New bill ensures Jailtime for CEOs that lie | Hacker News Reader

New bill ensures Jailtime for CEOs that lie

vice.com

93 pointselsewhen45 comments

Good. I find it unlikely to pass, but I'd like it to pass.

If a CEO says publicly, "Our product is safe and good for the public, and there should be no concern" and it turns out they knew their product was actively harmful, or that they were marketing it in harmful ways (see: cigarettes, opiates) then they were willfully misleading the public and jail-time should be a very real possibility.

I agree plenty times the command chain was let scot free from scandals because of the diluted liability on the corporate actions as whole and the limited personal responsibility granted by hiding behind a corporation, something personal to pierce the corporate veil is needed at this point in time as correction to the rampant abuse from execs

This might be an issue with 1A , but we shall see.

It's about accountability imho. From CEO's to our elected leaders to law enforcement to celebrities. This is very generalized, but there is a huge lack of people being held accountable for their actions and decisions in this country. It's always someone else. I.E I think here, Jussie Smollett is a good recent example.

The Equifax hack for example is an example of where the CEO failed. Easy fix, and could have been addressed but it was not. Equifax should not exist imho. They are in the business to keep our data private, and they clearly failed. Why do they get to continue to operate as nothing happened? They exposed millions of users private and confidential info, and all we get is credit reporting, and some of us get maybe a few dollars. sigh

False statement of fact is not protected free speech, and has a long history of case law. So I'm not sure about hand-wringing over the constitutional impacts is really a serious concern.

That is not entirely true, it all depends on who the target of the speech is. Law enforcement certainly can lie to the public.

I am always of the opinion, government first. As in, want to apply an accountability rule; or any law for that matter, apply it to those who write the law first and make their penalties more severe.

In this case, this is a lot of election year posturing. We already have accounts of government officials leaking private information and that rarely lands with anyone being penalized.

>Law enforcement certainly can lie to the public.

OK, but that's just because the government hasn't passed a law against such speech; it isn't protected by the First Amendment. If the government wants to adopt a rule stopping cops from lying to the public (in their official capacity), it is free to attach penalties to violations of such a rule. And while it is useful for undercover cops to lie to maintain their cover, it might very well be a good policy that uniformed officers must not tell lies to the public. It certainly could help increase trust in the police.

> That is not entirely true, it all depends on who the target of the speech is. Law enforcement certainly can lie to the public.

Why can law enforcement lie to the public? I honestly don't know what you're alluding to.

They can, for instance, tell you that one of your supposed cohorts has already told them what happened, but you can still receive a reduced sentence if you confess. I can also recall a few cases where they have lied to suspects about their rights, I believe largely within the CBP. I'm not sure how that interacts with your Miranda Rights (i.e. they have to read your Miranda rights, but are they then allowed to lie about them?).

That's an entirely different class of thing though, possibly civil vs. criminal, I believe. If I'm signing a contract with you, and you tell me "no one is going to ever offer you a deal like this," even though you fully know many people would offer me a better deal, that's not illegal.

This is more akin to the chief of police making an announcement that a building is safe to enter, knowing there is a gunmen ready to shoot people as they enter. I don't know the exact definitions here, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure my scenario would be legally actionable.

Similarly, freedom of speech is limited at least in one way by "imminent lawless action."

I'm not sure about the issue you mention regarding CBP, but I believe there are certain differences between how the law treats citizens and non-citizens. The Exclusionary Rule, disallowing evidence illegally obtained, doesn't apply to civil matters, including immigration, apparently (https://www.halt.org/things-cops-do-that-are-illegal-what-a-...).

Law enforcement can omit or lie about your Miranda rights, but they can't use evidence obtained from what you say without reading your rights. So if a cop saw you shoot someone, and you're still holding the gun, they don't really need to read you your rights; they don't really need anything from you at that point.

> If I'm signing a contract with you, and you tell me "no one is going to ever offer you a deal like this," even though you fully know many people would offer me a better deal, that's not illegal.

Is it not illegal to get someone to sign a contract based on a known falsehood? I.e. if I offer to sell you my house and tell you that it has no issues, but it turns out termites have eaten half of it and I knew that, is the contract not invalid? I think your solution only works because it's common sense that that is not a statement of fact.

Honestly it sounds bad that we say it's okay for the police to lie in order to coerce a confession. I wonder how much it would reduce false confessions if we did so. My hunch, based on no data (if someone knows more please chime in because I am interested) is at least 90% of false confessions would disappear. I say that because I believe most false confessions are essentially bullied out of people by police. Everybody has seen Making A Murderer. I don't think that's the norm by any means, but it's proof this happens.

I understand why they do it. But I am 100% for anything to increase police accountability. They should be held to a higher standard and obviously that is not the case today (at least in the United States).

The trope of telling a suspected undercover "If you're a cop you have to tell me"

There's also some choice scenes in The Wire, like when they put some youths in a "lie detector" that is really a copy machine.

> This might be an issue with 1A , but we shall see.

This took me a few minutes to figure out. For others, I believe 1A refers to the constitution:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 
    abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition 
    the government for a redress of grievances

I apologize here, should have been more clear.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment

This explains how lying is not protected in some cases, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/fTrials/conlaw/lying.h...

or this https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/does-th...

Good.

In a more general sense, we as a society need to take a long, hard look at limited liability. We cannot call for more personal responsibility in society with one hand while with the other hand letting malicious decision-makers walk away with their personal fortunes while workers and shareholders take on the cost of their actions. People need to be held accountable for their actions, and this is especially true for people in positions of power whose actions can affect millions of people.

I'm not sure you understand what limited liability means. Limited liability doesn't mean that the CEO can't be put in prison or Equifax liquidated. It means that after Equifax is liquidated, if there's still debts to be paid, I can't go into a private individuals 401(k) plan, see that they held stock in Equifax, then demand they empty their savings account to pay the debts for “their" company that they theoretically "own" in the form of stock. Limited liability doesn't mean corporations don't have to follow the law or can't be sued.

on the flip side, limited liability allows smaller players to enter the market without necessarily risking their entire life savings.

So maybe the "long hard look at limited liability" I suggested concludes that limited liability applies only to small players entering the market.

Nobody is confused about why limited liability exists, so I don't think it needs to be brought up every time someone points out the problems with it. It generally comes across as just trying to shut down the conversation, and refuse to admit there are very large downsides to limited liability.

what "very large downsides” are you talking about? the possibility that a company might be unable to repay a debt? do you also think we need to take a long hard look at bankruptcy? to me, the fact that I can hold a few thousand dollars in stocks without risking everything I own seems pretty good. I'm not sure how you could change it in a way that wouldn't shift the balance of power even more towards the well-capitalized.

Ideally, limited liability wouldn't apply to people making decisions for the company: if a CEO decides, for example, not to recall deadly exploding cars because of a cost/revenue analysis, the CEO's 401k should not be off limits as a source of funds for a settlement against the company.

I don't know why you assume you benefit from this not being the case: when Ford was sued for the Pinto, shareholders of Ford lost money which they wouldn't have lost if the decision makers had paid more of the settlement.

One possible way to regulate this is related to voting and non-voting shares. If you want to invest in a company without taking on liability, you can invest in non-voting shares--since you can't make any decisions for the company, you can't be held liable if the company decides to do something wrong. But you shouldn't be able to take part in the decision making of a company without also taking responsibility if you decide to do something wrong.

That may be true, but I see it in practice being used by CEOs whose annual salary is far bigger than my life savings, and who still walk away with Golden Parachutes.

If the goal is specifically to assist startups, then let's find some way to codify that. It sounds like one of those cases of unintended consequences. Is it trying to help out the little guy? It sure looks like it's helping the rich stay rich.

in general, employees are not held financially responsible for mistakes they make at work unless they are being criminally negligent/malicious. a CEO is just a very well paid employee. unless I'm mistaken, limited liability is about what owners of a company are liable for.

the goal of limited liability is not specifically to help startups, it's a common law concept that predates "startups" by hundreds of years. I would argue that it helps the little guy much more than the extremely wealthy. I personally could not invest at all if I couldn't limit my losses to the amount of money I put in. people with millions of dollars can take on a lot more risk without becoming homeless if one or two holdings goes belly-up.

There's a pretty big difference between "My holdings went belly up because our process wasn't efficient enough" and "My holdings went belly up because I was caught giving cancer to kids". Limited liability may be intended to protect in the former case, but it also protects in the latter case.

Part of the difficulty here is that ownership confers some power to shareholders (the ability to vote in some corporate matters) but doesn't confer any responsibility for those decisions. For the average investor, this is a good thing: I don't have time to vote in every shareholder election I hold the right to vote in, so it doesn't make sense to hold me liable for elections I didn't vote in.

A possible solution here is non-voting shares. Limited liability could easily apply only to those holding non-voting shares, and people could have the ability to convert voting shares into non-voting shares if they don't intend to vote in shareholder elections.

On the flip side it takes their skin out of the game.

This is some helicopter parenting nonsense. I want to play too but not get hurt.

If one wants to be a service provider, in a free market, reliant on customers who in turn rely on them, shoulder all the risk.

On the flip side other nations use universal social services to insure the general public if cushioned from complete failure.

Anyone getting into business should really feel the burden. And big corp leadership should feel an even bigger burden for being too big to fail. They want to be that big they should be ready for a hard fall.

I don’t owe political deference to corporate. They get my time and that’s good enough.

Would be neat if we could get one of these for politicians that lie!

One problem at a time please

Personally, I think Andrew Yang has a bold position for data privacy that I hope Congress will embrace.

Data as a property right: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/data-property-right/

Data generated by each individual needs to be owned by them, with certain rights conveyed that will allow them to know how it’s used and protect it.

If I were to set up an device that associated different electromagnetic spectrum emissions, would that data belong to me or to the people who emitted it?

I was initially sceptical, because lying is generally not illegal. CEOs are people, and people have first amendment rights. However, it seems it's narrowly classifying the act of hiding what you do with personal data as criminal fraud, and I'm on board with that idea.

Bill proposals rarely count as on topic for HN. Most proposed bills never go anywhere.

The content of this bill seems like it would be pretty important for HN, though.

I rather they start with the financial companies. How many bankers were even charged after 2008? Rhetorical question of course.

It's a pity we didn't take a page from Iceland.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-31/welcome-t...

What's with the title? I thought Jailtime might be a new apple product. It should be "jail time".

Yeah, that's a bill that will never see passage.

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