Sony Declines to Appear Before U.S. Congress

[JDKJ]

Gross negligence, breach of their privacy policy, removal of a product products ability to to be used for it's specific purpose (on several counts) and distribution of a product that is below merchantable quality.

None of that's a "crime."

uhh...Yes, yes breach of contract is very much a crime, it isn't a violent crime, like murder or rape, but in the business world it's pretty much the only crime. Anyone who's spent even a minimal amount of time studying business law (I'm literally talking 10 minutes here) will be know that each is a crime, and there are preceding cases relating to each offense. I've gone ahead and quoted in some very, very basic links into my previous post....I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling or just completely naive to the law, but either way I'm amazed that anyone would claim that negligence or breaking contract is not a crime :S

It's not. I'm pretty sure that if it was, I'd have discovered that fact during my three years of law school and umpteen years in the practice of law. The recourse for breach of contract and civil negligence is to file suit in civil court. There's no criminal statute in any state or federal penal code that provides for prosecution for breach of contract or civil negligence. I'll bet any amount of money on that. If you're inclined to quickly part with some of your money, then feel free to put some where your mouth is -- you will lose that money. I can guarantee that.

And I clicked your links. They do absolutely nothing to support your contention that the offenses you list are criminal offenses. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

...Fine, that is technically right, but Sony have still broken the law in their breach of contract and for intents and purposes that is a crime, they are also almost certainly in breach of government regulations (related to breach of contract) and will probably be fined.

There is obviously going to be a court case, there are civil suits being filed in several western countries and these court cases will be at the public expense. If they government can reduce these costs by exercising it's power to investigate what happened then surely it should.

It is further reasonable for various governments to get involved as "laws" were broken by those who broke into sonys systems... Ultimately, laws and regulations have been broken and the governments should behave accordingly.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with "for intents and purposes that is a crime" but conduct is either criminalized or it isn't. If it isn't criminalized, it isn't a crime. And not all violations of government regulations are crimes. The violation of those that provide for fines and penalties only are usually not criminal in nature. The hallmark of a criminal statute or regulation is usually that it provides for imprisonment. If a statute or regulation doesn't say anything about imprisoning violators, then we can usually safely assume that it isn't a criminal statute or regulation.

 

[JDKJ]

Gross negligence, breach of their privacy policy, removal of a product products ability to to be used for it's specific purpose (on several counts) and distribution of a product that is below merchantable quality.

None of that's a "crime."

uhh...Yes, yes breach of contract is very much a crime, it isn't a violent crime, like murder or rape, but in the business world it's pretty much the only crime. Anyone who's spent even a minimal amount of time studying business law (I'm literally talking 10 minutes here) will be know that each is a crime, and there are preceding cases relating to each offense. I've gone ahead and quoted in some very, very basic links into my previous post....I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling or just completely naive to the law, but either way I'm amazed that anyone would claim that negligence or breaking contract is not a crime :S

It's not. I'm pretty sure that if it was, I'd have discovered that fact during my three years of law school and umpteen years in the practice of law. The recourse for breach of contract and civil negligence is to file suit in civil court. There's no criminal statute in any state or federal penal code that provides for prosecution for breach of contract or civil negligence. I'll bet any amount of money on that. If you're inclined to quickly part with some of your money, then feel free to put some where your mouth is -- you will lose that money. I can guarantee that.

And I clicked your links. They do absolutely nothing to support your contention that the offenses you list are criminal offenses. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

...Fine, that is technically right, but Sony have still broken the law in their breach of contract and for intents and purposes that is a crime, they are also almost certainly in breach of government regulations (related to breach of contract) and will probably be fined.

There is obviously going to be a court case, there are civil suits being filed in several western countries and these court cases will be at the public expense. If they government can reduce these costs by exercising it's power to investigate what happened then surely it should.

It is further reasonable for various governments to get involved as "laws" were broken by those who broke into sonys systems... Ultimately, laws and regulations have been broken and the governments should behave accordingly.

I don't want to get into the middle of your discussion, but after reading through this thread, I don't see what contract Sony breached? Every company has to take reasonable precautions with customer data. But that's it - "reasonable", and that's in their judgment, no one elses. If you look at PCI standards for the protection of credit card transactions, they're pretty - let's say "general". It might be true that Sony didn't meet those standards, just as it might be true that they didn't meet Sarbanes-Oxley standards for the protection of systems involved in financial reporting.

But they also might have met those standards as adopted by themselves, meaning that as far as the law is concerned, they're completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

As far as the severity and impact on the American economy is concerned, I just remember that about once every 10 years in my lifetime, some kind of group has pump-and-dumped some part of the entire US stock market for bazillions of dollars, and basically everyone involved just walks away with the cash. Sometimes the government hangs someone from a streetlight, sometimes they gear up and pass a new law, but always way too late to stop the damage, and never in a way that will prevent the next time.

Crime don't pay. Bullshit. It most certainly does in America. You just gotta know better than to rob anyone with a gun. That don't pay. You gotta rob them with a pen (preferably one of those $1000 Montblanc fountain pens). That does pay. It pays big time.

 

[JDKJ]

Actually, out of the 800B or so owed, there's only 19B left, and 22B of interest.

yeah, I wonder how long it'll take your US printers to print off the rest of that money. You should probably research things a bit before you say something like that.

We won't have to print it, we'll just borrow it from the Chinese.

 

[godfist88]

jeez congress leave'em alone, they got enough crap to deal with without you breathing down their necks.

 

[loogie]

"Sony, will you stop working on fixing your network and answer some questions?" Really?

Because every man, woman, child, grandmother, and adopted son is out researching and developing new security for their systems... no, they're ashamed, embarrased and worried about what would happen at such a meeting... Not saying they should be appearing, but they sure as hell aren't declining because they are ALL busy ALL the time.

I got to say, whoever the fuck hacked this site had better feel real smug about themselves. They've kept a major gaming company running around with it's head cut off, probably gave the plastic share a bit of a raise with all it's new credit cards being printed, and now has nations across the world starting to declare hate on Sony because someone outsmarted them the way people do the government all the time!

Oh I'm sure they do. I'm sure there are plenty of other hackers giving them props right now for such a complete mindf*ck...

You could argue that Sony is in the wrong, but really it's not like they opened the door and said "Come on in and take our stuff," and I doubt that they'd want this feedback. I bet no one in Sony said "let's make our system hackable so people will leave for Microsoft, get mad at us, and start not purchasing our online games because they're afraid our system will be hacked again, as well as spend millions on repairs and having to pay for 'outside sources' to 'look into the situation'"

No, they didn't say "lets make out systems hackable"... They took a large peice of foam, painted it with metalic grey, drew on some fake rivets, and placed it in the doorway of the vault, then proceeded to flick the big guy known for breaking down big iron doors in the ear and insulted his mother until he steamrolled the big flimsy piece of crap. Sony is at fault, for having not nearly the level of security they should have had when dealing with so much personal data... nevermind obviously preforming such lack of security on every system they own... it makes no sense to say Sony wasn't at fault because people aren't supposed to hack... go take out $100 from the bank and put it on the ground in the street then watch it. no one is supposed to take it, yet see how long it takes for someone to do just that. Now imagine if that wasn't even your money...

While it sucks not being able to play and have to cancel our credit cards, imagine what the hell is going on for Sony. They may not care about individuals, but would you want your name to be connected with this kind of thing? I don't think so.

Well obviously a company doesn't want this kind of thing to happen to them... Sony is doing many great things to make things so as smoothly after the fact... but that's just it, it's after the fact... The ways the hacker(s) got into their servers had been found previously and reported, they even pointed out the fact of real unencrypted ccards and personal info being found, and Sony obviously did very little to plug that hole... Even if that wasn't the way, it is painfully obvious that this was not some super hack job, it was a hacker taking advantage of a severly weak system.

And the government should shut up and worry about other things, like say, making sure THEIR servers are protected so they're not hacked the same way and have their credit card numbers, or worse yet, Wikileaks sytled data to be taken by an unknown face

I'm sorry, but with a problem this big I would sure as hell hope my government is seriously investigating the issue... we're talking millions of users information being stolen, and tens of thousands of credit cards... I don't believe there has ever been a leak of this magnitude, and I would hope the government is worried about such things.

 

[SinisterGehe]

anyway i kind of think its a bit of a silly move to not testify before congress. to me it makes them sound like they dont care about data security.

It sounds to me that they have better things to do than bable front of some commitee about what has happened, not what will happen. I saw the questions and by the looks of it, it mainly focuses on what they know, it would be pointless to go there and say: " We have no fucking clue, we are still investigating."

 

[emeraldrafael]

Actually, out of the 800B or so owed, there's only 19B left, and 22B of interest.

yeah, I wonder how long it'll take your US printers to print off the rest of that money. You should probably research things a bit before you say something like that.

Um... I have. And thats the official number (at least, it was when I looked, but that was for the 2010-2011 Macro Econ college booklet we had out this year. its probably less now.

 

[Canid117]

You know, as much as this security breach in Sony annoys the hell out of me - I had to change some passwords and cut up a credit card - I kind of find this obnoxious of the government to do.

Seriously, I'm still pissed about the banking fiasco here. How long did it take for them to pay back America for what they did? Oh, they still haven't yet... I see. And where are all the sub committees demanding to see these bankers? Oh, they already did that. And what happened? Oh yeah, we gave their dumb asses more money.

Sorry, but in the grand scheme of things, this Sony shit is insignificant. The government needs to get their priorities straight.

So just because they do one thing you disagree with they have to stop enforcing all laws? Thats awesome! Whos up for a looting party and murder spree next week!

anyway i kind of think its a bit of a silly move to not testify before congress. to me it makes them sound like they dont care about data security.

It sounds to me that they have better things to do than bable front of some commitee about what has happened, not what will happen. I saw the questions and by the looks of it, it mainly focuses on what they know, it would be pointless to go there and say: " We have no fucking clue, we are still investigating."

The technicians and engineers who are hard at work trying to fix the leak are not the ones who would go in front of congress and explain what happened. That would be the job of their lawyers and executives.

 

[mikev7.0]

I was unaware that appearing before Congress was a thing one could readily decline; I thought it was something important.

They can decline a request, especially with good reason, but as JDKJ has pointed out, they were not issued a subpeona which would make it mandatory I think.

I still think it's against the law (or really should be) to take a customer's money and then not let them use the product they paid for. I know that our Congressman is really anti internet as far as commerce goes and he sites that as a major reason. People paying for things that aren't real to begin with and then not even getting what they paid for yet doesn't physically exist. Uh, I think....

 

[JDKJ]

anyway i kind of think its a bit of a silly move to not testify before congress. to me it makes them sound like they dont care about data security.

It sounds to me that they have better things to do than bable front of some commitee about what has happened, not what will happen. I saw the questions and by the looks of it, it mainly focuses on what they know, it would be pointless to go there and say: " We have no fucking clue, we are still investigating."

If I was Sony, just to take the piss outta Congress, I'd do something akin to what the Big Tobacco CEOs did when Congress hauled them up to the Hill and asked them if they knew that their product is addictive: they all put on their best bullshittin' faces and said, "No, I am not aware that nicotine is addictive." Take that, Congress!!

 

[teebeeohh]

while i am all for elected officials annoying the hell out of corporate executives on live TV i think it may be better to wait a while and give sony a chance to explain what exactly happened, doing this now is just grabbing for attention.

 

[BabyRaptor]

People in this thread sound like a bunch of 5 year olds. 77 million people just got their personal information stolen, and potentially sold online. Undoubtedly, some of those people were Americans. (I am, and my info was stolen.)

Congress has the right to talk to Sony about what happened. They aren't out there trashing Sony, or blowing what happened out of proportion, or scare-mongering anything...They just want some questions answered.

It was perfectly fine when they were doing it to Apple over the iPhone tracking people, but now it's a group everyone likes, so...Commence the hate and pouting!

 

[mikev7.0]

"Sony, will you stop working on fixing your network and answer some questions?" Really?

I got to say, whoever the fuck hacked this site had better feel real smug about themselves. They've kept a major gaming company running around with it's head cut off, probably gave the plastic share a bit of a raise with all it's new credit cards being printed, and now has nations across the world starting to declare hate on Sony because someone outsmarted them the way people do the government all the time!

You could argue that Sony is in the wrong, but really it's not like they opened the door and said "Come on in and take our stuff," and I doubt that they'd want this feedback. I bet no one in Sony said "let's make our system hackable so people will leave for Microsoft, get mad at us, and start not purchasing our online games because they're afraid our system will be hacked again, as well as spend millions on repairs and having to pay for 'outside sources' to 'look into the situation'"

While it sucks not being able to play and have to cancel our credit cards, imagine what the hell is going on for Sony. They may not care about individuals, but would you want your name to be connected with this kind of thing? I don't think so.

And the government should shut up and worry about other things, like say, making sure THEIR servers are protected so they're not hacked the same way and have their credit card numbers, or worse yet, Wikileaks sytled data to be taken by an unknown face

Um, I would say the the U.S.A. has the best hackers in the world. Do you know what ARPA IS?? What are you using right, say, now? How did the computer get invented in the first place?? Right. I would say at the very least (again all subjective I can't offer proof, just common sense) that the government has these bases covered. Well at least a hell of a lot better than SONY....

Once all is said and done I think it will be revealed that yeah, basically SONY may not have left the door open, but they sure as hell didn't use a deadbolt all the while proclaiming themselves locksmiths of the future.

 

[Sovereignty]

Anyone else shocked by how many people are in Sony's corner?

Seriously I have never seen so much defending of a company that let vital information get snagged by the wrong people ever.

I sort of feel alienated in that I totally blame Sony for this. And the hearing, while it wouldn't do anything, is to make Jane and John Q. Tax Payer feel like something's being done.

I guess the majority doesn't understand how bad identity theft is, but it's a horrible debilitating experience. Especially if you own a business or make a nice hefty some of money a year.

People trusted Sony with their privy information. Expected them to go through every precaution with it. And they failed. It's not like this was some huge failure amongst tons of companies... This was just Sony.

They're liable for it, and should at least send a spokesman to explain the current situation at the hearing. I mean seriously.

I guarantee one of their lawyers is sitting on their hands doing nothing right now. Send that guy.

 

[JDKJ]

"Sony, will you stop working on fixing your network and answer some questions?" Really?

I got to say, whoever the fuck hacked this site had better feel real smug about themselves. They've kept a major gaming company running around with it's head cut off, probably gave the plastic share a bit of a raise with all it's new credit cards being printed, and now has nations across the world starting to declare hate on Sony because someone outsmarted them the way people do the government all the time!

You could argue that Sony is in the wrong, but really it's not like they opened the door and said "Come on in and take our stuff," and I doubt that they'd want this feedback. I bet no one in Sony said "let's make our system hackable so people will leave for Microsoft, get mad at us, and start not purchasing our online games because they're afraid our system will be hacked again, as well as spend millions on repairs and having to pay for 'outside sources' to 'look into the situation'"

While it sucks not being able to play and have to cancel our credit cards, imagine what the hell is going on for Sony. They may not care about individuals, but would you want your name to be connected with this kind of thing? I don't think so.

And the government should shut up and worry about other things, like say, making sure THEIR servers are protected so they're not hacked the same way and have their credit card numbers, or worse yet, Wikileaks sytled data to be taken by an unknown face

Um, I would say the the U.S.A. has the best hackers in the world. Do you know what ARPA IS?? What are you using right, say, now? How did the computer get invented in the first place?? Right. I would say at the very least (again all subjective I can't offer proof, just common sense) that the government has these bases covered. Well at least a hell of a lot better than SONY....

Once all is said and done I think it will be revealed that yeah, basically SONY may not have left the door open, but they sure as hell didn't use a deadbolt all the while proclaiming themselves locksmiths of the future.

You-Es-Ay!! You-Es-Ay!! Al Gore invented the internet!! He's an American!! Therefore, America invented the internet!! You-Es-Ay!! You-Es-Ay!! And we shot bin Laden dead, right between the eyes!! We are bad-ass!! You-Es-Ay!! You-Es-Ay!!

 

[Space Jawa]

Why does Congress do this? PUBLICITY! All congressional hearings are for is making a person or organization grovel on live TV, and Sony has every right to refuse.

I think you more or less just answered your own question there. They do it because they get to make people grovel on live TV and all that jazz.

You can, however, do what many do when hauled before Congress and are asked to answer their questions: repeat the phrase "on the advice of my attorney, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that to do so could tend to incriminate me" (aka "taking the Fifth") over and over and over again until they get tired of you and send you back home.

Unless you're Tony Stark, in which case you have some fun with it and make the committee look bad at their own hearing.

 

[Averant]

Congress likes to beat dead horses because it's easier than actual work

Spoiler: For example

Too many jokes, too much useless crap, and that was just the first minute. This is why I don't like politics. Cause politicians are professional bush beaters.

It was perfectly fine when they were doing it to Apple over the iPhone tracking people, but now it's a group everyone likes, so...Commence the hate and pouting!

Welcome to Humanity, mate. Hypocrisy is the status quo, don'tcha know?

 

[dkyros]

[bleep] Sony, I had my facebook hacked earlier today bc of this [bleep]. Changed the password and now I know which of my many passwords I had for PSN. Nothing worse than logging into facebook and seeing what I saw on my page.

Anon was right, they stuck their Pen15 in the bee hive and now they have consequences. Their stock dropped 1.25% yesterday and something tells me this in only the start.

EDITed for your pleasure

 

[Tulks]

i dont get australia. its so small but it seems to have if finger in every pie there is.

australia seems to get a mention all over the place.

Small? You may be thinking of the UK.

OT: Honestly, is it really such a bad thing that Sony are taking flak for this? Even if they did nothing actively wrong, an intrusion of this magnitude still warrants serious investigation.
The gov't bodies in the countries listed simply want to be reassured that data on their citizens isn't compromised in this way again. (Delicious irony, I know.)