Banks hit with $549 million in fines for use of Signal, WhatsApp to evade regulators’ reach::Wells Fargo, a relatively small player on Wall Street, racked up the most fines Tuesday, with a total of $200 million in penalties.

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • treadful@lemmy.zip
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Cras@feddit.uk
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        11 months ago

        I work for a large American bank working under a consent order from the SEC to address this exact problem, and it’s my job to find and implement the solutions. I can say with absolute confidence that weakening platform integrity is absolutely not a solution being pushed for any of this - not least because the platform owners will 100% not cooperate with any attempt to do so.

    • FlumPHP@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      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.

    • broguy89@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I see this as a “yes, Signal is secure, look, they used it and are getting away with it too” narrative.

    • hackitfast@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

  • J12@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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

    • ech0@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Sometimes I don’t feed the meter if I don’t think a meter maid will get to my car before the parking hours end. I just fuckin risk it.

      • Frodo@startrek.website
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        11 months ago

        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.

    • TwoGems@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Agreed. They harm people all day with defective products and the solution is “lol here have this fine that barely hurts you”

    • JustAThought@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      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.

    • kaizervonmaanen@reddthat.com
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      11 months ago

      Of you put CEOs and Execs in prison then you are not treating corporations like people. If you do something illegal then they put you in prison. Not your CEO or Execs.

    • sol@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Nobody’s sending you to jail for using WhatsApp.

  • db2@sopuli.xyz
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    11 months ago

    It’s cost if doing business for them though, the “fines” are a farce, just protection money paid to a gang.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

          • grte@lemmy.ca
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            11 months ago

            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.

            • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              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.

              • grte@lemmy.ca
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                11 months ago

                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.

              • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                11 months ago

                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.

          • krolden@lemmy.ml
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            11 months ago

            Send the whole corporation to prison since they have legal rights same as I do (but I can’t afford to enforce mine).

      • db2@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        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.

        • xePBMg9@lemmynsfw.com
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          11 months ago

          They can pass whatever they want on to the customer; as long as they follow the rule of law. If they charge too much, their buissnes idea was unsound and will most likely be done better by a competitor.

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      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.

    • demonquark@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Fines as a percentage of revenue. A big percentage. That’ll stop this nonsense.

  • meseek #2982@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    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.”

    • Oneobi@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

  • Mojojojo1993@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Don’t need no logarithm :-)

      Just 1% of their worldwide year’s revenue for each day when the offence is/was happening.

    • Cras@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      Actually being directly in a position to see how seriously this is taken by the banks, mobilizing to address the problem of staff using non approved and recorded communications is massive and doing exactly what the fine is supposed to do - motivating the companies involved to get off their arses and fix the gaping holes that allow this to happen.

      Source - I’m the guy on the tech side who has to come up with solutions to allow communications with clients/peers/other firms over whatsApp, Signal, Line, SMS etc in a way that is able to be archived in line with the law

    • Deiv@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      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

    • Disgusted_Tadpole@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Exsúrgat Deus et dissipéntur inimíci ejus: et fúgiant qui odérunt eum a fácie ejus. Sicut déficit fumus defíciant; sicut fluit cera a fácie ígnis, sic péreant peccatóres a fácie Dei. Júdica Dómine nocéntes me; expúgna impugnántes me. Confundántur et revereántur quaeréntes ánimam meam. Avertántur retrórsum et confundántur, cogitántes míhi mála.

  • shadowspirit@geddit.social
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    11 months ago

    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.