When Everything Everywhere Is Securities Fraud, this is the corporate environment that results.
This seems to be an allusion to Matt Levine’s writing that “everything is securities fraud”.
It’s not as cynical against companies as you think. The overall point is that sometimes there’s a lot blurrier line between legitimate activities and what someone could interpret as securities fraud than you’d expect.
This is not the case. They can and will take any information in the worst possible light. They want fine and convictions not for the fair decision to be made.
You are saying they want slam dunk cases, but are apparently obtaining these outcomes using evidence that can go either way? You don't see the contradiction there?
The judicial system is adversarial by nature. The goal of the prosecution is to put forward its best possible case that basically means assuming the worst of any piece of evidence.
Even for officers of publicly-traded companies, it should not be difficult to avoid committing securities fraud if you're not actually attempting to make money in ways you shouldn't.
So, this isn’t about committing securities fraud, it’s about writing something that shows that the company knows that something bad is going on. It’s about evidence.
Also it is very common and easy for people to speculate wildly about what might be going on, to make jokes, and to use legal terms they don’t really understand. This is Hacker News; you know this. In court, such nonsense may make it look like you actually knew something.