Re-Regulation and Big-Business Favoritism: It is both obvious and subtle that this deal is inconsistent with Mr. Trump’s avowed goal of reducing the regulatory burden. Such deals obviously can be cut only with big firms, as equivalent negotiations with hundreds of thousands of small- and medium companies over location decisions and the like are impossible. And so the looming Trump administration, perhaps without realizing it, has taken the same path well-traveled for the last eight Obama years: The large firms in important industries (health care, financial services, energy) are to be cartelized by massive legislative and regulatory burdens, while the small- and medium-sized businesses that are the backbone of American capitalism are left to fend for themselves.
Rent-Seeking: Will other large firms now find it advantageous to threaten (or hint) at relocation plans merely to obtain the same kind of benefits that Carrier/United Technologies has won?
.. However small the effect, the preservation of the Carrier industrial operation in Indiana will yield a dollar stronger rather than weaker, meaning that other exporters will find it more difficult to compete in international markets. And so in the end, the Carrier deal will shift employment among sectors rather than preserve it.
.. The Carrier deal, to adapt a famous phrase, is a small step for some workers and a giant leap backwards for the economy as a whole. That the losers do not know who they are is an endemic part of the age-old problem of government incentives to bestow benefits upon concentrated interests.
Data Is a Toxic Asset
All this makes data a toxic asset, and it continues to be toxic as long as it sits in a company’s computers and networks. The data is vulnerable, and the company is vulnerable. It’s vulnerable to hackers and governments. It’s vulnerable to employee error. And when there’s a toxic data spill, millions of people can be affected. The 2015 Anthem Health data breach affected 80 million people. The 2013 Target Corp. breach affected 110 million.
.. If data is toxic, why do organizations save it?
There are three reasons. The first is that we’re in the middle of the hype cycle of big data. Companies and governments are still punch-drunk on data, and have believed the wildest of promises on how valuable that data is. The research showing that more data isn’t necessarily better, and that there are serious diminishing returns when adding additional data to processes like personalized advertising, is just starting to come out.
The second is that many organizations are still downplaying the risks. Some simply don’t realize just how damaging a data breach would be. Some believe they can completely protect themselves against a data breach, or at least that their legal and public relations teams can minimize the damage if they fail. And while there’s certainly a lot that companies can do technically to better secure the data they hold about all of us, there’s no better security than deleting the data.
The last reason is that some organizations understand both the first two reasons and are saving the data anyway. The culture of venture-capital-funded start-up companies is one of extreme risk taking. These are companies that are always running out of money, that always know their impending death date.
.. We can be smarter than this. We need to regulate what corporations can do with our data at every stage: collection, storage, use, resale and disposal. We can make corporate executives personally liable so they know there’s a downside to taking chances. We can make the business models that involve massively surveilling people the less compelling ones, simply by making certain business practices illegal.
How a Bunch of Hacked DVR Machines Took Down Twitter and Reddit
And on October 1, an anonymous developer posted source code online that allowed anyone to string a similar kind of botnet together. Krebs wrote that releasing that software, called Mirai, “virtually [guaranteed] that the Internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices.”
.. Sometimes a retribution-style attack can follow a presentation of this type... Last month, Schneier argued in Motherboard that the government must regulate internet-of-things cybersecurity. “The market can’t fix this because neither the buyer nor the seller cares,” he wrote:The government could impose security regulations on [internet of things] manufacturers, forcing them to make their devices secure even though their customers don’t care. They could impose liabilities on manufacturers, allowing people like Brian Krebs to sue them. Any of these would raise the cost of insecurity and give companies incentives to spend money making their devices secure.
Policing the Banks Is an Inside Job
Unlike other financial police, banking regulators either have no whistle-blower programs that provide incentives and protections for individuals to break their silence about wrongdoing they witness, or these regulators have little-known programs with comically small awards.
.. Without robust whistle-blower programs, bank regulators are like beat cops who don’t have a working 911 system.
.. Mary Jo White, the S.E.C. chairwoman, said recently that the program had been a “game changer” for the agency.