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Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

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Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#91
post #71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your contention that the pharmaceutical industry is dying? Or that it has insufficient lobbying power to push back against regulations that don't improve safety in proportion to their costs? But to answer your direct question, I think the answer is a pretty clear no. Financial companies invest a ton in communications. If there's a buck to be made from improving their tools so that their employees can communicate f…

Not that it's dying at all - it just makes it more expensive for them to do literally anything. That cost ultimately trickles down to the consumer. The entire US healthcare industry contributes to this. It's extremely regulated, usually for good reason, but the consequences are that there are tons of middle men, bureaucracy, and inefficiency that makes the end product more expensive And the safety is probably correct…

So one, if it's not pharma who's dying, who are you asserting is dying from regulation?

Two, you're ignoring the externalities here. Most regulations exist to account for negative externalities. If I sell big cookies on the street for $5 each and 1 person in 10 dies from eating my cookies, then my $50 in revenue has to be compared against the cost of the death. Food safety regulations have costs to be sure, but we have to measure them against the harm averted.

If a product is more expensive because its makers have to be more careful, then that's not inefficient. It's people having to pay the true costs of the product, which is more efficient overall.

It's also true that regulation can be inefficient, of course. But the solution for that is primarily for producers to be responsible members of society, and secondarily for them to work closely with regulators to find effective regulation at minimal cost.

But if effective regulation that properly places costs kills a company or an industry, I'd argue that industry should not exist in the first place. Something we're seeing rediscovered in real time with people like Sam Bankman-Fried.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#92
post #85

"We are pleased to resolve this matter" Nobody should ever be "pleased" with knowingly breaking the law. When will we ever get serious about law enforcement for this type of crime?

It's not a law. It's a regulation. There is a difference.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#93
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full headline is "...to evade regulators’ reach", which is much clearer.

I had a problem with including the full headline because only so many characters could be used in the title of the post.

You could have used

"Banks fined millions evading regulation with Signal & WhatsApp"

News headlines have rules they use to make for shorter sentences.

They'd probably write

"Banks fined millions, delete records, use E2E apps"

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#95
post #85

"We are pleased to resolve this matter" Nobody should ever be "pleased" with knowingly breaking the law. When will we ever get serious about law enforcement for this type of crime?

> When will we ever get serious about law enforcement for this type of crime?

No sooner than the day we abolish the profit motive.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#96
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often is the use GDPR compliant? I guess people don't care unless someone sues

Well, banks need this to prove their are not fixing price rates (e.g. as the Libor Scandal about 10y ago), and that they did their part in KYC and prevention of AML for the client, or that they not miss-sold a product in case of a legal procedure or claim. So everything is recorded, encrypted, some is monitored in near RT by engines, and only accessed by human employees when necessary. A full log of who accessed what…

> This falls under Fair Use (not sure about the exact term) under GDPR, as is a sensible way for the bank to uphold their legal obligations.

The term you're likely looking for is "Legitimate Interest", but that's not quite the same. You're looking for the bigger picture.

Full disclosure: I was the DPO of a gambling company and had to interpret the cross-regulation conflicts quite routinely. One of the big things with GDPR is that it can not overrule industry or domain-specific regulations. It will certainly influence how the data may be accessed, but as far as internal collection and storage goes, GDPR changes nothing material in finance.

Banks and trading shops are required to record and store all work-related communications. No exceptions, no excuses. The reasons are as you stated. To prove (or disprove) cases of insider trading, collusion, price fixing, front running, and all the other forms of fraud/abuse that would allow the financial outfits and/or their traders to break the rules and fleece their customers and/or counterparties. (They still manage, but at least it's not as blatant.)

The main impact of GDPR is that the financial industry has one additional reason to purge old records once the statute of limitations has expired.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#97
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always cynical when I hear arguments like this, I feel like it's the profit motive which is more to blame. They need to justify those prices somehow, and reducing payouts to shareholders or C-levels would be unthinkable.

I don't disagree with you - I'm just pointing out that when profit margins decrease, prices increase and the customer ends up paying for it in "free market" conditions, there should be players who can compete by not increasing prices, but due to the increasing number of regulations, it becomes impossible for smaller players to enter the market or exist in the market, so nobody can come in and take advantage of loweri…

> in "free market" conditions, there should be players who can compete by not increasing prices

In a free market without regulation, the "rational" thing to do is to flood the market with fake "life saving drugs" and reap the (almost) infinite ROI.

In a less hyperbolic sense, the nature of "market" dictates we cut corners wherever possible. When it's a matter of life and death, the public chose to legislate which corners cannot be cut.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#98

Sounds like this is less about Signal/WA and more about them not archiving methods. They could in theory run _e.g._ `sigtop` every couple of months and encrypt it (e.g. age or veracrypt). It's a complicated workflow but I imagine they have a pipeline for emails that isnt much less complicated, but also isnt E2EE.

WhatsApp at least has the possibility to back up messages, maybe signal too.

It's harder on Signal but there are tools to do it on desktop.

https://github.com/tbvdm/sigtop

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#99

Ha, in Europe WhatsApp is even used by doctors and teachers to discuss patient/student matters, and even some government offices use it. It's wild how entrenched it is in every aspects of society, from social to business. Goes to show you how far good UX, simplicity and ease of use can take you.

I hope [1] is an example of that tide turning.

[1] ICO reprimands NHS Lanarkshire for sharing patient data via WhatsApp - https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs...

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#100
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit weird that even though they can communicate person-to-person, where records won't be kept, they are supposed to keep records of electronic communication.

Well, it's incredibly hard to scale fraud only through person-to-person communications. It's not impossible, but think about the scale that online communication would allow.

This has nothing to do with scaling. How do you picture that, some employee would broadcast sensitive information to a WhatsApp group, in order to reach as many others as possible at once?

The offense here is that no effort was done to keep records of the communication. It would have been ok to use WhatsApp if they somehow would have archived all communications. Records of communications have to be kept so that auditors can verify that no inside trading secrets were communicated to others, for instance.

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