[HN Gopher] Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over '...
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Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over 'stunning'
privacy violations
Author : greenyoda
Score : 88 points
Date : 2020-05-03 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lawandcrime.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lawandcrime.com)
| antjanus wrote:
| it's frustrating. 5 billion for a fine over the course of 8 years
| of operation?
|
| They made $17 billion _this quarter_.
| [deleted]
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Agreed. That's as if someone who makes $100k/year, and made
| that money while operating for 8 years doing something illegal,
| then was ordered to pay a fine of $900 and told not to do it
| again or else.
| greenyoda wrote:
| The judge did threaten Facebook with harsher treatment if they
| ever ended up in his court again.
|
| From the end of the court decision:
|
| > _The Court ends by noting that under the Stipulated Order it
| retains jurisdiction over this matter, including to enforce its
| terms. See Stipulated Order at 5. In the event that the parties
| return to this Court because the United States alleges--once
| again--that Facebook has reneged on its promises and continued
| to violate the law or the terms of the amended administrative
| order, the Court may not apply quite the same deference to the
| terms of a proposed resolution. As the D.C. Circuit has
| explained, a district court must be especially deferential
| "when the proposed decree comes to a district judge in the
| first instance as a settlement between the parties." Microsoft,
| 56 F.3d at 1461. But, on the other hand, when "a district judge
| has administered a consent decree for some period of time," and
| is therefore likely more familiar with the relevant context,
| "the lack of an initial trial is, at least marginally, less of
| an inhibition" when weighing the appropriateness of a proposed
| remedy._ [1]
|
| [1]
| https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6876914/4-23-20-F...
| (linked in the first sentence of the article)
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| They'll just use that as proof the judge is biased and ask
| him to recuse.
|
| Honestly, if I had another life, I would become the tech-
| savvy judge. Give Facebook a 300% revenue fine.
| will4274 wrote:
| I disagree in part. The articles notes:
|
| > The settlement also obligates Facebook to pay $5 billion in
| civil penalties; that penalty is significantly larger than the
| next-closest penalty the FTC has ever won-which topped out at
| $22.5 million.
|
| With $5 billion, I believe we're within a factor of ten of the
| right fine, which isn't something I always believe about these
| settlements. Compared to e.g. Janet Jackson at the Superbowl,
| resulting in a fine of $27 thousand - $5 billion is at least a
| line on the spreadsheet.
| tsherr wrote:
| If you want corporations like Facebook to care about breaking the
| law, you need start handing out jail time for the CEOs. Fining a
| significant percentage of revenue might work, but they'd probably
| cook the books.
| nimbius wrote:
| the best two things that can happen in my opinion (based on a
| book called 'the chickenshit club') are
|
| 0. make corporations admit wrongdoing. almsot every one of them
| that gets out of a protracted settlement like this without
| having to own any responsibility at the corporate level for
| this. They can take the fine. They cannot take the risk to
| their business and loss of reputation in the market.
|
| 1. Stop offering settlements and start prosecuting. Chain up
| their C levels, withhold bail, deny parole and do not under any
| circumstances allow the argument of 'hurting the market' sway
| you. Do the same thing you do to street criminals: freeze their
| assets and punish companies doling out golden parachutes (AKA
| bankrolled hush money.) Yes this means you wont always have a
| perfect record as a prosecutor, yes this means you wont get
| your shiny DC penthouse after you 'retire' from government life
| with a law firm in the beltway. and yes it means youll do real
| work.
| mattmanser wrote:
| The reason you don't have crazy nonsense like this is that it
| would be a field-day for political persecution. Prefect for
| corruption.
|
| A politician with clout doesn't like what some CEO said, or
| that he bankrolled your opponent?
|
| Destroy their business by setting the prosecutors on them,
| jail their CEO, destroy their business by seizing the
| cashflow, and then 2 years down the line, charges dropped.
| Whoops.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| So if making people responsible for what their companies do
| is, as you put it "crazy nonsense", what would you suggest
| instead?
| [deleted]
| mattmanser wrote:
| You can make them responsible, just keep innocent until
| proven guilty in mind.
|
| No reason to do asset seizures or withhold bail or any of
| the other things he's listed as necessary to hold them
| responsible. Those are extreme measures that they use in
| the drug war because they've been losing it for decades
| and are giving up on the principal of fair laws in a
| desperate attempt to look effective.
| notechback wrote:
| Well this is why the judiciary should be independent, not
| political as in the US
| close04 wrote:
| Another reason you don't have this is that if an executive
| knew they become _personally_ responsible for such
| wrongdoing they would refuse the position. Today the bar is
| pretty high to punish the executive personally.
|
| And if they do take the job they would be hyper-cautious.
| This is not conducive to high profit. So companies via
| lobbyists make sure legislation is passed "as it should".
| The balance of power is _incredibly_ tilted in the favor of
| corporations, and some governments really did their best to
| maintain this status-quo.
| perl4ever wrote:
| Gee, what country does that sound like? It just occurred to
| me, seriously.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Reminds me years ago I stumbled on an essay by Richard Posner
| ex Chief Justice of the 7th Circuit. In it he discussed his
| belief that.
|
| a) The only way to keep poor people in line is the threat of
| prison.
|
| b) Middle class people can be kept in line by the threat of
| fines.
|
| c) However the wealthy are kept in line by the threat of losing
| their good reputation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner
| hatenberg wrote:
| C Totally doesn't scale in the age of Trump and Moscow Mitch
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| Let's not take the conversation down this direction please.
| newen wrote:
| I mean..everyone can be kept in line with a).
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| From that list/summary it almost sounds like he's trying to
| protect the rich by saying that the typical forms of "keeping
| people in line", don't work with the wealthy.
|
| Maybe he should have been more sincere by explaining how the
| wealthy can buy or trade their way out of trouble, by unduly
| (or at least unfairly) influencing the legal system to their
| advantage.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| He was saying fines and prison aren't usually needed to
| keep the wealthy from doing bad things. Poor people have
| neither reputation or money to lose so prison is the only
| way to motivate them. Which tells you how much Posner knows
| about actual poor people. For most poor people their good
| reputation is the only thing of value they have.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This is why some countries do income-based fines. Get a
| speeding ticket in some Scandinavian countries and you may be
| on the hook for six figures if you're rich.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I used to live in Stockholm. Every now and then,on our way
| to the water, we used cross Ostermalm-a pretty expensive
| area. One day,we noticed Mercedes SLS outside an apartment
| block. The guy must have been one of the earliest
| adopters,as it was only released for sales a few weeks
| earlier. After seeing the car for some time,one day it was
| gone.Oh,well,maybe the owner moved somewhere else or he
| sold it,etc.Turns out,this happened instead:
| www.motor1.com/news/23266/1-million-speeding-fine-in-
| switzerland-for-swedish-sls-owner/amp/
|
| And the Swiss apparently keep your car until you fork out
| the fine..
| takeda wrote:
| Those things affect most people, it's just that poor people
| don't have any reputation to worry about, and won't afford
| the fees.
|
| Rich people can also be punished by fees if they got them as
| much as the middle class (i.e. they need to be based on net
| worth), prison time will affect everyone.
|
| The biggest issue is that rich can use their money and
| influence to escape justice, I suppose maybe it means that
| reputation is the only thing left to control the rich, but
| that hardly helps, there are many rich people with horrible
| reputation that still do very well, one even got the highest
| office in the land.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That seems like utter nonsense. The threat of jail is much
| more daunting for middle-class people than poor people, and
| fines are often the other way around. However, the rich can
| afford fines and can generally buy their way, more or less
| legally, from jail sentences, so they don't see it as a
| realistic probability for themselves. This would be the only
| reason that the rich can't usually be kept in line by the
| threat of jail.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Why jail time? Hit them where it hurts: their company stock.
| Corporate malfeasance should (in part) be punished by clawing
| back some portion of executive stock compensation FBO the
| victims and/or the government. Some portion of their
| compensation was "earned" by decisions that violated the law
| and directly harmed others. Take it away.
| itsajoke wrote:
| A prerequisite of having scruples is being human. The jury is
| still out on whether Mark Zuckerberg qualifies.
| dang wrote:
| Personal attacks will get you banned here. Maybe you don't feel
| you owe a person better, but you owe this community better if
| you're posting to it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| markdown wrote:
| The odd thing about your comment is that most of the other
| comments in this thread (at the time I'm typing this) call
| for personally holding Facebook office-bearers to account,
| the implication being that Zuckerberg is a criminal who
| should be thrown in jail.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is a vast difference between claiming some public
| figure is not a human being and a reasoned belief that the
| same person should be held criminally accountable for the
| actions of the corporation they control. One is a facile
| attack, the other is an interesting legal opinion.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's interesting that the site presenting this story has, by
| their own declaration, 382 different marketing-related cookies,
| which you are required to accept with no alternatives if you want
| to browse the site.
|
| I'm not trying to say that they are not entitled to report on
| FB's privacy violations or something, they are reporters and it
| is very good that they are doing so.
|
| It's just amazing to what extent journalism sites are trying to
| monetize. Old newspapers could only dream of the kind of
| advertising revenue that sites like this probably have.
| notechback wrote:
| I think it's the opposite, there are so many trackers because
| each time they sell it their user's data parmys _so little_ .
| novalis78 wrote:
| There is no greater privacy violation than the BSA act. Can't
| wait for that to be on the table of some judge one day.
| droffel wrote:
| In the absense of capital punishment for corporations, fines can
| and will be seen as merely the cost of doing business. It feels
| like the only way to address this is by holding the decision
| makers (executives) responsible, but that would require piercing
| the corporate veil[1], which has disappointingly low precedent in
| the US
|
| [1]Edit: piercing the veil refers to holding shareholders
| responsible, which is a different (but related) way of keeping
| companies accountable. Thanks for the clarification wnoise.
| twomoretime wrote:
| >In the absense of capital punishment for corporations
|
| That's an interesting analogy that I've never considered, given
| we treat corporations as personlike entities. Why don't we have
| a capital punishment equivalent?
|
| Perhaps our rules regarding social harm are too loose. But I'm
| not sure that I would trust a government, especially our
| government, to make and enforce the right rules.
|
| In any case our legislation desperately needs to catch up to
| the tech. Communication has changed exponentially for the last
| few hundred years - printing, radio, telephone, television,
| cell phone, dialup, cable, smartphone, gigabit...many of our
| laws are simply not written for an era where decentralized
| communication of this bandwidth and latency is possible.
| Article is case in point.
| thewebcount wrote:
| It does exist. The state can cause an involuntary dissolution
| of your corporation [0] if circumstances dictate. That would
| include such things as not paying your corporate taxes.
|
| [0] https://www.upcounsel.com/involuntary-dissolution
| perl4ever wrote:
| "Why don't we"
|
| Way too many people ask "why don't we" before figuring out
| what they are talking about.
|
| Arthur Andersen got the death penalty. If you point that out,
| people will argue with you, no the death penalty would be
| something different.
|
| It doesn't matter what you think a word or phrase means, you
| should have a good idea of what _you_ mean by it before
| advocating it.
| twomoretime wrote:
| What? I'm identifying a need and a possible solution. Now
| we have a civil discussion with the goal of exchanging
| information.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Corporate charters can be revoked. It doesn't happen because
| of the jobs factor but in theory it can be.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| We punish corporations in ways which adversely impact jobs
| all the time, even though we don't do charter revocation.
| jacquesm wrote:
| True, but once you start applying that at the level of
| Facebook the jobs factor starts to really add weight.
|
| Personally I'd much prefer executives to become
| automatically liable for wrongdoing by their companies.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's an interesting analogy that I've never considered,
| given we treat corporations as personlike entities. Why don't
| we have a capital punishment equivalent?
|
| We do, it's called charter revocation. It's basically never
| done any more because even though the corporate form is a
| privilege granted by the public, it's become essentially an
| unconditional gift.
| wnoise wrote:
| Piercing the corporate veil is a different thing, connecting
| the corporation to its owners (e.g. stockholders for public
| corporations, or the conglomerate for subsidiaries.)
| perl4ever wrote:
| Who are the owners of big public corporations?
|
| If you have an IRA, maybe you're an owner of Facebook as part
| of an index fund.
|
| But do you really own the fund? Or does the broker/bank own
| it for you?
|
| Does the index fund manager own the stock, such as Vanguard
| or Blackrock? Or is it really owned by The Depository Trust &
| Clearing Corporation for the fund?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _fines can and will be seen as merely the cost of doing
| business_
|
| There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
|
| The answer, of course, is that fines can be increased to the
| point where businesses change.
|
| Just recently, Amazon was forced to completely shut down in
| France because the level of fines made it impossible to run
| their business at all.
|
| Businesses respond to incentives. Fines are an incentive. They
| can be set at any level. It's the responsibility of government
| to figure out the right level.
|
| Also, finding the executives responsible for any decision is
| not nearly as clear-cut as you might suppose. Ultimately
| shareholders are responsible. Then they elect a board which
| elects the C-suite which hires the VP's who staff their
| divisions and so on. And approvals happen at every level but
| with varying degrees of granularity and attention.
|
| The C-suite will collectively sign off on a strategic plan for
| the following year. Different members are aware of
| implementation details at different levels. There's very often
| no clear "the buck stops here" for any policy except ultimately
| with the shareholders themselves. (A manager approved the plan,
| but final sign-off was with their VP, but that was part of the
| package presented to the CEO, who brought it to the board...)
| Which is why fines work well -- they punish the shareholders.
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