Is 23andMe going to actually be held responsible?
I think both our industry and our information infrastructure would be vastly better if companies were forced to be serious about security when they are collecting and holding private data.
Again, just as I understand it, that's why nobody gets in trouble for this shit. It's not really fair to blame any one particular person. Whether or not that can be remedied by modifying the corporate system we operate in somehow, I don't know. Probably yes, but that's not my skillset at all.
edit: but in any case, this was due to people re-using passwords, so I doubt you could realistically blame the company.
> It's not really fair to blame any one particular person
These are literally the very circumstances that we were presented with as reason why executive compensation is astronomical. It's all that responsibility they have to assume in times like these, right? They're supposed to fall on their sword, and whoever replaces them is supposed to make damn sure shit like this doesn't happen on their watch. The pay and parachutes ensure they land on their feet.
The reason nothing ever changes is because these clowns never get in trouble. If you want that $10M salary, you better make sure everyone under you is doing their part to ensure events like this don't happen-- or you get dethroned.
Does China still sell melamine-tainted baby formula? We've been conditioned to just let our leaders stay in command after plowing into icebergs-- while they blame and execute the engineers shoveling coal below deck.
The solution isn't to randomly start blaming CEOs for things they had no realistic control over, it's to swing in the other direction of putting more money towards workers by taking it away from pure growth-oriented goals.
My perception is that it’s really really hard to differentiate between someone who’s genuinely a force to be reckoned with and someone who’s just in the right place at the right time. After their first success they can hop around between companies from executive role to executive role playing it safe and riding the gravy train just by not fucking it up. I’d be interested if anyone can provide examples of executives that consistently trigger inflections in a company’s performance within say 2 years of joining across multiple companies. I’m genuinely curious.
Intent is not a sufficient legal standard to address this epidemic of negligence. We need Strict Liability for data protection.
Separate from that, if there's laws and regulations, the company could also be hit with fines. Officials could also investigate individual culpability for bad behavior by people within they company, but that possibility doesn't mean that any kind of holding companies responsible would be unfair.
This not only affects users, but the user's relatives/loved ones as well.