
U.S. consumer protection official puts Equifax probe on ice - chatmasta
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-equifax-cfpb/exclusive-u-s-consumer-protection-official-puts-equifax-probe-on-ice-sources-idUSKBN1FP0IZ#ref
======
FilterSweep
143M Americans Affected and by Census'[0] count, there are ~327M Americans.

Chances are, if you're an adult American you are impacted. _Even if you did
not authorize Equifax 's "services"_, __a third party most likely did it for
you __, and you are impacted.

Note that your credit score or lack thereof is often used to deny housing and
(for generally _unsubstantiated_ reasons,) employment.

The fact that Equifax is not held accountable is one of the biggest data-
related atrocities of the modern era.

[0]: [https://www.census.gov/popclock/](https://www.census.gov/popclock/)

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> Note that your credit score or lack thereof is often used to deny housing
> and (for generally unsubstantiated reasons,) employment.

Not defending Equifax, but this is misleading. Credit checks are what enable
lending of this sort in the first place.

~~~
mijamo
No. France for one does not have a similar system available and lending still
works well.

~~~
Karunamon
How does France go about determining if someone is a good credit risk who pays
their bills on time?

~~~
ubernostrum
It really is amazing how until the current three credit reporting agencies
came long, nobody in the history of humanity had managed to obtain a loan. We
owe them a lot for inventing the entire idea of lending money.

~~~
astura
Since this apparently isn't obvious to you, creditors have different interest
rates and different loan terms for different risk pools. Your risk pool is
determined, in part, by your history of borrowing and paying back money.

It isn't that lending doesn't exist without credit history, it's everyone gets
the same shitty terms and shitty interest rate and banks are much more
conservative in lending.

~~~
ubernostrum
Apparently the other commenter is right, I should've used some kind of sarcasm
mark.

The parent comment I was replying to seemed not to understand how a
functioning credit/lending market could exist without Equifax-like centralized
reporting agencies. The sarcastic point was that credit and lending existed
and worked for millennia previously.

~~~
fjsolwmv
The point you are still missing is that better credit rating leads to lower
interest and more efficient investing.

~~~
ubernostrum
Which... didn't seem to be the claim made in the comment I originally
responded to.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Another transparent appointee of Trump's designed to destroy the department to
which he/she was appointed. See: Ajit Pai, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, Betsy
DeVos, and more.

Is there any precedent for committing "mutiny" in a governmental organization?

~~~
mattkrause
A more-legal solution might involve invoking the “take-care” clause that
requires the executive branch to “faithfully execute” laws. They usually get
very wide latitude to (de)prioritize things, but requesting zero money and
putting all work on hold might be on the other side of the line.

~~~
IncRnd
There is no constitutional duty to request funds. The duty is upon Congress to
appropriate funds. They have the power of the purse, not the Executive.

~~~
tonyztan
In the case of the CFPB, I believe Congress delegated to them the
authority/responsibility to request funds directly from the Federal Reserve.

[https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/budget-
strategy/fun...](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/budget-
strategy/funds-transfer-requests/)

~~~
IncRnd
Yes. Congress constantly pulls this rigamarole, even back in the 1974
Congressional Budget Act. That's actually why I wrote, "There is no
_constitutional_ duty to request funds". I didn't mean to imply anything else.

These requirements on the President are just a shell game from Congress to
blame the President, avoid passing a budget, and pretend to be the "white-
knights" each time there is a continuing resolution battle.

It is interesting to note that the CFPB passed in July 2010. Yet, 2015 was the
first budget passed since 2009. I think it's safe to say that Congress has
purposely engineered this situation to get the self-serving results they want.

------
40acres
This current administration must be like living in a mirror reality for long
time government workers. The EPA, FCC, CFPB, DOE and other regulatory agencies
have had appointed leaders who explicit mandate is to tear them apart. Even
the state department has been severely reduced (Did you know that we don't
have an ambassador to South Korea???). It seems like only Homeland Security
and DoD have had leaders who alight with their vision.

There is tons of waste in government and oversight is needed in many facets
but destroying our agencies is not the way forward. I wish voters where more
aware of how many services government agencies provide, it seems like most of
America is for smaller government until something like a shutdown slaps them
awake for a brief period of time.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Shuttering most of the Federal Government has been GOP platform since 1994
Contract With America.

~~~
jacobolus
Reagan’s whole schtick was that government is inherently useless.

e.g. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from
the government and I'm here to help.’”

“One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run
it.”

“Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end
and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

etc., and unfortunately this rhetoric was very effective as
advertising/propaganda, noticeably shifting public attitudes.

His platform was largely about cutting taxes, deregulation, privatizing public
institutions and infrastructure, reducing or eliminating government services,
...

~~~
hodgesrm
Not sure you can blame the rhetoric alone as such sayings have been around for
a long time. viz. Mark Twain: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures
that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

p.s., As far as I can tell he actually wrote this, which is somewhat unusual
for such things.

~~~
jacobolus
Reagan’s policies were aligned with this rhetoric... or at least, the rhetoric
was used as justification for the policies, which e.g. shifted the tax burden
from the rich toward the middle class by cutting taxes on income (in
particular slashing the top marginal rates) and inheritance, hiking payroll
taxes, and using Social Security money to pay for general federal
expenditures.

------
tammer
Since I'm seeing confusion about how this has occurred in various comments:
this is actually not a failure of the executive branch/presidential
administration. The American system is defined by a system of "checks and
balances" — meaning that the legislature has full power to veto appointees to
these departments and even impeach the president. What we're witnessing is a
critical vulnerability in this system — when two branches of American
government no longer work in the interest of the country, the only remaining
check is public elections. These are slow to occur and can be manipulated in
plethora ways.

So the issue here is a legislature that has coordinated against the interests
of the country and its people for the betterment of themselves and the few who
fund them. Keep that in mind, and direct anger and action there.

~~~
rgbrenner
Mulvaney is the acting head of the CFPB.. meaning he was not confirmed by the
Senate. Trump appointed him, and he leads the agency. That's it.

I'm going to assume you weren't aware of that... and not--as Trump likes to do
--pointing fingers at others for Trump's failures.

~~~
asciimo
Yes, that's true--the malware installed in our government has done some bad
things that need to be discussed. But we also have to address the
vulnerability that resulted in its installation.

~~~
evan_
To continue the metaphor: From the perspective of the malware, the bugs are
features

------
cheschire
What saddens me is that the details of the pervasiveness of this
administration’s failures will likely be lost when the stories are retold
decades from now. The big sweeping failures will be the focus, and people
still won’t quite grasp how living in this time actually feels.

~~~
smhinsey
I don't know about this. One thing that has really struck me about the kind of
behavior on display is that a lot of it seems to be under the assumption that
getting away with it initially means getting away with it forever, but in
reality, we live in one of the most well documented periods of time in
history. Information is everywhere and it's nearly impossible to suppress. Not
everything happens in internet time, but the truth is going to catch up to a
lot of people eventually.

There will probably be dozens of books solely about the topic of what has been
said by the executive branch on Twitter. (How clever will all those snappy
quips and one liners seem 15 years from now on the pages of the next David
McCollough?)

It's usually the case that those who aren't passionate about history will
primarily be familiar with the big picture marquee events without fully
getting the nuance of the experience, but there are troves of evidence here
for extraordinarily rich future histories.

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _Information is everywhere and it 's nearly impossible to suppress._

I've noticed a disturbing trend recently where this is becoming less true than
we'd like to believe.

Try searching for news articles about GWB's 2nd term. Try to find opinion
pieces about it. Try to name (and cite) a dozen different important events
directly related to his administration.

It's doable, but it's not easy. Google's got a really short-term memory these
days (unless, of course, you're trying to debug a problem in Linux, in which
case these forum posts from 2010 are sure to help...).

It's a big part of why I take the time to maintain the bookmark database I've
got: I don't trust that I'll be able to find articles like this one in the
future.

~~~
cr0sh
> It's a big part of why I take the time to maintain the bookmark database
> I've got: I don't trust that I'll be able to find articles like this one in
> the future.

I go further than that - and I assume many do: For stuff I think I'll want to
reference in the future, that I find important - I'll take a copy of it;
ctrl+s or ctrl+p for basic stuff, other things I'll take the time and space to
mirror (using wget or something similar).

Given that we've seen major portions of the internet literally shut down or
"destroyed" over the decades, this isn't something one should find odd or
overkill.

I too keep a huge bookmark stack, but sometimes I don't properly sort things,
and just put them in a "general" location. Recently I started going back thru
these bookmarks, just to organize some of them - and many of them were no
longer valid; 404s were the norm. That said, in many cases having the bookmark
name or description (and even the old URL) was useful to find a copy of the
information, where it moved (if it did) or maybe somebody archived it. But in
some cases, it simply vanished.

I do agree with your assessment, though - Google and the internet has this
"short term memory" problem; a big part of that is the (now) dynamic nature of
websites, which doesn't allow for easy crawling by some systems (like the
wayback machine), as well as allowing the data to move or vanish at a whim.

------
adregan
I froze my credit for free in response to the Equifax breach, and it gave me a
little more piece of mind. However, I just had the experience of thawing my
credit and I discovered that the companies are back to charging you for the
freeze.

I had the pins for all the thaws and they went relatively smoothly, except for
Equifax, who required me to call and answer ridiculous questions about banking
I did over a decade ago (and suggested I would always have to do this
regardless of the fact that I had my pin and an account).

I shudder to think what would happen if I lost my pin numbers. Especially if I
didn't realize until right before I needed a credit check.

~~~
lostapathy
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop on that. Surely, given the recent
breaches, a _lot_ more people are freezing accounts who are less accustomed
than the average HN reader to keeping pins or other security identifiers
around long-term. Once those people need to start unfreezing accounts, we're
either going to have a mess because they can't, or a mess because it turns out
unfreezing isn't that well protected either.

Either way, gonna be ugly.

------
tomasien
There is no purpose for the United States regulatory apparatus if no action is
taken against Equifax. None.

~~~
justin66
You might want to think that one through a little more closely, keeping in
mind who is running the executive branch right now. They want you to think
there is no purpose for the regulatory apparatus, and they are attempting to
take no action against Equifax. It would certainly be _useful_ to them if you
took their inaction as proof that the regulatory apparatus has no purpose.

~~~
tomasien
Absolutely agree. I think my statement makes implies I believe the regulatory
apparatus COULD have utility, but in any state where they can't prosecute
Equifax it does not.

------
kaonashi
Ah Republicans, they want you to believe the government can't do anything
well, and then they set out to prove it to you. Remarkably consistent.

------
ceejayoz
Depressing, but hardly surprising.

One of his early moves was to change their mission statement to add "regularly
identifying and addressing outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome
regulations".

[https://thinkprogress.org/cfpb-protect-
consumers-8d50e60ba5d...](https://thinkprogress.org/cfpb-protect-
consumers-8d50e60ba5d6/)

Odd addition to the agency that was created because existing regulation was
demonstrably insufficient.

------
moistoreos
Tax dollars hard at "work" at "protecting" consumers.

~~~
lostcolony
Consider the administration, and the fact the GOP has hated this bureau since
it's inception, promising to curtail it. This is hardly evidence that
governmental consumer protection can't work, just evidence that the GOP has
delivered on its promise to stop government from trying.

~~~
geofft
The purpose of all this "deep state" talk is to cast doubt on the idea that
certain government policies should not change at each administration's whims,
and there should be a semblance of continuity of both policy and personnel
across presidential elections. Now that anyone who's been working for the
government since before 2017 is being demonized as the "deep state," it opens
the door to politicize every single action from every single agency.

If a Democratic president gets elected in 2020, it'll be interesting to watch
whether this standard gets upheld. (Most likely the Republicans will complain
about how the Democrats are attacking loyal Americans working hard for their
government, and the Democrats will do their usual thing of feeling bad and
giving in.)

~~~
fjsolwmv
Politics is a pendulum. It has always swung back and forth every few year. But
now it's swinging much farther and much heavier, and it's making the whole
system unstable.

Democrats are unlikely to give in again. Giving in is what drive away their
base cost them the election in 2016. If they do it again in 2020, the party is
dead.

~~~
zero_intp
Good luck with that, the Democratic party has not suddenly grown a spine.

~~~
aerotwelve
Please vote in your local Democratic caucus/primary and force them to grow a
spine. We need your help to make it happen.

------
outsidetheparty
> Mulvaney put a hold on much agency work when he took over in November, and
> said it would last at least 30 days to give him a chance to understand the
> job.

Yes, I too routinely shut down entire departments when I'm put in charge of
them. Just long enough so I can get a handle on things, you know. Perfectly
reasonable behavior.

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, in Mulvaney’s other job n the administration, he's also advocated CFPB
be disbanded, so when he talks about understanding the job, it's about
understanding how to dismantle it entirely, not how to do it effectively.

~~~
sangnoir
Same story at the EPA and other agencies. I believe the agenda was summarized
as "deconstruction of the administrative state".

~~~
jorblumesea
I mean, scaling back or disbanding the federal government has been the GOP's
dream for the past 50 years. It also strengthens the argument that "government
doesn't work" because they made government not work.

People blame Trump but this has been a conservative agenda item for decades.

~~~
nkassis
Trump did appointed some of loudest voices against those departments to lead
them so he's pretty much responsible.

~~~
jorblumesea
Trump is just parroting fox and friends, which is basically how the government
works now apparently. Fox -> Trump -> Fox

------
aaronbrethorst
The "official" in this case is the new head of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, Mick Mulvaney, who is profiled here:
[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/mick-
mulv...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/mick-mulvaney-omb-
trump-budget-profile-feature-215546) and quoted as saying “I don’t think
anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am.”

------
g051051
I don't see how the facts of this article agree with the headline. Most
potential sources for information were cited as having "no comment". There's
been no official indication that the investigations have been abandoned.

> Three sources say, though, Mulvaney, the new CFPB chief, has not ordered
> subpoenas against Equifax or sought sworn testimony from executives, routine
> steps when launching a full-scale probe. Meanwhile the CFPB has shelved
> plans for on-the-ground tests of how Equifax protects data, an idea backed
> by Cordray.

So, beyond not issuing subpoenas (yet), and shelving plans for a security
test, that's hardly putting the probe "on ice". It's possible the the
statement from TransUnion was correct:

> We believe that it is clear that the CFPB was not given legal authority to
> supervise any financial institutions with respect to cybersecurity

In which case it's no surprise that the inspections were deferred or
cancelled.

------
thrillgore
I feel helpless with everything the current Administration is doing.

~~~
meddlepal
The old addage.. "If you can't beat them then join them" becomes more true to
me everyday as I get older. Accumulate wealth and "escape" the system.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
One has to wonder at the reasoning of a person who complains that the world
sucks and decides that the solution is to make it suckier for their own
benefit.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
If you live in a dump why not litter?

I'd have no problem with "political litter" in the state I currently reside
because it's a corrupt, mismanaged dump.

If I moved back to where I used to live I'd care.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> If you live in a dump why not litter?

How do you think it got to be such a dump?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Social acceptance of corruption and mismanagement

------
MReedB
This reminds me of the same thing happening at Yahoo. I and others are still
dealing with every Yahoo account being hacked, and the world essentially just
ignoring the disaster. This time it is far, far worse. The whole eTrust system
is hacked. They are used by banks all over, and by most FDIC Banks here in the
US. The idea that it can be ignored, and dealt with on a case by case basis,
is almost insane. It is a clear criminally liable situation. Even if the
certificates are replaced, they will be used, in time, to try to establish
credibility and get access to the accounts they are tied to. I had seven! My
firm blelief is even when I close those accounts, open new ones, all on MY
dime, it will still leave me under a cloud. Whoevfer ends up with them will
try to use them to trick monetary systems into thinking they are me, long
enough to steal money. I have run over 100 banks, or done their books. The
scope of this is potentially over $1 TRILLION dollar, and that is just the
banks I did ebnd-of-day for. For the government to blow it off, for the banks
themselves to blow it off, for the FDIC to blow it off.... My God, they are
insane. I did the end-of-days! Geez. Come on! My opinion is the heads of these
entities should be criminally charged, if they do NOT act, and now. Its been
months. I am stunned, and I am losing any faith I had in even the FederaL
Reserve Baord! The Board is independant, or at least, as independant as they
can be made, and still part of the US Government. I urge all the Board to
declare this an emergency, and force the rest to get up and deal with it. I
guarantee, irregardless of lawsuits, promises, and all the rest, when people
lose their money, and even if they are eventiually compensated somehow, it
wilol destroy people. I am simply of the belief that this is an act of
criminal negligence, and at so many places that it is almost mind boggling.
Thse leaders need to quit wqaiting for someone else to yell fire, and get out
the damned fire hoses, while yelling Fire loudly, publicly, and defiantly. The
ones who do so will go down as future leaders, and the ones who hope it goes
away are the ones who should be fired, immediately. They need to act, to
perform the damned jobs they were hired to do! If the FAA acted this way, its
head would gert hung when planes fell out of the sky, and just go ask him,
because he or she will nod furiously!

------
jokoon
I really worry that this leak could really be used for a massive scam
campaign. If well executed it could do massive damage.

I really wonder about the necessary cost involved to prevent those future
scams.

~~~
drawkbox
If you are setting up troll/bot armies, lots of valid information to setup
users under.

Wait til they start contacting representatives with stolen data to make it
look like real constituents, en masse in your name like the FCC faked comments
supporting net neutrality repeals.

How are we gonna stop people contacting your representatives, under your name,
throwing support behind what you are opposed to?

We eventually need some sort of validated 'contact your representative' system
that tracks responses, shows numbers of people in support against how
representatives vote and more to make sure people are real people and that it
isn't stolen data used to support something you don't want in your name.
Contacting your representative is one of the most broken systems in the US
with so few representatives, if they flood them with real user data but fake
concerns, representatives will be flooded with the wrong perception of what
people want.

This is besides all the fraud that can come about with stolen data from hack
after hack. How long until they have access to all the NSA collected data
through hacks and backdoors. We are seriously in the thick of it.

------
nicwolff
Trump's cabinet is like the wind-down team a VC brings in to shutter a non-
performing portfolio company – they have no experience or interest in the work
done by the divisions they are put over, only in selling them off.

~~~
antiviral
And in your analogy, all hypothetical of course, the VC here is located in
Moscow?

Update: Am I really being down-voted for suggesting what everyone already
knows? Seriously?

~~~
braythwayt
It's generally a bad idea to complain about down-votes. Try to shrug and argue
the points, not people's choices for how to respond to the points.

Taking my own advice, regardless of what you or anybody may think of the
connection between Russian money, Russian politics, and Mr. Trump, surely we
can find a number of wealthy Americans who are interested in winding down
Federal oversight.

I'd start with the high-fructose corn syrup people, the private university
rip-off people, and the fossil fuel people. If there are also Russian
interests, surely they are not "acting alone."

~~~
zeveb
> surely we can find a number of wealthy Americans who are interested in
> winding down Federal oversight.

Or non-wealthy Americans interested in winding down Federal over-reach.
Really, in a _federal_ republic aren't there quite a lot of things which can
safely be left to the several states? Is it necessary to make _everything_ an
item for federal concern?

~~~
s73ver_
Most things already are. But there are many things that do need to be a
federal concern, because a state does not exist in a vacuum, nor is it a
(metaphorical) island. Things like the environment and pollution, for
instance, need to have a federal component. One state may decide to relax
environmental protections so that they can encourage factories and jobs.
However, that pollution does not limit itself to the people that decided it.
People outside that area, in other states that do have environmental
regulations, will also be affected.

~~~
zeveb
> But there are many things that do need to be a federal concern

I completely agree! Most of them are already explicitly listed as federal
concerns, in the Constitution; we should amend it to include environmental
concerns for the exact reason you note.

But I see no reason why e.g. education should be a federal concern. Let the
states do as they will.

~~~
s73ver_
Because there need to be national standards for education. The citizens of a
state do not exist in a vacuum, and being taught Creationism instead of actual
science is going to do great harm to those kids ability to get jobs, which is
going to have an impact on many sectors of the economy.

------
schnable
They are still being investigated by the FTC.

------
jimjimjim
Hypothetical: If a Tyrant rules a country why should the serfs expect
anything?

------
rhizome
Nice, what was I just saying last night?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307496)

------
Froyoh
What does it mean to put something 'on ice'?

~~~
bo1024
To "freeze" it, i.e. stop it from moving forward, also to preserve in its
current form with possibility of pursuing later.

------
turc1656
_" In contrast, the CFPB fined credit bureaus more than $25 million just last
year for over-marketing its monitoring services, which generated monthly
fees."_

How is "over-marketing" even a thing? Like what is the definition of that
term? Seems very odd that would be a regulation at all which they could be
fined for. I'm no fan of credit companies, but it seems strange that a company
could get fined for aggressively advertising their product.

~~~
neuronexmachina
They were selling credit scores to consumers and claimed they were the same
scores lenders used for making credit decisions. They weren't. They also
deceptively enrolled consumers in costly subscriptions, e.g. "It costs only
$1" but then in the small print costs $16/month after the trial period.

[https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-
order...](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-orders-
transunion-and-equifax-pay-deceiving-consumers-marketing-credit-scores-and-
credit-products/)

