08:56PM
The amazing thing is that in my experience at least a CxO who runs a company into the ground is more likely to be given a chance to be a CxO than a lower-level executive who has been successfully running whatever they're in charge of. This might have something to do with their buddies from their former job doing the hiring.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05 2018, @09:25PM (1 child)
What about the assets? Wholly owned subsidiaries? Parent corporation that actually owns everything?
Any way you line up this "death penalty", some structure will emerge where the corporation found responsible will own nothing and the stock holders, execs, etc, can move on to another corporation with an oddly (ahem, exactly) similar structure.
It's hard to make "death" apply to legal fictions in a meaningful way.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 06 2018, @02:09PM
It was a quick idea. But to refine it . . .
The death penalty applies to the corporation or wholly owned subsidiary that committed the offense. Not to a holding company. Not necessarily to a parent company that owns the offending company -- unless it is shown that the offense was done at the parent company's direction, and on up the chain of ownership. It stops where the offense began.
The assets are disposed of as in bankruptcy liquidation. The creditors are paid off, and maybe the investors get something.
If investors are unhappy, they should pay more attention to how evil are the companies they invest in.
If creditors are unhappy, maybe they should have some threshold of just how evil of an organization they will associate with.
Just as in all of human history. This is what happens with evil human individuals. It serves as a lesson to others. People becoming too evil become well known and are shunned. Collateral damage is done in inflicting the death penalty. Etc.
It's not a perfect plan. But some people want corporations to be people, so let's make it sew.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Friday July 06 2018, @05:32AM
I dunno. "Going to jail" could be the equivalent of a death penalty. "Going to jail" would involved having all the physical premises padlocked and all the bank accounts frozen for the duration of the sentence. 30 days in the slammer for Wells Fargo, VW, The Trump Organization, whatever. Production stops, cash flow stops, but contract obligations don't stop. Gonna be a lot of penalties after the sentence is up and the dust settles.
Why yes, it would hurt innocent people. Criminals do that. A corporation that steals from thousands hurts far more people than the blue collar mugger can ever aspire to.