U.S. Consumer Bureau Loses Fight to Allow More Class-Action Suits

Your example falls under the purview of negligence in tort law. Nevertheless an arbitration agreement may supersede a potential lawsuit.

The widespread use of forced arbitration seems ripe for examination by the SCOTUS. I'm no lawyer, but it seems like a fairly blatant violation of the 7th amendment.

> imagine that in 1920, the Canadian military marched over the border and robbed some banks

The international law on this is rather complicated but I believe that those affected would have a case against the Canadian government, as well as being covered by the US bank insurance system.

However, in the case of Equifax, personal data isn't the property of the person (in the US system) and so you don't have a case. You'd need to have an EU-style data protection system rather than a US system which treats data as free speech.

There's no way to have meaningful freedoms of speech, assembly, and petition while the government decides what counts as "fair" speech, assembly, and petition.

Lobbying is literally talking to people in power. It involves money because advertising and marketing aren't free. A special interest group is literally a group of people who want to talk about a particular set of issues.

So to return a question, what are some plans for limiting lobbying and money that don't violate the rights to petition, assembly, and speech? Minus points if the new rules help incumbent powers erect new barriers to talking to elected officials.

this was not about protecting consumers but instead about protecting the interest of trial lawyers who saw their money slush fund about to dry up. this is a group that notoriously donates to one party over another and exerts incredible control over that party. this rule would have done far more than just smack financial institutions as it was only a first move by the bureau which operates too far outside of what should have been permitted.

This was a law masquerading as a regulation and it needs to a law passed by Congress and not some out of control government agency who reports to no one. Go read up on this construct, it was an attempt to prevent normal government checks and balances from affecting it. Its chief is not subject to anyone, there are strict rules to prevent their removal, their funding is not from Congress but instead the Federal Reserve. Even the Fed cannot control the spending of this agency which can reach 12% of the Fed's budget; meaning nearly half a billion dollars to an unaccountable agency.

So while the law was good it is the agency affecting it that is the true issue and this agency needs to be put back into an accountable structure like all Federal Agencies. This was a pure partisan attempt to create an agency and staff it in a particular way to prevent debate and review.

I may be in the minority here, but I do not come to HN to get linked to a random person's blog. This is a concerning trend, and it's one thing when someone actually provides some level of insight in a few paragraphs and says they've written several pages on the same subject at [link].

But this is just bottom of the barrel "you said something vaguely similar to a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago, here's the link with the oh-so-edgy title."