Over Half a Million Bank Accounts Breached 450
Gone Phishing writes "CNN is reporting that about 676,000 bank accounts in at least four banks (Bank of America, Wachovia, Commerce Bancorp, and PNC Financial Services) have had personal information "illegally sold". Over 60,000 customers have been notified so far."
Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:5, Insightful)
How about punishing them for their inactions? If somebody walked in to a military base and stole a nuclear warhead, would you throw up your hands and say "well, it wasn't the military's fault; they're not the ones who stole it"? Of course it's their freakin' fault! Who's supposed to be guarding this stuff??
Then of course, there's the issue of why they need to have this info in the first place. Just as you could argue if we didn't have nuclear weapons in the first place then there'd be no reason to worry about them being stolen, so you could argue that Lexis-Nexis - a company most of us have absolutely no contact with - should not have things like our social security numbers (which are for, you know, our individual social security payments, not anything else) to begin with.
If you are going to take it upon yourself to store my information, then you had damn well better safeguard it. And if you don't, then you should be held liable, and you should be punished severely when data is stolen through your negligence. (And in this case, I define negligence as "any case where your security was lax enough to allow data to be stolen" - or in other words, every single case of a security breach.)
If a company cannot secure this data to the point where it cannot be stolen, then they have no business holding this data to begin with.
value, protection and economics (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO, the goal should be to make economics work for us. The cost of them collecting and securing it should balance the value the get from selling it. Then if the expected return on investment is zero, why would they even bother to collect it? It's just because right now it costs them little to collect it and they can resell it for more is why they do it right now.
One way to get this to assign big penalties to losing control of the info so that the expected cost is high. Another way is to just bill them up front (e.g., tax companies for collecting the information). I'm guessing that in the end, some combination of things would be optimal.
Another thing to look at is to licence people (not companies) to handle information. For example, it takes a registered notary public (not a flunky that the bank assigns) to witness signatures on major business transactions. Why can a company assign some skript kitty to process social security numbers? Why should a bank VP have any access at all? Getting notary public certification is trivial for anyone with a 1/2 a brain, but they make it very clear that your butt is on the line, not the company's butt, so most of them take it pretty seriously. Something about a few hours studying for a test and a name on a license and some personal responsibility makes most folks take their jobs less like a joke (although you occasionally get the rougue CPA or notary, it isn't very common)... Maybe it's time for a certified public information collection certificate or something like that...
Anyhow, that's just food for thought...
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:5, Interesting)
We are so ripe for authoritarian rule. We want to leave control of our lives to others, and all we expect of security is to punish someone who doesn't cross every t and dot every i when they report on the failures.
The fact that Wachovia has my money and social security number and can demand many things of me without proof (such as fees and late charges), means that conversely, they should be responsible and compensate me for any damages resulting from their failure to live up to this trust. I think I need to pull my money out this week.
I thoroughly expect the news service to retract and fire anyone who reported this, but might have gotten the date wrong.
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:5, Funny)
Bank of Vinnie: Now 99% more secure than Bank of America.
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:5, Insightful)
My beef is not with banks... They are generally pretty dilligent about customer data--they've been doing this stuff for a while now. MY beef (and I believe the parent poster's beef) is a company he has never done business with acquiring, storing, and failing to secure his personal information. Certainly, we should punish the identity thieves--and severely. But the reality is that, in the case of ChoicePoint, (whom the parent poster cited as contacting him,) they simply didn't have adequate protections in place to keep somebody from pretending to be a "legitimate" buyer of personal information. (We'll leave for another day the argument that there should be no such thing as a "legitimate" sale of my personal information by anyone but me. If Choicepoint wants to PAY ME to list my personal information for their own potential profit, that is another story, of course.)
Bottom line? If ChoicePoint wasn't in the super-sleazy, ethically dubious game of gathering and selling personal information, the data that was "accidentally sold" to these inappropriate persons would never have been divulged--because they never would have had it in the first place to be ABLE To divulge it.
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:3, Informative)
Operator: Hi, your account has been on the fraud list and one of the transaction is under investigation.
Customer: What do you mean?
Operator: There has been a debit of $15000 in a transaction last night.
Customer: Have I been robbed?
Operator: Sort of. Because you did not purchase our Anti-Fraud plan, we will be working in recovering the stolen amount. But you will see a permanent debit of $60.
Customer: So I gain $15000 back, but lose $60?
Operator: yes
Customer: Great
All the way to the bank. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about you, but in australia, it's called "100 points of ID"
From some random
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:3, Interesting)
Um... have you thought this through? If what you believe were the law, then any company that has a legal issue, such as liability for security breach, illegal dumping of toxic waste, products that become sentient and wipe out humanity, etc. could g
It's deja vu all over again! (Score:4, Funny)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -- aparently a blind drunkard that's easily bribed.
Re:Stolen Account Information and Dupes (Score:3, Funny)
We'll let you be the spokesperson, you seem to have a strong grasp of the language.
US data protection act? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/19980029.htm
A few holes, especially principle eight, but overall it does what it's supposed to.
Re:US data protection act? (Score:5, Interesting)
The closest the US has is the DCMA, which prohibits the reverse-engineering of encrypted data for the purpose of copying it, which essentially makes it a crime to steal encrypted personal data, but I've yet to hear of anyone actually prosecuted this way and it is extremely unlikely to ever happen.
Largely because commercial companies often don't encrypt personal data for customers.
Re:US data protection act? (Score:2)
I thought it was encrypted copyrighted data. (IANAL)
Re:US data protection act? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:US data protection act? (Score:4, Informative)
Because databases are not protected, many large personal-information companies have been pressuring Congress to pass special protection laws for them, but so far none have passed.
Laws are reactionary (Score:4, Insightful)
The DPA requires a proactive approach (Score:3, Informative)
If you can read legalese. The principles:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/80029--l.htm
Course, I'm not entirely sure how big the teeth are.
Wow, your country must be great. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter what laws you enact. If you RTFA, you'll see that this was an inside job done by corrupt upper-level employees. Setting aside security-Utopia for a second, at some point you have to trust your own employees, especially "upper level" ones. When that trust turns out to be misplaced, there's not a lot one can do to prevent malfeasance.
Re:Wow, your country must be great. (Score:3, Insightful)
The DPA requires a proactive approach (Score:3, Interesting)
But the DPA requires:
"Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data."
It's not perfect, it can be made more difficult. (Score:5, Informative)
Then, you have those logs checked by another person, not at that location. Was there a legitimate reason for the access (withdrawl/deposit)? Was that access initiated by the customer?
The people monitoring the logs will not have access to the personal information of the accounts.
Now, if the logs are checked on a random basis (Joe is NOT the only person who checks all of Seattle's logs) then that activity is much easier to spot.The key is to build a system where individuals are NOT allowed unchecked access to personal information.
The reason we don't have systems like that is because there isn't any financial incentive to implement them.
The US does NOT have the same privacy laws that other countries have so this kind of activity is MUCH easier to get away with.
Re:It's not perfect, it can be made more difficult (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at a large financial institution (life insurance, in a branch of a bank. Hell what I'm saying is 100% accurate so let me say that I'm talking about RBC Insurance - Life, whose offices are in Mississauga, Ontario) a while back, and had full access to hundreds of thousands of customer's data, including specially separated "high net worth" clients. I looked around and realized that on any of the developer PCs (where the user was admin. Actually these morons set DOMAIN\Users as admins, which meant that there was no PC to PC security and any hack could occur by co-opting a coworker) a USB key or PDA could siphon off everything.
Realizes how insanely loose the controls were, I proposed initiative after initiative to tighten up the system, and to add some sort of read logging, but I learned firsthand that financial institutions, presuming this one was par for the course, are 95% politics, and 5% actual concern about customers. The only way any sort of checks and balances were going to be implemented is if it properly gave a handjob to every useless mid-level manager planning their next Machiavellian maneuver (and successfully ensured that I didn't look good out of it, as a shop like RBC is configured in such a way that only the mediocre persist. If you look good, the next time a management churn occurs some clueless twit will purge the clueful). It really was eye opening, and the status quo was maintained and everyone acted like nothing was wrong.
Of course you really have to work in a place like that to fully appreciate how terribly incompetent such organizations are, and to maek it more fun they churn their management around with no logic or thought. Remarkable stuff.
Re:It's not perfect, it can be made more difficult (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not perfect, it can be made more difficult (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason we don't have this is because, in the USA, the crooks are writing our laws.
Re:US data protection act? (Score:3, Insightful)
We have several laws that apply to personal data. There are gaps you can drive a truck through, and the industry has spent decades doing just that. (I particularly like the part about how the laws specify that they only apply to "authorized uses" of personal data--so if it's not an authorized use, you can do anything. No, I'm not kidding.)
Re:US data protection act? (Score:2)
Re:US data protection act? (Score:4, Informative)
For Banks, we do (Score:4, Informative)
It has two purposes - the first purpose is to have financial institutions adopt measures to protect consumer data. The second purpose is to add a great deal of paperwork and extra compliance steps that bank staff must accomplish without adding any extra safety to the information.
I believe that in health care, HIPPA or HIPAA (which ever one it was!) accomplished much the same thing.
Re:US data protection act? (Score:3, Informative)
Two points to remember: 1. No law (and there are laws against this in the U.S.) will prevent crime if the criminal believes he can get away with it; 2. The only techbical aspect of this crime is the way the data were stored. The same crime could have occured in 1905, except the info would have been passed in ledger books.
Re:US data protection act? (Score:4, Interesting)
This could get ugly (Score:5, Insightful)
My account is safe. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My account is safe. (Score:3, Interesting)
The sad thing is this weekend I got two of those emails from differnt 'banks'. I wonder how many people fall for them. I actually tried to contact the real bank of the first email but their contact us page was impossible so there wasn't anything I could do.
Re:My account is safe. (Score:2)
Re:My account is safe. (Score:2)
I can't even begin to wonder how many have fallen for these scams. its a damn shame.
Re:My account is safe. (Score:5, Funny)
Are you by any chance damaged in the pre-frontal lobe [slashdot.org]?
Opting Out of 3rd Party Information Sharing (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Opting Out of 3rd Party Information Sharing (Score:2, Interesting)
The bigger they are... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:2)
I don't see anything about it at wikipedia but it was my understanding of credit unions that they do rely on banks for certain things. In that case, are credit unions as a whole exposed to this problem? Can anyone clarify?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_union
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:2)
So some services are supposedly barred from being offered by credit unions, but for consumers they should be fine.
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:2)
http://www.umcu.org/
right on the front page of the university of michigan credit union
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:2)
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:2)
Credit unions are no panacea [msn.com]
Of course, with a building looking like that, and the name "Need Action Credit Union", maybe nobody should be all that surprised.
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to work for a collection agency that specifically did third-party collections for credit unions across the country. We just had an 800 number for each credit union, and we'd answer with the name of the CU depending on which line rang. Same with sending out letters- just
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:3, Funny)
Nickel-and-dime is all they did, right now I owe them over 40$ to close my 20$ account and the number just grows year after year, I get statements from them, but I just shred them.
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, duh. You're certainly not going to see 600,000 peoples accounts stolen from a credit union with only 20,000 customers. That doesn't mean it's any more secure.
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:3, Informative)
There's the Bank Boston/Fleet/Bank of America network, and there's the SUM network that almost everyone else has joined.
In my case, my credit union doesn't charge fees for much of anything, and I can avoid ATM fees by avoiding the Bank of America ATMs.
Gee how informative (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a feeling that most people's social security numbers have been harvested by people who shouldn't have them
Conflict of interest (Score:5, Interesting)
/snip/
The case has led to criminal charges against nine people, including seven bank employees and alleged ring leader Orazio Lembo, who operated DRL Associates, a company that advertised as a skip-and-trace collection agency.
Hmmm... working for a bank and a "collection agency". Sounds like a conflict of interest banks might want to look out for and possibly stipulate that working for a collection agency is not permitted while working for a financial institution.
Hackensack? (Score:5, Funny)
I only hope that Hackensack don't lack the knack to track this crack attack.
Re:Hackensack? (Score:2, Funny)
What about the agencies? Will they face charges? (Score:5, Insightful)
But, what about the 40 collection agencies and law firms? Will they face civil charges? Criminal charges? Both? Surely they knew they were up to no good, and they were the ones funding the information theft in the first place -- all so that they could illegally harass debtors.
Will the Feds follow the money?
Re:What about the agencies? Will they face charges (Score:3, Informative)
"Lomia said the law firms that allegedly sought Lembo's services are part of "phase two" of the investigation."
Screw identity theft... (Score:4, Interesting)
after reading article (Score:4, Informative)
Bank of America (up $0.10 to $46.67, Research), the nation's No. 2 bank, has notified 60,000 customers of the problem. Wachovia (Research) has notified 48,000 customers.
Makes you wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
There are several thousand smaller banks in the United States and many smaller banks have lower fees than those giants and a customer actually means something to those banks.
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
I've NEVER paid a fee with my BoA account. I don't know how so many people have problems. Free bill pay, free online banking, free bank transfers, overdraft protection, free checking. Hell I even get free checks, not that I write checks anymore though. Only thing I don't like is the horrible interest rate, but thats why I've got a ING account in addition to my BoA accounts.
I've noticed with the small banks (and yes I've looked into them) the online banking sucks, bill pay is a pain in the ass to use and the tellers aren't too bright.
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:3, Informative)
1. Sign up for an account at Arlington Trust Co., a local bank (1987);
2. Arlington Trust Co. merges with Shawmut (1988);
3. Shawmut merges with Fleet (1995);
4. Fleet merges with BankBoston (itself the result of serial mergers) to become FleetBoston (1999);
5. FleetBoston merges with Bank of America (2004).
In other words, these are the world's largest banks because of a series of mergers and absorptio
Be thankful. (Score:5, Informative)
(Those from the UK may recall the curious scandal of "Phantom Withdrawls" from ATM machines, where mysterious, large withdrawls were taking place, even though nobody was apparently present to make those withdrawls. It was unimaginably difficult to prove the vitim was a victim, and even then it was next to impossible to get the bank to repay the money.)
bank of america link (Score:2)
USAA (Score:2)
Re:USAA (Score:3, Interesting)
In a sane world yes. However in a sane world one would also hope that our armed forces could act as prison guards without torturing and humiliating their wards.
check your accounts (Score:4, Informative)
Wachovia says that they sent out letters to everyone they know to be affected. My mail service is spotty at times, so I gave them a call. 1-800-WACHOVIA (1-800-922-4684). Just keep pressing 0 till you get an operator. Their customer service workers were able to tell me over the phone if my account was compromised. It's not. w00t! Took them about five minutes, but I think everyone should double check.
Re:check your accounts (Score:4, Funny)
Sent out letters?
Welcome to the 21st century, Wachovia.
My bank promptly sent me an email alerting me to the problem, and allowing me to log in (via a secure server) and check my account status immediately. Fortunately my account wasn't hacked.
Sucka! (Score:5, Funny)
--grendel drago
Re:check your accounts (Score:3, Insightful)
And you're right. Welcome to the 20th century, where requests to "confirm everything," to "update your personal information," or to change your ATM's PIN number because of an information breach can be sent to thousands of mailboxes in an instant, at no cost at all. Sending out a legitimate looking letter via mail, and tryi
whew (Score:5, Funny)
Stop using big banks (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Higher interest rates
2. Interest-bearing checking accounts
3. No fees ever
4. Free online billpay
5. ATM fee refunds (since they don't have their own ATMs)
6. Postage paid envelopes for deposits
7. 24/7 Customer Service with almost 0 hold time
8. No BS
I switched to an internet bank a long time ago and I'll never look back. But I'm not going to tell you what the bank is because I don't want it to turn into a "big bank". Go find your own.
Re:Stop using big banks (Score:2)
Big Bank Leach (Score:3, Interesting)
I use a "big bank", but as far as I can tell, they make no money off me.
Everything I do with them is "free" - free checking, atm use, etc.
Whenever I have excess money in the bank, it gets swept into an online bank account that pays decent interest, or I send it off to my brokerage account where I gamble it away on bad stock picks ;-)
I buy my checks from random cheapo check printers.
As far as I can tell, I get the benefit of the big bank (lots of atms, grocery store loca
10 is a good start (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone involved in this should be in jail Now! Ten years apiece is a good start.
And I don't mean Club Fed either.
I'm really getting sick of this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Holders of mass amounts of critical info need to learn that if they lose it, or mismanage it, that they will be held liable for hundred of millions of dollars in civil penalties, and years in prison for the most egregious cases of negligence.
No problems here... (Score:2)
Can I sell my info before someone else does? (Score:5, Funny)
Like, can I sell my personal information before someone else does?
It will only get worse (Score:5, Insightful)
I say it will only get worse because the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is coming into effect which requires companies to put into place access controls to monitor/audit who has access to what information (among other things). The SOX, in conjunction with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act are forcing corporations to get their financial house in order in such a way that this type of malfeasance is getting much harder to hide. Expect to see more of the same for quite some time.
While I think it's nice that these laws are having their desired effect I still envy those wacky europeans and their data protection laws.
Amoeba
Glad I opened a new account (Score:3, Interesting)
The thought that someone could wipe me out financially by cracking an online system got me worried enough that I opened a checking account at a local bank where I now keep a majority of my funds. I move enough into the Wachovia account for paying bills and stuff that are connected to it, but there's never enough in there to completely wipe me out anymore.
And obviously, with the new bank, I won't be using the check card online. It looks like mine wasn't affected and it doesn't look like the account info was being used for robbery, I still feel more secure with the new account.
Just called BofA.... (Score:2)
Re:Just called BofA.... (Score:3, Informative)
So I Log on to Wachovia's Site and See This... (Score:3, Funny)
Customer Protection
Guard yourself against fraud and identity theft. Wachovia provides the highest levels of protection and stands ready to assist you should you become a victim.
Irony, anyone?
Go after the "clients" too (Score:2)
"That information was then sold to his clients, which included more than 40 law firms and collection agencies."
I don't know whether the 40 law firms and collection agencies are criminally liable but if they ain't, they oughta be. An example should be made of them. Yes, those taking the data bear the brunt of the blame but the ones purchasing it have some culpability too.
A simple solution (Score:4, Informative)
Some states [msn.com] allow citizens to block use of their credit report. Thus, even if someone steals your SSN, your birth certificate, and your drivers license, they're unable to obtain any new credit in your name, because no one is going to give credit without first getting a credit report.
Sure, it doesn't solve all problems with ID theft, but it certainly helps.
Interesting Coincidence (Score:4, Interesting)
A while back I got a call at around 4:30 P.M. from a credit card company requesting that I verify I had applied for a Home Depot card via one of those "just sign the line below" forms. I hadn't, so I immediately began the tedious process of requesting credit reports and contacting my bank to check up on unusual activity.
Later, at about 7:00 P.M. the same night, I got an pre-recorded call requesting that I call an 800 number and reference a specific "case code". I wrote down the telephone number and the code, and the next day spent a few minutes on Google shagging down the number. Turns out it was for a law firm in Utah that specialises in handling collection cases (unfortunately, I cannot remember their name). I remember thinking, a) "I don't owe anyone any money" and b) "how in the hell did they get my number?".
Now, I guess I know.
The story ended well for me - there were attempts to steal my identity, but they were all apparently stopped. I never did call the collection firm, so I have no idea what they may have wanted to chat about - seems to me if it was important, they would have used a human instead of a tape. The links I followed from Google were mostly to blogs and forum entries relating to how other folks had recieved similar calls from this agency, and upon returning them had been informed by the collection agency that they owed some form of money to an bank/credit card company they were representing. The kicker was that they also tried to add an additional fee (some as high as $275 US), payable to the collection agency alone. Other links mentioned how this same company had been banned from business in a lot of states for trying to add this extra fee, and, in essence, refusing to clear the original debt until their extra fee had been paid.
Got fired for reporting insecure loan apps... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Got fired for reporting insecure loan apps... (Score:3, Insightful)
My girlfriend has made a sexual harassment claim against her boss in the past; not only did the claim go nowhere (because said boss is worshipped by his superiors), but now that more than a year has passed, she has received a poor performance review, on the basis of
If your bank notified you, would you notice? (Score:3, Informative)
One of the wost things about spammers is that they generate a "boy who cried wolf" problem for people sending legitimate e-mails.
Normally Windows, but Solaris is 3 here. (Score:3, Insightful)
That assumes that they really are on the these sites. With the big break-in that occured with Visa/MC/Discover about 1-2 years ago, it took awhile, but they found a Nebraska clearing house running windows had been broken into, not the CC sites.
Deliberate misnomer this 'identity theft'. (Score:5, Insightful)
But no, this is too costly, so they try to put it back on the person who's information is used in the fraud.
It's NOT RIGHT! If someone else borrows money in your name, it's the lenders problem, not yours. Your identity was not stolen. You are still you. The lender is at fault because he failed to exercise due diligence in a climate where fraud is rampant.
Just think about it for a minute. You are NOT the victim of identity theft. You are still you and the other guy screwed some third party. Why should it cost you any money or any time... Instead, the idiots who carelessly or out of greed failed to verify that it was indeed you and not someone else requesting a credit report and credit should pay.
There's a simple solution too.
The credit reporting companies need to stop selling information to anyone other than the person who owns the information. Mainly you if it's your information. You want a loan, you request the information. Hell, if it takes a photo ID and a visit with a rep from the reporting company, then that's what it takes... But it's their problem to solve, NOT yours.
Wells Fargo has BOA beat by a mile! (Score:4, Informative)
Last year, I received a notice that my personal info was on a system of theirs that was compromised. I called the customer support number given and inquired about what happened. Turns out, a laptop at a billing facility (yeah, i know...a laptop) was stolen along with a few others in a physical security breach.
On that laptop was the personal info (SS numbers, addys, everything) of 300,000 account holders. Yes, that's right...300,000! Worse part is that this same scenario has occurred 3 times in the last 2 years!
Wells Fargo's CSO and CISO should be flipping friggin' burgers instead of providing security as they are
setting the standard for how bad you really can be.
Hey Wells Fargo asshats, ever heard of getting some kind of policy and compliance audits going?
Didn't matter, it was an inside job (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What will it take? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like Bush's policies either, but let's not just make things up, ok? First, not all class action suits are "forced" to federal court, only very large suits.
Second, they're moved to federal court not because federal courts are more business-friendly, but because of procedural differences in state court vs federal court. State courts tend to be more relaxed in due process procedures, and award ridiculous damages that are confiscated by private law firms. The ease with which a class action suit can be won in a small jurisdiction for enormous rewards has caused capitalistic law firms to seek out groups of marginally damaged people and organize them for a suit. This has caused a tenfold increase in class action lawsuits over the last decade.
Meanwhile, plaintiffs from multiple states with complaints against the same defendant could not organize on a federal level and file in federal court, due to procedural restrictions that prevented class action suits from being moved out of state. Thus you had the dangerous situation of one state's courts determining a case that would have national prescedent ramifications, and this seriously violates the principles of federalism. For a guy who bitched in his post about removing checks and balances, you're also complaining about legislation that was intended to prevent one state from determining national policy via state courts that are cherry-picked by millionaire attorneys.
The legislation in question removed some of the roadblocks to moving large cases with multistate plaintiffs to federal court by granting original jurisdiction of a case to the District Courts instead of the state courts for large suits in which there are multistate plaintiffs.
You then characaterize all this in your tired anti-Bush ranting as some pro-business move that Bush enacted for his cronies. First, that's not how a bill becomes a law, and you ought to know that by now. Presidents do not sponsor legislation in committee, nor vote on them in congress. They sign them.
There are a shitload of legitimate things to criticize President Bush about, but I'm tired of this hate-filled ranting that's misinformed. It's really hard to push for social evolution and progress when most of the people on your side are ignorant and more concerned with politics than anything else.
Oops, I forgot our legislature is too busy removing checks and balances (Senate) and debating corrupt members (House) to get anything else done.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here, so I can't really respond to you. The only major battle I know of in the Senate is over appelate court nominations, and I haven't read anything yet about changes to how nominations are handled.
Re:What will it take? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the point was that laws and typical awards vary from state to state. It used to be that you could just pick a state: if a company does business in five states and screws people in all five of them, y