Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill That Could Hold Tech Execs Responsible For Data Breaches (theverge.com)

On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced a new piece of legislation that would make it easier to criminally charge company executives when Americans' personal data is breached. From a report: The Corporate Executive Accountability Act is yet another push from Warren who has focused much of her presidential campaign on holding corporations and their leaders responsible for both their market dominance and perceived corruption. The bill, if approved, would widen criminal liability of "negligent" executives of corporations (that make more than $1 billion) when they commit crimes, repeatedly break federal laws, or harm a large number of Americans by way of civil rights violations, including their data privacy. "When a criminal on the street steals money from your wallet, they go to jail. When small-business owners cheat their customers, they go to jail," Warren wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published on Wednesday morning. "But when corporate executives at big companies oversee huge frauds that hurt tens of thousands of people, they often get to walk away with multimillion-dollar payouts."

Comments

shes got my vote

[Anonymous Coward]

it about time someone proposed a bill like this.

Sounds a bit like a SARBOX bill but for privacy...

[CFD339]

SARBOX makes executives personally responsible for the accuracy of the financial data they put out. This has made them get serious about the source of that financial data within their own company. Maybe a bill like this would help with privacy the same way.

Privacy is a red herring

[rsilvergun]

You care about privacy to protect what you have, and what you have gets less and less every year.

This isn't a shot at tech companies. She just did that so it's harder to criticize her (after all, the tech companies just love liberals). No, this is a shot at the folks who crashed the economy in 2008. After that working class Americans lost trillions in wealth. That wealth wasn't destroyed, it was pocketed by the rich. It was the single biggest wealth transfer in my life. Maybe in history.

The trouble here is we focus to much on how Facebook knows what color car we like best or our favorite restaurant and not enough on the massive wealth grab that happens every 10 years when corrupt businessmen and politicians crash the economy and then buy up our assets at rock bottom prices while we're laid off.