There's a solution: personal liability for the executives and managers at the company, and for the investors.<p>For example, every person who has ever worked for IDScan at any level of management should have all lifetime compensation clawed back and then pay a further 2x of that in fines. All VCs in the company should face personal liability up to 10% of their net worth. (Fines should be based on net worth; see e.g., <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/opinion/flat-fines-wealthy-poor.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/opinion/flat-fines-wealth...</a>)
Or maybe something bigger should change<p>like why your driver license or even id should enable someone to do damage to your life?<p>especially that it isnt difficult to lose it and even needs to be shared with someone (e.g hotel)?
No, this is a NOW problem, not a future one and it will take months if not years to fully understand the impact. We need a NOW solution not prevention. Training AI on all the images and data here will facilitate a class of identity theft we may not have ever seen. This cannot just be abut prevention.
This is a little harsh. What about requiring companies to carry management liability insurance? Or to list individual managers on cybersecurity insurance policies? Premiums will rise when a company employs managers with claims history. Eventually, it becomes difficult to employ them in key positions if they have a bad track record.
Holding actual people liable sounds like a more effective option. The insurance would just be included into the cost of doing business and make everything more expensive. Insurance makes everything worse.<p>Holding actual humans liable (with appropriate levels of harshness) would make actual humans more likely to take preventative steps. Holding shareholders somewhat liable (maybe extra taxes on sales of a companies stock) might be useful also.
If you think there is never a valid use for insurance policies I can’t take you seriously.
Are we talking hypothetical utopia or something that could actually happen? Insurance probably isn’t the most perfect solution but it’s the most feasible. These exact policies and insurers already exist.<p>And why the hell would anyone want a job where a mistake results in personal ruin? Sure, there are a lot of shitty companies and people running them, but mistakes also happen when people are trying to do a good job. It’s not possible to completely prevent a data breach even with an unlimited budget.<p>I think the best solution is to weed out the people who behave irresponsibly and have an environment where we learn from the ones who are responsible and fail anyway.
> And why the hell would anyone want a job where a mistake results in personal ruin?<p>People will do nearly anything if the price is right.
> And why the hell would anyone want a job where a mistake results in personal ruin<p>We are talking about the sort of job where you are paid ludicrous amounts of money. The sort of jobs that usually come with massive golden parachutes<p>People earning more money in a year than most people earn their whole lives <i>should</i> be accepting a much higher burden of risk
Could we not keep the same "harsh" plan, and then let others provide and purchase such insurance on their own? Why does the insurance have to be mandated?
Because the company will file bankruptcy and nobody will get anything. Requiring insurance up front at least provides some coverage for liabilities.<p>It's why you can't legally drive without insurance. It's not for you or your car, nobody cares about that. It's for the other people and their property.
Who receives the payouts of those insurance benefits and how would one go about making a claim?
The company typically receives the payout to cover losses from whatever incident precipitated the claim. This isn’t hypothetical. Companies already do this. For example, a company could get hacked and extorted for ransom. They can file a claim and use the payout to pay the ransom. Or a manager makes a mistake that results in a lawsuit, settlement, defense costs, etc. The company can file a claim against a management liability policy.<p>What’s new that I’m proposing is to require companies to carry insurance and list accountable people on the policies so that claim history is associated with their decisions. Many companies already have management liability and/or cybersecurity policies, but it’s typically optional and individual decision makers aren’t listed on the policy. The claim history is associated only with the company and never the people who made the decision. That’s why they can just leave and do the same thing somewhere else.
And when the hacked information is used to cause a national-level disaster, the costs of which are greater than the assets of the insurer, and their re-insurance funds, bankrupting them, what then?<p>Insurance is not a solution for everything.<p>More critically, just because a company buys insurance, it should not be a get-out-of-jail-free card for the executives and management to feel free to manage data irresponsibly.<p>It is really simple:<p>If they can not handle properly the risks of their business, they should be in another business.
This is data that will be relevant for every single victim for decades to come and they will pay for this regularly, and it cannot be undone.<p>What amount per person is acceptable for a thing that simply should never happen?<p>I don't think "this will ruin my and my bosses life"-levels are over the top at all. Don't wanna risk it, then don't store the data. Usually for most purposes it would be e ough to store that yes, someone has a legit drivers license, which types of vehicles it is for and how long it is valid (if there is a limit).<p>We don't get to this kind of data reduction if people don't see data as the liability it sometimes is for their customers.
Fines exceeding 100% of lifetime compensation might actually do something. As it stands, clawbacks are ineffective — for example, Carrie Tolstedt of the Wells Fargo scandal wound up money ahead to the tune of tens of millions of dollars:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Tolstedt" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Tolstedt</a><p>> <i>In response to the report, Wells Fargo retroactively fired Tolstedt for cause and revoked $47.3 million that they had previously paid her. This brought the total amount of money she had given up to $67 million, or about 54% of her $125 million pay package she initially received when she retired.</i>
You do realize the limited liability corporation was a key innovation that unlocked the Industrial Revolution, right?<p>Companies definitely respond to fines or liability. They just need to be big enough.<p>For example, I recently heard an interview from an environmentalist who expected to be outraged touring a Chevron drilling location but was surprised by how much precaution is taken these days. Basically, liability for oil spills is massive. We could just make data leak liability massive too.
This is so unrealistic but I do agree personal liability should come into play more for people who knowingly act inappropriately.
Including investors is a bit much unless they encouraged or mandated some decisons that enabled this.
If you add in personal liability for mistakes, nobody competent will ever bother working in the industry again. It's not worth the personal risk. You'll get stuck with bottom of the barrel staff who don't have much to lose and get a steady paycheck for a few years.
It's cleaner to hold some of a corp's money in escrow if they're handling IDs, to ensure they can't avoid fines via bankruptcy.
> personal liability for the executives and managers at the company<p>How cute, you think the engineers who failed to properly develop and maintain a system that can securely store sensitive information flawlessly won't (or shouldn't) be held accountable.<p>Every time this topic comes up it makes me wonder how many people on here who go "wow how in this day and age is it possible to have a data breach???" aren't just extraordinarily lucky that no one is really trying to attack the service they created or are fortunate enough to work in the few places that can legitimately say they're nigh-impenetrable.
This.
Great way to incentivize everyone to do nothing. Most middle managers don’t know shit.
Wow, how could this have happened right before the election? Surely this will not be used as a pretext for anything.
Near the beginning of my career, I talked to a greybeard who harrumphed at me discussing something-or-other and said "computer security is an oxymoron". I thought he was being too pessimistic, nowadays I realize he was right.
Real computer security IS possible but takes a lot of effort by very skilled and dedicated people. You don't hear about bank mainframes getting hacked often.
> You don't hear about bank mainframes getting hacked often.<p>Who do you think employs the top-level criminals?
It makes systems harder to work with and new features slower to deploy and it requires you to make sure you stay on top of CVEs.<p>That's overhead that businesses really hate paying as it's diverts software devs away from making new features.
Human security. Computers are fine, they usually do exactly as they’re programmed.
Will anything be different _this time around_?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach#Investigation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Manag...</a> was a National Security Disaster and I'm not sure we saw useful concrete changes.
Equifax's stock price went up when they were hacked.
Joking right :)
Elon fucking Musk has literally every single piece of personal information of every person in the country. It’s so far past too late for any of this to matter.<p>I’m not sure how we start over but this data plus LLMs is gonna make it a full time job to keep your parents from sending every penny to a scammer.
Is there any way to check if your ID was compromised without going on some onion site?<p>I don't know if it even matters. I always assumed every bit of my information was available somewhere. Just curious.<p>I think IDScan should set something up so we can check if our data was compromised, at the least.
What I would love to know is who is selling my info. I get texts from all kinds of politicians but I didn't know who sold them my number. Seems like selling someone's property without their approval should be illegal. It'd be great if I could request who sold them my data, then go to that entity tell them to stop selling (rinse and repeat)
> It'd be great if I could request who sold them my data, then go to that entity tell them to stop selling (rinse and repeat)<p>There are a number of companies (e.g. Delete Me) that offer that service. They wouldn't have caught the subject of this post since it was a breach.<p>The problem here arose from ID verification where you need to send your ID out to an entity that can then store it.
I'm reminded of the OPM breach back in 2015 [0]. Practically everyone that even applied for a security clearance was compromised. In addition, millions of sets of fingerprints were recovered by the entity that carried out the hack.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Manag...</a>
American national security apparatus do not care about the actual Americans. They are too worried about foreign entanglements, and protecting a specific foreign country than their own country.
Its unfortunate that the security requirements are expected from the for-profit businesses when the cost of paying penalties for breach of security is way lower than actually implementing the security.<p>Ironically in case of breach they just sell you another of their product where you put your personal information again
The CRAs compete for breach business, because it's absolutely a profitable enterprise for them:<p>How many people actually sign up for your "free credit monitoring for a year" following a breach?<p>When you do, you typically do so by signing up for the highest tier (sometimes $30 or even $50 a month) product with a redemption code for one year free. You have to enter a credit card to do so, and to no-one's surprise, if you don't cancel in time, it automatically converts to a paid subscription "for your convenience".<p>There are many consumer protection farces in the US, but right up there has to be the notion that "identity theft" is the consumer's responsibility/obligation to prevent or resolve, not the entity that actually had the data stolen. You're considered liable until you prove innocence, even though you did nothing wrong.<p>This very nearly burned me when buying my home - having been an AT&T customer in the PNW for nearly two decades, "I" apparently decided to hit up a Walmart on the outskirts of El Paso, sign up for a Verizon service, run up two months of international calls and bail out.<p>Despite a police report, my utility statements, AT&T bills, etc. (all of which were, to be blunt, none of VZWs business), VZW stood by it initially, "On review of your documentation, we remain satisfied that this debt belongs to you based on the documents used to open your account".<p>I asked to see them, since they were, in VZW's own words, "mine". "We can't, for customer privacy reasons." Oh, so "mine when the bill needs paid, may not be mine for privacy purposes".
Was ran through the same gauntlet by a medical provider billing me for services. Insurance wouldn't pay them due to "insufficient documentation". Wouldn't disclose what documentation they had received or what documentation they needed. Just that is was inadequate. Service provider wouldn't tell me what they had sent.<p>Somehow a few hours before our court hearing they by some miracle decided to settle the debt with no fee to me.
> the notion that "identity theft" is the consumer's responsibility/obligation to prevent or resolve, not the entity that actually had the data stolen.<p>You may enjoy/find-useful this Mitchell & Webb radio-skit [0] of a conversation between a banker and a visiting customer.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E</a>
I really want these people handling my healthcare and other details about my life.
Private healthcare is much worse, seemingly they have an open access policy. New breaches occur in the order of millions per week. Not remotely newsworthy anymore. (last time this was mainstream worthy was 200M leaked records in 2024).
Last week
<a href="https://www.securityweek.com/4-1-million-impacted-by-adapthealth-data-breach/" rel="nofollow">https://www.securityweek.com/4-1-million-impacted-by-adapthe...</a>
Week before that
<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/more-9-5-million-patient-185826616.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/more-9-5-million-pati...</a>
2 weeks before that:
<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/general/carecloud-confirms-3-7m-patients-had-their-medical-records-stolen-in-data-breach/ar-AA2atIcb" rel="nofollow">https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/general/carecloud-confirms-...</a>
And it will remain this was as long as the consequences of not protecting our data remain trivial.
In my experience, any industry following a security standard halts all effort at security once they're compliant with the standard. HIPAA sets a minimum but seems to also guarantee you will get exactly that minimum and nothing better.
Which people? This leak was caused completely by private businesses.
You want an ID verification company handling healthcare? Even if you're a staunch believer in free enterprise this seems like a capability mismatch.
When this first landed I asked what the fix could even be. Everyone needs a new ID at a minimum. But then I got to thinking: 1) is that the point? Conspiratorial thinking I know but “hey all
Our ids got hacked I guess we need a national id”. And related 2) the current id system from a security standpoint was a band aid fix for outdated world to be shoehorned into a modern one. IDscan was never cryptographic proof you were who you said you were. Maybe better than “enter your name and SSN” but bottom line, at least in US there is no cryptographically secure identity system that proves you are the citizen you say. And that fact bleeds into all sorts of patchwork solutions, fraud, etc. Moreover there are serious philosophical hurdles to getting to one. I’m not even positive I want one. But unless there is some zero-trust way to do this, I’m not sure what the fix would be.
And then, in real life, one discovers that institutions route around in creative ways for all sorts of different reasons ( recently had to 2fa a transaction at a god damn teller window; you just took my DL ).
> IDscan was never cryptographic proof you were who you said you were. Maybe better than “enter your name and SSN”<p>With the benefit of hindsight, we'd have all been better off if SSNs had been so <i>obviously flagrantly public</i> that nobody would ever consider them a trust-factor.
To be fair many SS cards were printed stating right on them they aren't for ID usage.
But they were! My college student ID from 1980 has my SS number right on it. I have here an employee badge from the Walt Disney Company from 2000 and my SS number is in a bar code right on the bottom. Even in 2000, it would be trivial to take a photo of someone wearing the ID badge and decode the 1D bar code on it.
Passports seem a lot better. You scan it with NFC, and the chip inside proves authenticity via asymmetric crypto.
The breach is bad no doubt-- but this information was already readily available to bad actors e.g. via Lexis Nexis. Practically all states sell DL and registration information to information brokers, and the remaining ones require you to obtain auto insurance, and the insurers all sell the information.<p>Many people pretend this isn't happening because of the "The Drivers Privacy Protection Act" but the DPPA is paper thin protection at best as it has a long list of permitted uses which anyone can just lie about (and are you worried about threats from parties so honest they're unable to lie?). Not that they usually have to lie given that the permitted uses include "For use by licensed private investigation agencies" and "For the bulk distribution of surveys, marketing materials, or solicitations"... In practice this just means accessing the information costs a little money and requires someone check a "this is for a permitted purpose" checkbox. The biggest impact is that it causes abusers of the information to be circumspect about their sources, which helps maintain the data-harvesting status quo.<p>(Guess what: the same databases also have ALPR gathered pictures of your car at whatever locations its been in public view... stores, your home, your mistresses home... Makes flock (YC S17) look pretty mild by comparison. The fundamental sin is requiring ID without also making it a crime for anyone but the owner and issuer to posses someone elses ID information.)<p>In some sense the IDScan breach may (ultimately) improve our privacy and security because it will break people out of the FALSE belief that this information is private, or that it can be protected by anything short of restricting its collection in the first place.
"but this information was already readily available to bad actors e.g. via Lexis Nexis."<p>My ex had access to Lexis Nexis and I was always shocked how much information about people they have.
Right on! It's always frustrating reading articles framed in terms of "security breaches" and "dark web", invariably doing hand waving at unspecified harm, when the real threat actor for <i>pretty much everybody</i> is the "above board" surveillance industry. Random people who buy this info outside the law can't really hurt me - it's not like I'm a witch and my DL# is my "true (system-given) name" and I disappear when they say it or something. Rather the parties who can hurt me are the ones who pretend knowledge of this semi-public information is an authentication system, and then hassle me with legal nastygrams when <i>they</i> get defrauded. Or who keep comprehensive dossiers on my behavior to unaccountably sort me into corporate-defined boxes so they can better extract my wealth and otherwise form anti-competitive arrangements against me. These actual attackers operate mostly according to the (very broken) law, and they are what needs fixing. Not just scaremongering when some bogeyman "wrong people" get a small taste of the exact same information.
Hundreds of millions of American's names, addresses, social security numbers, etc were in the NPD leak which has been publicly downloadable. The idea that any of this information should be considered private, only knowable by the person themself is wrong.
Glad to see someone talking about this
[dead]
Slackers are always behind this shit