[Calvin02]

Banks are required to maintain financial transaction records.

Is the argument that governments don't have a good reason to mandate record collection?

Why can't I ask my government to keep me safe from terrorists but also expect that companies will not just be careless with the data they collect as part of that?

[kaliqt]

Government has no right to track that either, they themselves launder trillions, start wars and massacre millions, even a drug lord is a petty criminal compared to them, and it's clear their tracking of any and all records of any type is more about control than safety, thus it should be disregarded as an argument and be done away with entirely.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they themselves launder trillions, start wars and massacre millions, even a drug lord is a petty criminal compared to them

And then people wonder why privacy has a difficult time getting public support.

[kbolino]

The government can't keep its own data safe, as the OPM breach showed. Apart from some resignations, nobody faced any serious consequences for that either.

[Angostura]

Even more reason for regulatory requirements covering data security for all organisations- both private and public sector

[elric]

Many (all?) banks keep financial transaction records for way longer than what is legally required. Thankfully, most banks are technically incompetent and are unable to easily use data that is not relatively recent. In fact, one bank I worked for had to load transactions from a CD-ROM archive which contained all the transactions in a printable text format (the same format as their printed bank statements). Multiple CDs per day, with no indexing or identification beyond the date. Trying to find a specific 10 year old transaction was very hard work indeed.

[oxide]

I agree. I think it's reasonable to expect companies to safeguard that information from malicious actors.

[SoftTalker]

I don't agree. I don't think it's reasonable to expect it, because companies show over and over that they cannot do it. And let's face it, the only reason your company hasn't fallen victim to a data breach or ransomware is that you haven't been seriously targeted yet.

We need to change our approach. We need to look at why these kinds of data are valuable, and then make them not valuable. Then nobody will bother with hacking to get it.

[phito]

I don't think it is. I assume everyone gets hacked eventually. It's really hard (I would argue impossible) to make a 100% secure computer system, and if they're operated by people, you're terribly vulnerable.

[xkcd1963]

You are more likely striken by lightning than coming in contact with terrorism whatsoever