alt Hacker News> have you ever seen the Comcast CEO grilled by Congress?
I seem to recall some media circuses here and there about CEOs being subpoenad by Congress, for example Zuckerberg. I don't really consider that a consequence in any meaningful sense.
Apparently the appeals court also released the hacker, even though his extortion led directly to the suicide of two people, and damage to thousands of others. Maybe the GDPR was meant to have teeth, but I can't help but wonder if the Helsinki Court of Appeals is for sale.
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> Apparently the appeals court also released the hacker
The court of appeals found me guilty, despite the evidence clearly not supporting that conclusion.
I rather doubt it's because they're for sale, rather it would have been too damaging for the government to admit that they had framed me.
I share your outrage about companies abusing users' data, but we're mixing up several different things:
- the Vastaamo ex-CEO was in fact criminally tried and convicted (even if that conviction was overturned on eventual appeal) and had his reputation destroyed. That compares well for GDPR vs US state privacy laws, which is what I was saying to you. That was my point by saying the US Comcast CEO hasn't been grilled by Congress on those (he has on media mergers, but not his company's business practices). I'm agreeing with you that Congressional grillings aren't consequences in any meaningful sense.
- the Vastaamo hacker was not charged under GDPR, they were charged with criminal offenses: aggravated data breach, aggravated attempted extortion, aggravated distribution of information infringing private life, blackmail, breach of confidentiality and falsification of evidence.
- I was not aware the Vastaamo hacker had been freed after serving part of his sentence (although his conviction was not overturned), but it seems [0] it might have been for implicating other people in the cyberextortion/ransomware ring. And since those people were operating in countries without much rule of law, we'd expect actions were taken that didn't involved courts or journalists. I can't find any press coverage of that part.
[0]: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/vastaa...