32 Senators Want To Know If US Regulators Halted Equifax Probe (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Earlier this week, a Reuters report suggested that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) had halted its investigation into last year's massive Equifax data breach. Reuters sources said that even basic steps expected in such a probe hadn't been taken and efforts had stalled since Mick Mulvaney took over as head of the CFPB late last year. Now, 31 Democratic senators and one Independent have written a letter to Mulvaney asking if that is indeed the case and if so, why.

In their letter, the senators expressed their concern over these reports and reiterated the duty the CFPB has to not only investigate the breach but to bring action against Equifax if deemed necessary. "Consumer reporting agencies and the data they collect play a central role in consumers' access to credit and the fair and competitive pricing of that credit," they wrote. "Therefore, the CFPB has a duty to supervise consumer reporting agencies, investigate how this breach has or will harm consumers and bring enforcement actions as necessary."

Comments

Re:Spoiler alert: Yes

[fluffernutter]

Honest question, what damage did the email server incident actually cause? I've read some things about it and I don't understand how it is on the same scale as the Equifax breach.

Re:Spoiler alert: Yes

[Immerman]

I didn't follow the story in depth - mostly they seemed to be the usual partisan torch-and-pitchfork rants. However, I think the core issue, and reason that such behavior is illegal, is that like electronic voting without a paper trail, there's no way to tell how much damage was actually done. You control your own communications channel for government business, it makes it that much easier for you to engage in corrupt dealings and then destroy the evidence. As well as allowing foreign intelligence agencies to more easily spy on you, since it's a fair bet that your basement server is far less secure than the shared servers with a full IT staff charged with keeping them up to date and secure.

As such I'd love to see everyone who engaged in such practices imprisoned, but honestly I don't expect to see it happen. I think most everyone accepts that the vast majority of federal elected officials are corrupt, the only question is exactly how badly. As such, while everyone will make lots of noise about their opponent's corruption, they won't actually *do* anything about it, as it would set precedent for their own prosecution when the wheel of power inevitably turns against them. They've pretty much got to be caught red handed doing something really appalling for there to even be a serious inquiry, and even then it's as likely as not that it will simply be dragged out until the population moves on to new outrages, and then quietly dropped with just enough of a slap on the wrist that everyone else can claim that "something was done about it"

Good luck with that

[magzteel]

The CFPB is not subject to congressional oversight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"A 2013 press release from the United States House Financial Services Committee criticized the CFPB for what was described as a "radical structure" that "is controlled by a single individual who cannot be fired for poor performance and who exercises sole control over the agency, its hiring and its budget." Moreover, the committee alleged a lack of financial transparency and a lack of accountability to Congress or the President. Committee Vice Chairman Patrick McHenry, expressed particular concern about travel costs and a $55 million renovation of CFPB headquarters, stating "$55 million is more than the entire annual construction and acquisition budget for GSA for the totality of federal buildings."[71] In 2012, the majority of GSA's Federal Buildings Fund went to rental costs, totaling $5.2 billion. $50 million was budgeted for construction and acquisition of facilities.[72]"

Re:Spoiler alert: Yes

[bondsbw]

My company is a large federal contractor, and everyone has it drilled in our heads just how many levels of prison we'll go to if we are negligent in like manner to the email debacle.

So sure, I think she should be in prison. But Leavenworth is much better than Guantanamo, which is where her competition deserves to go.