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Comment by _nickwhite | Hacker News Reader

While I'm quick to render my own verdict, especially in the tech realm where I live, work, and play, I was glad the article included this:

"Members of the public are reminded that the indictment only contains charges. The defendant is presumed innocent of the charges and it will be the government’s burden to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial."

Trial by Internet and Guilty-by-default isn't a good world to live in.

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Either the CEO is incompetent and didn't know about a huge failure of his organization or he's a criminal, either way the verdict of public opinion is not going to be kind.

The (non-technical) CEO pushed for new products and an aggressive sales quota company culture.

This is a common recipe for disaster when the actual product quality/security is no longer a core value.

The CEOs in these environments honestly have no clue what an "outdated Struts patch" is... so it's difficult to hold them criminally responsible.

I'm not excusing this behavior. In fact, quite the opposite. More indictments and congressional pressure on Equifax will hopefully persuade future CEOs to make IT security, data privacy, and consumer trust foundation product values.

When you take charge of an organization, and reap the benefits from being in charge, you accept the responsibility as well.

How could you not hold the CEO criminally responsible for this much damage just because they neglected to get informed on these topics or get expert opinions if they didn't have the ability to become informed.

If that's the case every company should have a head "CEO" who knows nothing and just does what a shadow CEO tells him to do. Then no one would be responsible ever!

But he did accept the responsibility. He's no longer CEO and forfeited his incentive compensation.

That's not good enough. That's like letting bank robbers go just because they got caught and forfeited their gains. The punishment must exceed the monetary gains to account for the less than 100% probability of things like this getting caught.

It does. Dudes like that really care about their careers, and his is undoubtedly over

you assume that. But a lot of these slimy characters keep coming back, end up on boards of directors, or running for public office. It's almost a bad cliche now. It happens even when they get convicted and do time. Watch and see what happens to Shrkelli in 8 years.

It's very unlikely that he didn't know about the security problems, that hadn't be released. I'd say about 99.9% chance that he knew. We know that it's very tempting for otherwise intelligent people to fall victim to this, like our favorite domestic lifestyle wallstreet-er CEO, Martha Stewart.

Stewart was done for obstruction and perjury, not insider trading.

Not to pick on you because I see this response a lot, but that's really misleading. She was also indicted for insider trading and though that charge was thrown away by the judge, the SEC also filed a civil case against her for insider trading. She settled that one by paying $195,000 and agreeing not to serve as an officer of any public company for five years. It's not like the insider trading didn't cost her anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImClone_stock_trading_case#Rep...

Can you share the dataset you used to calculate the 99.9% probability? Do you have experience with other CEOs in this kind of situation? Do you have inside knowledge of Equifax? I'm not sure how anyone can be so certain in the absence of evidence. Indeed this is the reason we put the burden of proof on the accuser and assume innocence.

I used my own experience working in a variety of companies including large corporations, and the way they sometimes told us information ahead of earnings and how cautious we needed to be about when we might sell something. I have never been more than a second level dev manager, but I can't imagine how this could happen by accident. So I had required training, cautions every quarter ahead of time, reminders when there was an open period, reminders about not talking to the press. This isn't rocket science. So someone who works on earnings announcements, knows the quarterly facts early, has experience with this just forgot or something? It's not credible.

Did you not read the press release? They have texts showing he was aware and knew it was bad.

> On Friday, August 25, 2017, Ying texted a co-worker that the breach they were working on “Sounds bad. We may be the one breached.” The following Monday, Ying conducted web searches on the impact of Experian’s 2015 data breach on its stock price. Later that morning, Ying exercised all of his available stock options held at UBS Financial Services, resulting in him receiving 6,815 shares of Equifax stock, which he then sold.

That does look bad. However, it describes the CIO. You're responding to a conversation about the CEO.

And again, innocent until proven guilty is a good principle, and we need to let the justice system do its work.

Typo on my part, the discussion is about the CIO.

Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to investigators, not for any other crime.

It's really tricky because while you're absolutely right, they generally don't indict innocent people. So when like 90% of these cases are guilty or a plea, it's way too easy to just forget about the 10%.

>So when like 90% of these cases are guilty or a plea

I don't really like how plea agreements work in the US either. Too many of them are "Agree to this lower charge or we will Aaron Swartz you, and you will go bankrupt trying to defend yourself."

Aaron Swartz (most likely) broke the law. The problem there was that many people disliked the law.

The internet is not taking anyone's freedoms away, the internet is punishing people's reputations.

big difference.

Punishment when we have yet to assess guilt.

Plenty of people have assessed guilt. It has not been demonstrated in the court of law which is an important difference.

However, when you consider how many people don't trust the US court system. You can't expect them to reserve judgement based on what they consider a biased system.

What exactly do you mean by "people don't trust the US court system"? That the guilty go free? That the innocent are wrongly convicted? That guilty people are not prosecuted? That justices are corrupt? And approximately how many people have this view?

I'm getting kind of tired of this rhetoric on how the US is so bad/corrupt/untrustable/whatever the word is today. We have some of the best courts in the history of the world. How would you like to get tried in Chinese, Russian, African, or South American court? Or be tried in the middle ages? Are they perfect? No. Will there be miscarriages of justice? Yes. Are you likely to experience one? No. And if you think it's that bad, well, there are plenty of other countries you could move to and find out if they are better. Or you could work to improve the system we do have (after studying it enough to understand it well enough to actually improve and not just change it).

Just because other places are worse doesn't mean the US is good. The US legal system enforces the law, not justice. It does a lot of work to make it more equitable but it's still obvious that if you have money you live by a different set of rules. The majority of the population couldn't pull off what the affluenza teen did, beat up their girlfriend publicly like Chris Brown with little to no affect on their career, or rape a kid and only serve 60 to 120 days in jail[1].

Every one of these instances of injustice degrade people's trust in the system

If I was an average person I'd rather be tried in the US, but if I was rich it seems like it doesn't matter. Our legal system seems pretty equivalent in outcome for the upper class. You only get more than a trivial punishment if you manage to upset someone with more money or power than you

[1]http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-07/news/sns-rt-us...

What exactly do you mean by "people don't trust the US court system"? (exactly what I said) That the guilty go free? (yes, happens all the time.) That the innocent are wrongly convicted? (Yes, just look at all the death row inmates that where proven innocent. Now consider most crimes have lower standards.) That guilty people are not prosecuted? (Yes, look at banking crimes etc.) That justices are corrupt? (Mark Ciavarella is one name among many, and that's without considering politics.) And approximately how many people have this view? (~2/3 of the people I know personally.)

The US is an extremely corrupt society. There are worse places, but it's the difference between standing in shit and swimming in it. You're still in shit either way.

In terms of improving the system. It does what it's intended to do, which has little to do with justice. Keep the powerful out of prison, keep the middle class in line, and keep the lower classes in fear. I am not going to waste my time time to change things, but I am going to call a corrupt system exactly what it is.

>What exactly do you mean by "people don't trust the US court system"? That the guilty go free? That the innocent are wrongly convicted? That guilty people are not prosecuted? That justices are corrupt? And approximately how many people have this view?

Eh, in the US, probably a huge portion of the black population for sure.

Me personally, working around police and elected officials for years, I don't have much trust for it either.

Your whataboutism doesn't help your case.

>Or you could work to improve the system we do have (after studying it enough to understand it well enough to actually improve and not just change it).

Improve it for whom, and how? Not everyone is going to want it improved and they are going to fight to keep the system at is. The people for whom it would improve the most are the most disempowered and least likely to change it.

Exactly. Criminal convictions have a higher standard than civil, which obviously have a much higher standard than the court of public opinion. Just because you don't get arrested and convicted in criminal court does not mean you aren't "guilty" using a less stringent standard.

What punishment would that be?

People inside the company sold right before the dip. That is a fact.

Seems like you are arguing they should be free of consequences. We judge people on their actions all the time, it is difficult to know their intentions.

Other people have to be on the otherside of that trade. It’s publically good to know there are possible untrustworthy actors in a company, especially when it is extremely difficult to prove white collar crimes

Selling before a dip is not a crime.

I feel like I'm being misunderstood. My point is that if you are a leader in a company and you sell before the dip which is based on some pretty negative event, you should not necessarily go to prison or have freedom's taken from you.

BUT, I don't think that means you shouldn't be subject to some reputational consequence.

Should we trust your statements when you get on that investor call? Isn't your prior actions relevant?

I don't see the benefit to this system. If we assassinate reputation based on coincidence then we have introduced an unnecessary element of chance. I would much rather base my opinion on facts. If the CEO lied to shareholders on a call or used inside knowledge to sell shares illegally then the reputation damage will come from the conviction. In the absence of this evidence I see no benefit in assuming guilt or otherwise damaging the CEOs reputation.

> I don't think that means you shouldn't be subject to some reputational consequence.

Why not? What if they were just unlucky? Why do you get to decided whether their reputation suffers?

When you know of something like the revealing of a huge breach, it is.

Why does the internet have the power to hand out punishment?

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