Yesterday's Wall St Journal had an op-ed piece headlined "Safety from Hackers -- and Trial Lawyers". The author, Brian E. Finch is a lawyer working for a "cyber security" law firm. He is advocating passage of the "Cyber Safety Act" thru Congress. This act would shield companies from law suits over security breaches.
Right now, companies can get sued down to their socks when hackers get thru their security and steal customer lists, with addresses and credit card numbers. Mr. Evans thinks this liability is horrible and discourages innovation in the tech industry.
Me, I think fear of lawsuits is the only thing preventing companies from selling even more insecure products than they do today. Suing Micro$oft for the uncounted security holes in Windows would improve world wide cyber security. The hackers that cracked the federal Office of Personal Management got their hands on my old Air Force service records and records of security clearances that I held for years after leaving the Air Force. Right now, any thoughtful company will take all the precautions it can think of to keep hackers out, for fear of dreadful law suits and market annilation when loopholes let the hackers in.
We got a lot of excess lawyers sloshing around the country, mostly causing trouble. Let's put them to work suing companies that peddle insecure products or who fail to safeguard their customer's records.
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