Equifax Deserves the Corporate Death Penalty
wired.com
wired.com
Corporations and executives as well as stockholders must suffer. For executives there must be clear disincentives to bad management. Stockholders must learn to NOT invest in unethical companies. And employees need to learn that working for poorly run companies is a poor career choice.
Otherwise, these events will continue to occur and everyone on the inside will glad hand each other about how they got away with it.
1. Such a big fine that their stock goes broke
2. Arresting the execs who took high salaries but did not take their jobs seriously enough
And, as far as fines, I think just providing a very simple path whereby they are deemed responsible for losses resulting from the breach is enough. Me having to personally sue them and personally prove their responsibility in a court is a very high bar. A class action is a much lower bar, but, will result in me getting significantly diminished compensation. Some process in-between that where their guilt is established beforehand and I merely need to prove what my damages are and I can collect, say, treble damages from Equifax would fix the Equifax problem in a more egalitarian way.
Equifax has a single database to protect and they failed at it, I will also argue that a company like Equifax offers minimal legitimate value and what value they suggest to offer is really an anti-value and therefore are, perhaps, eligible for such an extreme sanction.