The majority of their constituents are letting it slide. Data breaches are a yawn to most of the American public. They don't really understand what it means, they think the problem is "hackers" and not poor security practices, and few are ever directly victimized.

I would agree. It's the same with privacy and mass surveillance. The main issue is education and the fact that most people don't quite understand what it means for the NSA to gobble up all of their data, including what they read, what they post online, where they go, who they talk to, and so on, and all without even needing an individual warrant.

From what I've seen even previously pro-mass surveillance people and politicians do an 180 degree on their surveillance stand when they discover that data has been used against them and it's impacting their life to a large degree at that point. This again points to the fact that they previously didn't truly understand the implications of mass surveillance and how easily it could be abused.

Let's not leave corporations (particularly in the tech industry) out of this; they have a great deal of the same information.

The ethics of data collection on a mass scale is something which all industries need to take a long, hard look at.

How do we combat this behavior? How do you convince the general populous that this is a big deal? I can't think of any way that isn't absolutely catastrophic... which would lead to a hurried, half-baked reactionary attempt to 'fix' the problem. Sigh.

Start fining companies when user data is lost. News would report on companies getting fined for shitty security practices, which also makes it clear that the problem isn't hackers. Plus companies have an incentive to spend money on securing their data.

They tried. The Republican Party leadership suspended all investigation of Equifax. Equifax is part of the finance industry and the finance industry are major sponsors of the Republican Party.

They're major sponsors of both parties. According to http://fortune.com/2017/03/08/wall-street-2016-election-spen... their donations in 2016 split about 45-55 Democrat-Republican. In 2012, according to http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-responsible-for-o... they contributed significantly to Obama's re-election campaign.

If you really think the "finance industry" as a whole is what's pushing for the Equifax investigation to be shelved, then I expect the same would have happened under Democratic leadership.

One of the biggest problems I see is it is really hard to attribute an instance of Identity Theft to a specific breach. So you can't (as a reporter) go out and build stories about people directly affected by the breach to build awareness of the problem. People tend to ignore (or be ignorant) of the situation unless it affects themselves or the people they have relationships with.

She's a great consumer advocate. I don't like her as a politician. She'd be better if it weren't for all the lefter than average politics she brings with her.

Consumer advocacy is inherently leftist politics.