[spaceheretostay]

Isn't that just like 1 month's worth of revenue? That amounts to absolutely nothing in today's world, not even an incentive to reduce the bad behavior.

Jail time for lawbreaking executives needs to happen. The financial penalties do not dissuade bad behavior or act as a deterrent, so the same crimes will continue to be committed.

Are there any peer-reviewed studies looking at deterrence of financial/tech/privacy crimes in the modern era? I would expect that in every case the penalty is lower than the profit, making it a continued incentive to break the law.

The only thing these people value truly is their time on this Earth to be free and breathe fresh air. If they risk jail time when breaking these laws, I think we would see a reduction in intentional and repeated lawbreaking by large corporations.

[slashcom]

I don’t know man, 20% of your annual income would be seen as a sizeable fine. That’s 20% of their yearly profits, and it wipes out most of their earnings for Q1.

[xvector]

On the long-term, it's still nothing at all for Facebook. Their stock will bounce back.

[paulcole]

20% of 100,000 is much more significant than 20% of 100 billion dollars.

[bickfordb]

What crimes would they be jailed for?

[mbrameld]

Could they be prosecuted for violating the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act which makes it unlawful to "knowingly transfer[ring] or us[ing], without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law."

There's an element of intent that might be hard to prove. Intent is legally defined as "the decision to bring about a prohibited consequence." If you know your actions will result in prohibited consequences and take them anyway, you are deciding to bring about a prohibited consequence.

Conspiracy might fit, too. You've got 2 or more people intentionally agreeing to these practices that they know will result in identity theft and then taking action to put those practices into use.

I guess they'd have to start with somebody who provably had their identity stolen as a result of the practices, though.

[oh_sigh]

1 month of revenue is how many months of profit?

[blihp]

That misses the point: it's effectively a (cheap) speeding ticket for bad behavior over the life of the company. It would be a bargain at twice the price from their point of view.

[munk-a]

Yea, and it might be that this slap on the wrists prevents any real punishment from ever being dealt out - that's what pisses me off, whenever the government goes into a non-prosecution agreement or a fine without admittance of wrong doing... it's actually lowering the potential liabilities outstanding of the company unjustly.

[esoterica]

1 month of pay is a lot more than a speeding ticket.

[r3bl]

Finland, Switzerland, and the UK are the first three places that pop into my mind where speeding tickets are calculated based on the income of the offender.

You'd have to be caught going way above the limit to be fined above 1 month of pay, but it's possible.

[djakjxnanjak]

I think if you were talking about such a large speeding ticket, you wouldn’t use a speeding ticket as a metaphor for a small fine...

[ok_coo]

Even worse, in this model they can effectively just build in the cost of the fines in the business model. It's just a cost of doing business at this point.

I'm sorry, but this shit isn't going to end until the U.S. actually punishes white collar crime. Fines _do not_ work.

[SatvikBeri]

According to YCharts, Facebook's 2018 revenue was $55.8 BN and their profit was $22.1 BN, so 1 month of revenue is 2.5 months of profit.

[danpalmer]

They are fairly high margin relative to most industries, so probably less than 2 months of profit would be my guess.

[matt4077]

If only there was a way to find out how much profit a public company makes, instead of going three-deep in a threat with “would be my guess” numbers...

FWIW, FB quarterly profits Q1, Q2, and Q3 2018 were 5.1, 5.1, and 6.9 billion, respectively: https://www.statista.com/statistics/223289/facebooks-quarter...

[danpalmer]

There’s a place for estimates with reasoning. My intention was not to give the exact answer, which is often no that’s needed, but to help (in some small way) someone who doesn’t know how to get there build the reasoning that might get them enough of an answer.