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Richard Smith, who was CEO and chairman at Equifax when the company experienced a data breach that resulted in the theft of comprehensive private identifying information on 145 million Americans last month, appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee today to answer questions. The queries included: “Why was there nearly a week before members of the board were alerted of the breach?” “Why was the consumer facing website created on a separate domain?” “Does Equifax require consumers to consent to arbitration?” “If the data that you hold is about me, do I own it?” and “I get that this model is a good deal for Equifax, but can you explain how it is a good deal for consumers?”

Some of Smith’s answers were more satisfying than others.
The hearing confirmed what we all basically knew: Equifax has made a business model out of collecting obscene amounts of data on Americans without their consent — far more data than is really needed to perform its ostensible function of assessing creditworthiness, as multiple members pointed out.

The margin of profit on this business, Smith said in a speech at the University of Georgia last month, is approximately 90 percent. And while Smith and his interrogators repeatedly insisted that protecting consumer data was the company’s “primary goal,” it was not. Equifax’s primary goal was to continue its 118-year tradition of collecting metadata on every individual participating in the modern economy and selling it for ludicrous profits.

From the International Directory of Company Histories, “Equifax was founded in 1898 by two brothers, Cator and Guy Woolford. Cator Woolford got his start in the credit bureau business as a grocer in Chattanooga, Tennessee. There he supervised the compilation of a list of customers, with indications of their creditworthiness, for the local Retail Grocer's Association.”

The Congressional panel made a show of grilling Smith, and multiple members got in some satisfying jabs. Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico pointed out that Equifax’s offerings to consumers affected by the breach are all pretty worthless (For one thing, a free credit freeze at Equifax — the lynchpin of the company’s attempt to make things right — is ineffective without a simultaneous freeze at the two other major credit bureaus, Experian and TransUnion). “Will those products make them whole, yes or no?” Luján asked. Smith tried to say he did not know if consumers had been “harmed,” and Luján went in. “If someone’s credit has been stolen and someone went and opened up a bunch of their accounts, bought furniture, bought cell phones, bought a bunch of fuel, and now this consumer can't fix their history, they’ve been harmed. In that case, will Equifax make them whole?”

In another exchange, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas opened by asking how much Equifax is worth — roughly $13 billion — and then suggested that the company simply pay each consumer who was affected. “If you had to pay everybody whose account got hacked a couple thousand bucks or something,” he said, “what would the industry reaction be to that, if we passed a law that did that?”

Despite the bipartisan tough talk, the hearing was a sad reminder of the stunning riches that can be had by exploiting the powerlessness of the average American consumer. Smith, who announced his “retirement” with what will amount to a golden parachute on September 26 and has no impact on what the company will do to fix its sloppiness or reverse its moral depravity, is still positioned to earn many millions in the future from Equifax in addition the many millions he has already made. (Fortune calculated that amount will shake out to $90 million.

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