Private speech is never the problem and should absolutely be encouraged as a human right. The problem here is them avoiding regulators and should get fucked for that alone, that's the crime here. Signal and Whatsapp should not be mentioned at all and this is an attempt to push "encryption bad" narrative.
Yeah, the issue is evading records keeping requirements. The issue is not encrypted communications.
These articles make me pucker my asshole. Like it could be that thing that sends us down that slippery slope.
I worked at a firm that was regulated and audited by the SEC. The standard lesson from the compliance department was always to have potentially problematic conversations out loud instead of in email or Slack. They never needed encryption to avoid regulators.
Never considered this angle but you're right.
I see this as a "yes, Signal is secure, look, they used it and are getting away with it too" narrative.
I thought about that already. It's absolutely intentional, because you already know that they'll keep using those apps, and even if they were illegal, they would keep using them and just get another fine, which is obviously not something that bothers them. It's to prevent normal people from having any privacy.
I break the law, I go to jail. A corporation breaks the law they get a fine the equivalent of a parking ticket.
If corporations want to be people it’s time we start treating them like people. CEOs and Execs in prison. Actual fines that hurt the bottom line. And for the really egregious: shut them down, or if they’re “too big to fail” we can let the government take over or break them up into dozens of small companies ex: Baby Bells
Wells Fargo is worth 163 billion. That $200 million fine is literally 0.12% of their Net worth.
In comparison
The average US salary is $59,428. A parketing ticket on average is about $80
That parketing ticket is 0.13% of that Salary.
So this "fine" is in fact cheaper than a parking ticket.
You can’t compare worth with income. A better comparison might be profits, which were $15B for past 12 months. So Wells Fargo’s penalty is 1.3% of their “salary.” Even if you go by revenue, it’s greater than your parking ticket example. I get that they are an evil corporation, but accuracy matters.
Yup. The fines should be 10-20% of profits for the time period, per charge, depending on the severity.
That would got their gd attention.
Never profits, always revenue. Profits can be gobbled up by some internal bonus or "future investment in a project", thus making it $0. Revenue is all the money generated before allocations and expenses come out. Much harder to weasle out of.
Some countries have speeding fines set to a percentage of your pre-tax income. A student is hurt as much as a CEO. This should be the same.
Agreed. They harm people all day with defective products and the solution is "lol here have this fine that barely hurts you"
The whole point of a limited company is that its owners are protected against failures of the company. A lot of things will go sideways if this protection gets removed.
I believe the federal government has the power of the corporate death penalty, they just never use it.
At this point I'd rather we be like Asian countries and start jailing the CEOs.
Companies in prison. Unable to operate for whatever length their sentence is. When they come out, they will forever be considered a felon and will not be able to do business with most other companies.
It's cost if doing business for them though, the "fines" are a farce, just protection money paid to a gang.
they really need to start with forfeiting all profits. and then maybe a percentage-based fine on top of that.
make it really painful, in the only place these people can be hurt.
How about sending the people responsible to prison?
it's more complicated when it's an entire corporation. Corporations only care about the bottom line so they'll let their minions take the blame. The only real solution is to hurt them in the wallet enough that they have to play by the rules to make a profit.
Not really. Put the C suite in prison and I'm sure the next crew will think twice. They can try and throw underlings under the bus but we don't have to accept that. The buck stops at the top.
Can't put people into prison for things they didn't do, and demonstrating RICO is a lot harder than it sounds. I guarantee you, you start going after their profits and making them take losses, the behavior stops immediately, and across the board.
they'd just get another C-Suite.
But they did do something? They ran a company in an illegal fashion. If they didn't act directly they were negligent. Either way, lock them up.
They always defend their ridiculous income by saying that it's proportional to their level of responsibility? Then the board is responsible for everything that happens in the company unless they can pin point exactly who did what under whose guidance.
They need to start throwing these criminal fucks in prison.
They'll just pass it along to the customers though, that would have to be made very illegal first.. and even then they'd probably do it anyway and blame it on the tellers. In the sea of illegal things Wells Fargo has already done that wouldn't even make a ripple.
I feel like they need to apply charges like conspiracy and fraud against the individuals responsible. When I worked in national security oriented roles, the standard response when being asked to break the law (eg reveal classified info) was to say “I could do that, but I look really bad in orange.”
If the individuals being asked to commit violations and crimes were held individually responsible more often, people would be less likely to do it.
White collar crime costs the economy far more than other kinds of crime, and that’s due to a lack of enforcement caused by misaligned priorities.
And made $5 billion on the deal. I imagine it’s like “oh right, now we have to pay off the regulators, I mean the fine.”
Its a shit show. Staff can't event send a text saying they are sick unless they use an approved business communication channel.
Worst still, if you receive said comms from staff on a non approved channel, eg your personal phone, you have to report it to HR.
There is no way bank's can operate like that so the regulator is going to be lining their pockets for quite some time.
These really need to be reported as percentage of revenue. It's really not that much for them.
It’s always Wells Fargo with the law breaking.
It's the American version of HSBC
Oh no. In other news banks keep breaking the law and using our money to pay fines.
Remove banks. Leach on society that provide nothing. Yet they are the reason we can't frolic in the meadows.
Of course it's Wells Fargo!
That isn't a fine. That's the cutest if doing business to these assholes. I keep saying it, fines need to be calculated on a logarithmic scale based on income and net assets. That goes for everything from a speeding ticket to wire fraud - literally every crime with a fine as punishment.
small player
Tee hee!
Quantum computers accessible only to the rich and powerful can't get here soon enough..
how do i summon the auto tldr bot?
U.S. regulators on Tuesday announced a combined $549 million in penalties against Wall Street firms that failed to maintain electronic records of employee communications.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against 11 firms for “widespread and longstanding failures” to maintain records, including by allowing employees to use unsupervised side channels such as messaging apps WhatsApp and Signal, the regulator said.
Wells Fargo was the biggest U.S. bank cited Tuesday in the sweeping actions.
beep boop, I'm not a bot
Good nonbot
We know most banks are scummy but Wells Fargo takes the cake. That bank is always wrapped up in some BS. If WAMU can fail we should go ahead and let Wells Fargo become extinct.
Chump change for banks. Cost of doing business already sitting with the accounts team.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
