[tertius]

Because private property is a cornerstone of a free society?

You can't just destroy someone else's property because you have some personal anarchist notion of justice.

If they are really being negligent then they should face the proper penalties.

[Rjevski]

Well the issue is that there are no penalties. Only free money for lawyers and nothing for the people who got their PII stolen.

Dropping the DB means there's no more PII to leak, makes a pretty good financial penalty for the company and doesn't make millions for useless lawyers. That sounds like an acceptable solution by my standards.