Wells Fargo investigation appropriate
Californians are about to learn whether Nobel Prizewinning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz was right when he said: “We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but also too big to be held accountable.”
The state Department of Justice on Wednesday launched a probe into allegations of criminal identity theft linked to the Wells Fargo unauthorized accounts scandal.
If it was not criminal for individual bank employees, ordered by Wells Fargo executives, to use customers’ information to open unauthorized accounts under their names, it ought to be. This adds to the pressing need for Congress to pass a comprehensive Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. Americans deserve clear privacy protection of personal data, whether it’s for businesses’ internal use, unwarranted government intrusion or sharing of personal data for profit.
Wells Fargo employees created as many as 2 million unauthorized accounts to meet unreasonable sales targets, leading to $185 million in fines by several regulatory agencies and the resignation of disgraced CEO John Stumpf. The question is whether bank employees accessed the bank’s computer system in a manner that, under current law, constitutes identity theft and to what extent management condoned it.
Attorney General Kamala Harris is demanding all emails and communications of employees and managers with any connection to the accounts.
Banking experts say this is unusual but could lead to a wide range of potential criminal charges. It also could result in sanctions in addition to Treasurer John Chiang’s decision to suspend Wells Fargo from doing business with the state. Ohio and Illinois have also cut off business with the bank.
Given the banking and technology industries’ major stake in consumer trust of their products, it’s mind-boggling that the United States remains the only major developed nation without fundamental online user protections. We shouldn’t have to wonder if practices like Wells Fargo’s are legal or not.
Tech firms make boatloads of money from sharing user data. But ultimately, consumer protections and full disclosure about how user data is shared are in businesses’ best interests.
President Barack Obama used his 2015 State of the Union address to push Congress to pass a pioneering data privacy bill of rights, but the legislation went nowhere.
“We pioneered the internet,” Obama said. “But we also pioneered the Bill of Rights and a sense each of us as individuals have a sphere of privacy around us that should not be breached by our government but also by commercial interests.”
The Wells Fargo outrage and the recent revelation that Yahoo scanned hundreds of millions of customers’ emails for information requested by U.S. intelligence officers demand that the next president and Congress move basic privacy protection to the top of the priority list for 2017.