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USGOV and all but the largest businesses don't mesh. The solution to the spying threat is extending tort liability and statutory damages to negligence when ther

by rrggrr 8y ago

USGOV and all but the largest businesses don't mesh. The solution to the spying threat is extending tort liability and statutory damages to negligence when there are compromises. Not different than product safety, liability will make quick work of the problem.

dmix 8y ago
Thank you, I’ve been saying this forever. The solution to widespread hacking isn’t to make it easier for one side to find the other guys malware (quicker) while compromising your data privacy, in exchange for help from gov. Which is basically the only NSA “defence” being offered to businesses via “information sharing” programs.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Agreed. There is just zero reason to care about it and that lack of care only diminishes as more and more companies are compromised so it becomes normal and consumers really have no choice to take their business elsewhere. The only way this will change is if there are financial and/or criminal penalties for gross neglect of private data. I think healthcare (HIPAA) is another good example, although the financial penalties need to be higher given some of the compromises and relatively small fines.
nostrademons 8y ago
Who's the plaintiff in your suggestion? The article is not about companies leaking Americans' private data to China (though I'm sure that happens too), it's about them turning a blind eye when their own company confidential technology and product designs are stolen by China. For tort liability to be a factor here, the company would have to initiate a lawsuit against itself, which would never happen. The type of industrial espionage described in the article is actually a form of temporal arbitrage - it's present shareholders stealing from future shareholders and then hoping to unload the shares before the consequences of their decisions are reaped. In order to get access to the lucrative Chinese market now (and goose this quarter's earnings), they put up with Chinese industrial espionage that results in reduced competitiveness 10 years down the road. In 10 years, they probably won't be working at the company, nor will they hold many shares, and so the consequences don't affect them personally. This is a big problem in general (not just with industrial espionage - short-termism also affects labor practices, financial health, social fabric, environmental pollution, and global warming), but it's hard to see how any legal solution would fix it. Future shareholders are generally not entitled to sue until they actually become shareholders, at which point everybody says "Well, you should've known how fucked up the company was when you bought the shares". Similarly, unborn children don't get a vote on societal policies that may destroy the earth or society they live in before they're born. Usually the best alternative is just to deal with the problem with band-aids in the future, once it becomes widely recognized as a problem.
- pm90 8y ago
  > In order to get access to the lucrative Chinese market now (and goose this quarter's earnings), they put up with Chinese industrial espionage that results in reduced competitiveness 10 years down the road. Alternate reality: they stay alive instead of being hammered in earnings by their competitors, invest increased earnings to get better at security and prevent future data exfiltrations, use their existing corpus of innovation to get even more competitive and continue to exist long into the future. Innovations are important and must be protected. But the short-sightedness of today is partially driven by a change in reality: the rate of technological advances is brutally fast.
Spooky23 8y ago
No, it’s providing a framework to do advanced manufacturing in China. Every western company knows that the Chinese partners are stealing their tech. But stopping that will hurt the next quarter.

by rrggrr 8y ago

dmix 8y ago

Thank you, I’ve been saying this forever. The solution to widespread hacking isn’t to make it easier for one side to find the other guys malware (quicker) while compromising your data privacy, in exchange for help from gov. Which is basically the only NSA “defence” being offered to businesses via “information sharing” programs.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

Agreed. There is just zero reason to care about it and that lack of care only diminishes as more and more companies are compromised so it becomes normal and consumers really have no choice to take their business elsewhere. The only way this will change is if there are financial and/or criminal penalties for gross neglect of private data. I think healthcare (HIPAA) is another good example, although the financial penalties need to be higher given some of the compromises and relatively small fines.

nostrademons 8y ago

Who's the plaintiff in your suggestion? The article is not about companies leaking Americans' private data to China (though I'm sure that happens too), it's about them turning a blind eye when their own company confidential technology and product designs are stolen by China. For tort liability to be a factor here, the company would have to initiate a lawsuit against itself, which would never happen. The type of industrial espionage described in the article is actually a form of temporal arbitrage - it's present shareholders stealing from future shareholders and then hoping to unload the shares before the consequences of their decisions are reaped. In order to get access to the lucrative Chinese market now (and goose this quarter's earnings), they put up with Chinese industrial espionage that results in reduced competitiveness 10 years down the road. In 10 years, they probably won't be working at the company, nor will they hold many shares, and so the consequences don't affect them personally. This is a big problem in general (not just with industrial espionage - short-termism also affects labor practices, financial health, social fabric, environmental pollution, and global warming), but it's hard to see how any legal solution would fix it. Future shareholders are generally not entitled to sue until they actually become shareholders, at which point everybody says "Well, you should've known how fucked up the company was when you bought the shares". Similarly, unborn children don't get a vote on societal policies that may destroy the earth or society they live in before they're born. Usually the best alternative is just to deal with the problem with band-aids in the future, once it becomes widely recognized as a problem.

pm90 8y ago
> In order to get access to the lucrative Chinese market now (and goose this quarter's earnings), they put up with Chinese industrial espionage that results in reduced competitiveness 10 years down the road. Alternate reality: they stay alive instead of being hammered in earnings by their competitors, invest increased earnings to get better at security and prevent future data exfiltrations, use their existing corpus of innovation to get even more competitive and continue to exist long into the future. Innovations are important and must be protected. But the short-sightedness of today is partially driven by a change in reality: the rate of technological advances is brutally fast.

Spooky23 8y ago

No, it’s providing a framework to do advanced manufacturing in China. Every western company knows that the Chinese partners are stealing their tech. But stopping that will hurt the next quarter.