
Bulgaria tax hacking: An entire nation was hit - heshiebee
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/europe/bulgaria-hack-tax-intl/index.html
======
atdt
It is probably too much to hope for that the exfiltrated data includes tax
returns for the country's kleptocratic elite. Bulgaria has the worst
corruption in the European Union.

Seeing just how little tax is paid by the rich could start a movement for
change. Then again, it may simply be seen as a sad confirmation of what
everybody knows.

~~~
galangalalgol
is it that much worse than in the US? my city of ~800k is just finding out our
senator and relations found a way to get $500M o federal funds to dramatically
increase the value of the land they and their friends bought shortly before
the project was started. sadly with as much detail as I provided you probably
still can't be sure which city I'm talking about because it happens
everywhere. Regulatory capture in the communication, medical, defense, and
banking industries is obvious and unchallenged. How bad is Bulgaria?

~~~
akmarinov
Isn’t corruption basically legal in the US under the name of lobbying?

All the PACs and Super PACs that donate endless money, without divulging
origin to candidates, so that they’ll push through their agenda?

Like where’s the fiber broadband the government paid billions for to the
telecoms?

~~~
iagovar
When I read news about the US that's the impression I've got. I'm from Spain,
and we (and our neighbors) are quite vocal about our corruption, but the more
I read the more I realize that the stuff that is happening here would be just
legal somewhere else.

Here a party receiving money from companies is a big deal.

~~~
adventured
It's partially (not entirely) a myth about US politics.

The majority of political donations come from individuals.

Obama for example raised $1.23 billion from individual contributions over his
political career. Out of about $1.5 billion total.

For Trump, about 60% of his campaign's funding came from individual donations
(about $220m), his money included. Trump gave about $66m to his own campaign,
or around 20% of all the funding. Supporting PACs spent around $100 million.

Hillary Clinton got about 71% of her campaign funds from individual
contributions (around $405m). Her supporting PACs spent around $210m.

For the prominent Ted Cruz vs Beto O'Rourke Texas Senate battle, Cruz got 77%
of his funding from individual contributions.

From there you'd have to look into the share of the PAC money that comes from
individuals versus companies etc. PACs commonly derive a large share of their
funding from individual contributions. For some of that you can get good
figures, some of it is shadowy.

~~~
inuhj
Some people donate individually and not from their business because they don't
want anyone looking deeply.

------
seaghost
This will happen again and again because governments in developing countries
don't understand importance of IT security, where people with no
qualifications (often nepotism) works on protecting very important data. Not
to mention that someone who is qualified to work there is often working in
private sector for 3 to 5 times bigger salary due to govt. regulations on
public sector salaries.

~~~
DrJokepu
Developing countries lol. [https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/17/politics/customs-
and-border-p...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/17/politics/customs-and-border-
protection-data-breach-license-plates-leaked/index.html)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Hint: it’s not binary.

~~~
ownagefool
Yeah, the two most common forms of cyber security I've came across are:

a) Don't know much, don't care much, don't really do much; or

b) Super paranoid that we're going to need really expensive consultants and
buy really expensive products, and do lots of manual because automation is
insecure, need to be on-prem, basically 10-15 years behind.

Neither really patch servers, but often the guys that care are so behind the
times they're actually worse.

------
veselin
Most people in Bulgaria are more concerned that the breach gives new weapons
to scammers. There are a handful of groups that scam old people to transfer
money pretending to be their relatives in need. There are groups that steal
properties or even companies by doing a transfer with fake documents (then the
property is resold of course).

The finance minister said on the TV these are anyway illegal activities with
or without the leaked data. The problem though is that nobody was imprisoned
for such crimes for ages, just like there are no politicians going to prison
in the last ten years. Guess how many people believe him now.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Sweden “solves” this problem by publicising everyone's tax records, along with
almost everything else the government knows about them.

------
sheeeep86
I wonder how such a breach will affect pay equality in the country.
Theoretically soon everyone could publish how much the different ranks,
genders, etc. in each company are making, and give people a nice data to start
negotiations from ...

------
cheschire
This should make it trivial now to see which locals are being paid by foreign
military contracts in order to facilitate tradecraft.

------
buboard
does this include foreign companies? bulgaria is a popular low tax destination
for other countries.

------
runeb
Anyone know how GDPR would handle fining a country? 4% of GNP would be hefty.

~~~
IAmEveryone
I know you're just trying to exploit the somewhat widespread cynicism and
accusations of hypocriticism for humor, but that just isn't how it works.

While fines are routinely used against citizen, companies, and other private
entities to force compliance with the law, the absence of fines in the
relationship between courts and the executive quite obviously does not imply
that the government is free to ignore the law.

This should be obvious, considering there are lawsuits against the government
in the news every week. Fines are simply not necessary because public servants
are duty-bound to follow court orders. In modern democracies, this is not just
theory. Ignoring a court's order is virtually unheard of. It would be a major
breech of the rule of law, a tenet more central to democracy than even voting.
I wouldn't want to see what happens, although the risk has certainly risen in
the last, say, two years, at least in the US.

~~~
peshooo
> In modern democracies, this is not just theory. Ignoring a court's order is
> virtually unheard of.

This might be true for the older/western democracies. Sadly this is not the
case in Easter Europe. As we say in Bulgaria - the law is a door in a field.
You can go around if you want.

------
skybrian
Could the mods add (Bulgaria) to the title?

~~~
dang
We've switched to the HTML doc title.

------
ferros
I submitted this 14 hours ago, same source...?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20490428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20490428)

~~~
dang
It's ok for there to be reposts if a story hasn't gotten attention yet.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

