Surely, there's no "stronger message" than a company getting to make money hand over fist by exploiting their customers and then getting away with nothing but a slap on the wrist. That'll make sure no company ever decides to do that same thing since they'd obviously hate making tons of money and getting "recommendations" after a stern talking to.
Talk to me about "strong messages" when CEOs are sent to prison and a company's assets are seized.
Why not do most of that too? Yes, it should be non-viable as a business decision, but also something that will result in very personal and life altering consequences for those running the company. If I spied on even just a single person like this I'd be thrown in prison as a stalker. "Charge them for all individual incidents at maximum allocation per law." would mean a life sentence for CEOs when really just a decade or two behind bars would be enough to ensure that companies don't risk it.
The individual goes to jail, not the company. So how much does a fall guy cost a company? That’s just cost of business if responsibility is only held by the individual.
The key is to set multiple avenues of responsibility. It may be easy to find loopholes individually, but collectively it would become too burdensome. At least, for the company, make skirting the charges be as costly as following suit.
There is a very long list of companies who have been fined for GDPR violations, and several which have been fined repeatedly. It's not working. Show me a list of companies which have been dissolved or were broken up and sold off after GDPR violations. Then it might be enough to be taken seriously.
for something like this, jail time plus asset seizures is surely too extreme (purdue pharma, on the other hand...). however a severe financial penalty for both company and executives (VPs and up, plus legal counsel) makes a ton of sense. for execs, you'd want to especially financially negate at least some past and future bonuses and stock compensation, because it makes up the bulk of most executive comp.
> for something like this, jail time plus asset seizures is surely too extreme
If you'd go to jail for acting that way, why is that suddenly too extreme for CEOs? The fact is that very very personal details including things like sexual preferences, the medical history, the political views, the sexual partners, and the religious practices of millions of people were exposed by this data collection and that can't be taken back. All that data will exist forever and will likely be used against these people for the rest of their lives.
I don't want Canada to become the dystopian prison-nation that the US is. The "Land of the Free" has more of its population behind bars than any other country on Earth, but some jail time (not life behind bars) is completely appropriate for the scale and scope of what was done here and it is necessary to prevent it from happening again.
you'd be wont to find anyone who'd support exective prison time more than me, but i'm against prison time as a de facto punishment for exactly the reason that it results in too many people being locked up frivolously. i agree that the scale and scope here are atrocious, but again, take away all their gains and more, especially in regards to prestige and esteem, and you'll deter this type of behavior as effectively as incarceration without any of the downsides of prisons (especially the perverse incentives and the exhorbitant costs).
the punishment should fit the crime. that's why i'd throw the sacklers in prison (because they ruined countless lives, up to and including death), but not these executives.
> take away all their gains and more, especially in regards to prestige and esteem, and you'll deter this type of behavior as effectively as incarceration
I guess that'll have be left to speculation until somebody actually manages to convince their government to try it, but I suspect that any financial penalties that don't outright end a company will rarely be enough on its own to act as a deterrent, and that absolving CEOs of any responsibility or accountability and placing the financial burden of fines for violating the rights of millions on the company as a whole will just cause it to be seen as an acceptable gamble for CEOs. It's not even a bad one. The gains to be made exploiting people are very great after all, and the risk of being caught fairly low.
CEOs certainly don't care about prestige and esteem. They are often sociopaths and psychopaths who care very little about others or how they are viewed. Even when their actions do destroy a company they'll just deploy their golden parachutes and happily drift off to another one. As much as our legal systems fail to hold CEOs accountable corporations themselves are certainly no better at it.
> "CEOs certainly don't care about prestige and esteem."
oh quite the opposite, even for psycho/sociopaths. it's really the core thing that humans care about, with everything else, even money (beyond subsistence), only being proxy metrics for it. people kill other people simply for damaging their (self-)image/reputation (the jilted lover being a classic example).
the point of this punishment is to strike right at the heart of what humans care most about by knocking them down a number of rungs on the status ladder (prison time alone doesn't do this, as they'll be just a rich and statused coming out and they were going in, though maybe a bit more humble/shameful). you don't necessarily need to make them poor, just relatively poorer than who they believe their peers are. but yes, the key to any of this is to raise the risk considerably, as you noted. no punishment can be effective without credible enforcement.
I know there are people who think capitalism is inherently harmful and unsalvageable, but I'm convinced that with enough regulation and oversight it can be kept in its place and beaten into something that does more good than harm. I suspect it'll be one hell of an uphill battle to get us there though.
Talk to me about "strong messages" when CEOs are sent to prison and a company's assets are seized.