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Elizabeth Warren wants jail time for CEOs in Equifax-style breaches
In 2017, criminals stole the personal data of about 143 million people from the credit rating system Equifax. It was a huge embarrassment for the company and a headache for the millions of people affected. Equifax's then-57-year-old CEO Richard Smith retired in September 2017, weeks after the breach was discovered, with a multi-million dollar pay package.
Massachusetts US Senator turned Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren wants to make sure that CEOs who preside over massive data breaches in the future don't get off so easily. On Wednesday, she announced the Corporate Executive Accountability Act, which would impose jail time on corporate executives who "negligently permit or fail to prevent" a "violation of the law" that "affects the health, safety, finances or personal data" of 1 percent of the population of any state.
A CEO could get up to a year in prison for a first offense. Repeat offenders could get three years.
The penalty only applies to companies that generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue—Equifax had $3.4 billion in revenue in 2017. It also only applies to companies that are either convicted of violating the law or settle claims with state or federal regulators. Equifax may qualify on this score, too, since the company signed a consent decree with state regulators last year.
With that said, it seems that most data breaches probably wouldn't trigger criminal penalties under the proposed new law. A CEO would only face jail time if a data breach was the result of illegal activity by the company and if prosecutors can show that the CEO was negligent in failing to prevent it. And under current law, merely being the victim of a data breach isn't a crime.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday April 08 2019, @05:28PM (2 children)
And? They are both trying to implement the policies they believe in.
Now, as a voter, you get to choose which policy most closely aligns to your beliefs and vote for the people trying to implement it.
What you don't get to do is simply proclaim that both sides are the exact same when the actions they are taking are the exact opposite.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Monday April 08 2019, @08:12PM
I've made no such claim "that both sides are the exact same."
Perhaps I could have phrased it better, but I don't think they're trying to implement anything in this particular case. This is showmanship and hand-waving legislation at its best.
I don't believe that either side thinks this has any traction to become law. The proposed law is simply for show and both sides get to make themselves look good. It's a farce.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @09:26PM
No, they're not, because the Republicans don't believe in anything except money, and the majority of Democrats are the same. Corporate Democrats like Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and worse are the cancer plaguing the Democratic party, and they need to be primaried out of office in favor of progressive candidates who don't accept corporate bribes to even have a chance of saving it. The Republican party, on the other hand, is entirely hopeless.
That assumes the US is a democratic republic, when in fact it functions as more of an oligarchy. Maybe if we had instant-runoff voting and various other democratic reforms, things would be different, but that's not the case yet. Any country that forces people to choose a lesser evil is not democratic at all and will do very poorly at reflecting the actual policy positions of The People.