Sony has chosen not to testify at a Congressional hearing this Wednesday that aims to shed light on how corporations protect private user information.
The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade sent a letter to Sony last Friday, asking the company to attend a hearing and answer a set of thirteen questions regarding the way it handled the recent security breach of the PlayStation Network service.
Ken Johnson, senior advisor and spokesman for committee chairwoman Mary Bono Mack, told the New York Times that Sony declined to testify at the hearing because of "an ongoing investigation" with law enforcement.
The committee originally requested that Sony answer its questions by May 6, but pushed the deadline up to May 3 after Sony chose not to testify at the hearing.
A Sony spokesperson told the Times that while the company will not attend the hearing, it will indeed answer the committee's questions on time despite its ongoing investigation.
This Wednesday's hearing will help determine whether Congress needs to pass a federal breach notification law to protect consumers from future large-scale security breaches.
This situation that Sony is in has really snowballed for them. I mean just more and more just keeps getting added on to their troubles. I understand why they don't tesify, but it still doesnt look good for them either way
Yeah if I were in their shoes I wouldn't testify either. Have you ever seen the US auto industries questioned in congress? Its pretty brutal, most of the questions are not aimed at getting any answers but at making the representative look foolish.
Sony can't catch a break these few weeks huh? What an incredibly stupid move not to testify in front on Congress. Sony did nothing criminal. Here is a good opportunity to clear their name and strengthen their brand and they didn't take advantage of it. It sends the wrong message to their shareholders.
Sony may, in fact, have done several "criminal" things. Not criminal in the sense that they had on masks and were robbing a bank, but they may have violated a slew of laws already in place to protect consumers from security breaches.
Somewhere in the documentation of their press conference the CIO admitted that the hackers took advantage of a known security vulnerability. So far, we know that they stored some user data without any encryption, and that the hack was an exploit of a known hole in security.... it's not looking good for Sony arguing that they take security seriously and have taken reasonable "industry standard' steps to secure user data before the breach.
Somewhere in the documentation of their press conference the CIO admitted that the hackers took advantage of a known security vulnerability. So far, we know that they stored some user data without any encryption, and that the hack was an exploit of a known hole in security.... it's not looking good for Sony arguing that they take security seriously and have taken reasonable "industry standard' steps to secure user data before the breach.