The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse
&gt; Eventually, some lawyer is going to convince a judge that, say, 1% the victims of a deep-pocketed company’s breach will end up losing their houses to identity thieves as a result of the data that the company has leaked, and that the damages should be equal to 1% of all the property owned by a 53 million (or 500 million!) customers whom the company has wronged. It will take down a Fortune 100 company, and transfer billions from investors and insurers to lawyers and their clients.<p>This highlights a major problem with tort law: It&#x27;s monetary damages or GTFO. In other words, it&#x27;s nearly impossible to make a case for damages when there is no obvious monetary aspect of the harm done. I can&#x27;t sue Home Depot for giving up my credit card info to hackers unless I can prove that it led to someone running up my credit card bill. Either this needs to change, or it should be a crime for companies to release customers&#x27; personal information to unauthorized third parties.<p>Part of the problem is how these data breaches are framed in the media. It&#x27;s always &quot;Company X was HACKED!&quot; and &quot;Company Y SUFFERED a major data breach!&quot;. They&#x27;re portraying the negligent company as the victim! It should be &quot;Company A carelessly released their customers&#x27; data.&quot; or &quot;Company B failed to protect 10 million credit card numbers.&quot; Once we stop pretending these companies are victims, we can start making and enforcing tougher privacy laws.