Congresswoman Destroys Equifax CEO Mark Begor About Privacy (fastcompany.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) asked whether Equifax CEO Mark Begor would be willing to share his address, birth date, and Social Security number publicly at the hearing. Begor declined, citing the risk of "identity theft," letting Porter criticize Equifax's legal response to the 2017 security breach that exposed almost 150 million people's data of that sort to an unknown intruder. The company had unsuccessfully asked a judge presiding over a class-action suit over the breach to dismiss it, saying the plaintiffs hadn't "sufficiently alleged injury and proximate causation" to bring suit, as Yahoo Finance reported late last month.

Comments

This guy should be in prison

[WCMI92]

But they won't do that. Because he's rich. Filthy rich.

Re:This guy should be in prison

[DickBreath]

The only way to fix this is to make data breaches MUCH more expensive than what it costs to make their systems secure. With a side order of mandatory executive jail time just to be sure.

Re:This guy should be in prison

[DickBreath]

The jail time would need to be an option for willful negligence where profit was prioritized over actual data security.

The point of a financial penalty IS to force them to prioritize correctly. The costs of investing in security will be less than the cost of a breach. That incentive is exactly backwards at present.

If this is willfully ignored, then the jail time option needs to become available.

Re:This guy should be in prison

[Puls4r]

100% Nope.

If someone climbs onto a piece of heavy machinery like a crane and proceeds to kill someone - they are still prosecuted. If someone picks up a handgun and shoots someone, they are still prosecuted even if they have no training or knowledge on how to use the handgun.

Ignorance is NOT a defense. Especially in a situation where someone is put into a position of power. You could even extend the prosecution to the people who PUT the CTO in the position, because they knew he / she didn't have the experience or knowledge necessary to execute the job.

and what?

[Tom]

So she got her 15 minutes of fame, but does it change anything? Aside from the headline, is there any effect?

Re:and what?

[AmiMoJo]

Well in theory he adds to the debate over privacy laws and corporate punishment for breeches, and also the positive publicity and public sentiment might encourage others to join her in supporting laws that address the issue.

Obviously the system is far from perfect, but it's perhaps not a total waste of time.

She didn't destroy anything

[rsilvergun]

not that it hurts to call folks out for their bullshit, but by itself it's little more than impotent rage. If you want change you need to get a lot more people like her in office. And that means showing up for primary elections so you have real choices in the general election.

Re:She didn't destroy anything

[thomn8r]

We don't needs some blowhard reminding us of what we already know.

Actually, we do. Otherwise people just forget about it an then it's as if it never happened in the fist place.

Can congress stop throwing Zingers.

[jellomizer]

The problem I have with congressional hearings, it is that you a forced to go to a roasting session, and a scolding that one hasn't had sense they were 8 years old.
The problem is that these do little to fix the problems, politician zingers only really hurt people with political ambitions. A CEO doesn't need to win popular vote, He is fine being the most hated man in the world just as long as he gets his pay. Besides after the hearing, most CEO's will get out of the public eye, and most people will forget such insults and scolding told to him.
These hearings shouldn't be about punishing a guy, no matter how nasty they are. But trying to get information so Congress can craft laws and policies to prevent it from happening again.

I am sure Mark Begor as an adult, will fly home in his personal jet, and not loose much sleep, because a Congresswomen got a good zing on him.

Nothing matters

[DalM]

Nothing matters. This has no meaning. He won't lose his job. He won't even lose a second of sleep. He doesn't care about this or anything. Nothing matters.

Because he's rich. Wealth is the only virtue American culture acknowledges.

Congresswoman Destroys Equifax CEO Mark Begor Abou

[thereddaikon]

So what did she do? Send him to the shadow realm? Hit him with a good 'ole Kamehameha?

Nope. She just chewed him out. Can we chill with the over dramatic headlines? I want to destroy modern journalism and replace with something that just tells me what happened.

"destroys"

[roc97007]

Ok she had a great point, but can we stop using yahoo phrasing in our headlines?