“The software developers are largely the cause of the bugs in the existing software. The last thing we should do is expect the developers to fix it.”
I mean, I do believe private businesses should be held responsible, but one way to make them do that is by regulating them through an agency with higher authority, which probably means government.
Flawed analogy. Software developers introduce bugs inadvertently, and they have both an incentive and the knowledge to fix them. (In cases where that is not true, bugs indeed do not get fixed, and we should not expect the developers to fix them. That is why open source software is important--so I can fix bugs in software I use that the developer can't or won't fix.)
Government introduces bugs on purpose, to serve special interests, or out of ignorance, because government officials who make regulations are clueless about what they are regulating--but they don't get penalized for making clueless regulations and they don't get rewarded for fixing them. So government has neither an incentive nor the knowledge to fix bugs it introduces. (And the analogue to open source software in this case is libertarianism: if the government can't or won't fix bugs in regulations, it should not regulate in the first place.)
Um, what? If you are doing business with someone based on an assumption about their identity (giving them a loan based on credit history, for example), it sure should be your responsibility to verify that that assumption is correct--that the person you're dealing with is indeed the one that all the data you have applies to. And if your assumption turns out to be wrong, the last thing you should do is blame it on the person who actually is the one all your data applies to.
> If there are flaws in the existing system that lends itself to be manipulated, then the solution should be that the government should fix it.
The government is largely the cause of the flaws in the existing system. The last thing we should do is expect the government to fix it. If private corporations are going to make use of information about you, it should be their responsibility to make sure that information is accurate.