Equifax Lobbied For Easier Regulation Before Data Breach (wsj.com)

WSJ reports: Equifax was lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies to ease up on regulation of credit-reporting companies in the months before its massive data breach. Equifax spent at least $500,000 on lobbying Congress and federal regulators in the first half of 2017, according to its congressional lobbying-disclosure reports. Among the issues on which it lobbied was limiting the legal liability of credit-reporting companies. That issue is the subject of a bill that a panel of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the industry, discussed the same day Equifax disclosed the cyberattack that exposed personal financial data of as many as 143 million Americans. Equifax has also lobbied Congress and regulatory agencies on issues around "data security and breach notification" and "cybersecurity threat information sharing," according to its lobbying disclosures. The amount Equifax spent in the first half of this year appears to be in line with previous spending. In 2016 and 2015, the company's reports show it spent $1.1 million and $1.02 million, respectively, on lobbying activities. While the company had broadly similar lobbying issues in those years, the liability matter was new in 2017.

Comments

Re:They knew

[PopeRatzo]

They need to be made an example of by Congress

No, they need to be made an example of by two guys with a blowtorch and power tools. They need to be treated like a black man at a traffic stop.

I'm telling you, there's two ways to do this: 1) You take a few of these crooked CEOs and let Texas execute them (they enjoy that sort of thing down there), or 2) If you don't have the stomach for that, you confiscate all the companies stock. Then you let the former shareholders loose with a blowtorch and power tools. You do this once or twice and no CEO or board of directors will dare fuck around like this again.

Then you watch how fast life becomes better for most people.