Hack Will Lead to Little, if Any, Punishment for Equifax

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: DV Henkel-Wallace <gumby () henkel-wallace org>
> Date: September 21, 2017 at 1:43:04 AM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Hack Will Lead to Little, if Any, Punishment for Equifax
>
> As I have said, zero customer data was lost in the Equifax breech, so under the law it appears no harm was done, or 
> at least no actionable harm.
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/equifax-hack-penalties.html
>
> It’s a bad week when one senator says that “somebody needs to go to jail” for selling shares in your company before 
> it disclosed a massive data breach, and another asserts that the episode was “one of the most egregious examples of 
> corporate malfeasances since Enron.”
>
> The hacking into Equifax’s trove of consumer and financial data that exposed the sensitive personal information of as 
> many as 143 million Americans leads naturally to the question of the legal consequences the company and its 
> executives might face. The answer, for those who remember the government’s response to the financial crisis, will be 
> as familiar as it is unwelcome: not much.
>
> That seems outrageous when so many individuals may see their identities stolen because of a company’s failure to 
> ensure the safety of its primary product. But Equifax operates in a sphere with minimal government regulation, and 
> its conduct is unlikely to trigger a criminal prosecution of the company or any of its executives.
>
> The worst anyone connected with Equifax may end up facing is a tongue-lashing from Congress — many hearings are 
> already scheduled — except for the outside chance that the aggrieved public gets its own day in court. But that could 
> be years from now.
>
> Unlike the banks that packaged and sold risky securities and derivatives, leading to the meltdown in the financial 
> markets nine years ago, Equifax is a victim, not a perpetrator. Frustrating as it may be in this case, we usually 
> don’t blame the victim of a theft for allowing it to happen — even if you go into a bad neighborhood late at night. 
> And the usual tools that federal prosecutors use to go after companies for misconduct — most notably the mail fraud 
> and wire fraud statutes — do not apply because Equifax did not actively mislead anyone about the hacking.



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