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Comment by SethTro | Hacker News Reader

> Moody’s downgraded Equifax from a “stable” to a “negative” outlook

> Lawsuits and investigations have cost $690 million in the first quarter of 2019 alone

> And the lawsuits will keep coming: In January, an Atlanta judge denied Equifax’s attempts to dismiss class-actions filed against the company.

Looks like there are real consequences to losing data on half of all Americans

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Will any of the individuals responsible face direct consequences for their actions? Or, will the cost of their mistakes be borne entirely by shareholders?

The shareholders should bear the consequences of failure, just as they reap the rewards of success.

But not because of anything Congress did.

I would have liked Congress to do more too, but is this relevant here?

In a thread discussing Equifax's data breach, costs, and liabilities? Where would it be more relevant?

I think I overreacted somewhat, sorry for that.

But, ideally it should have been a direct comment on this story. You replied to an unrelated statement.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that existing laws and civil structures are capable of dealing with this without new laws having to be passed explicitly for this case.

Doing it more quickly would have been nice, sure.

If the system works as-is, does Congress need to do anything?

Ideally, I think that we'd want the federal Congress and the individual state legislatures being reflective, making prospective decisions which anticipate future events and impose the correct structure to deal with them, rather than retrospectively doing something in order to be seen to do something.

But no-one ever got elected on a platform of 'my predecessors did a great job; I'm going to play some golf!'

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