The Equifax breach affected data about people that was collected as part of practices that tie to big finance, whose behavior feels hopelessly disconnected from

The Equifax breach affected data about people that was collected as part of practices that tie to big finance, whose behavior feels hopelessly disconnected from the everyday lives of individuals. It's the System, it's always been the System, and will probably always be the System, made sure of by lobbyists, inertia, and lack of good answers that are equally palatable to everyone on how to do it any other way. For common people, there's a sense of helplessness, and for politicians there's a sense of inconvenient consequences for having punted the topic of national identity to the States and the private sector -- and too many barriers to achieving realistic progress on doing it any other way. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is about data that was once relinquished by users voluntarily for a different purpose, or collected by Facebook as part of its normal operating practice, that found its way through multiple hands in unsavory backroom deals, and ultimately ended up with a radical actor who ostensibly used it to help a widely-derided candidate eke out a narrow and unexpected victory in the US presidency. It's an issue that emotionally tugs at all sorts of people for all sorts of different reasons: multiple breaches of trust, a corporation's business model laid bare to everyone who's been unaware, the complete lack of accountability to the chain of custody of people's data, the unsavoriness (depending on the viewer) of some of the characters involved -- it's a story everyone can get upset about. More critically, it's a story that annoys politicians too, and unlike with Equifax, they are actually equipped and willing to take action on it.