new ideas are promoted, he said.
Over the years, and even centuries, laws in New York may have been layered on that stifle new types of businesses and competition. “Innovation does not succeed in an environment that mindlessly protects the status quo,” he said. Blindly shredding legislation might not be the answer though, Schneiderman said, as that may let new monopolies emerge.
New business models can bring new costs that have to be weighed in relation to the environment, quality of life, and public safety, he said. Schneiderman called out a segment of socially irresponsible folks who he said pretend such costs, borne by the larger community, are not their problem. “To me, that’s like an oil refinery that refuses to acknowledge it has responsibility for the collateral consequences of black smoke belching out of its smoke stacks,” he said.
Schneiderman rounded out his remarks with a pitch to the tech community for help to get a stalled piece of legislation, which his office drafted, on data privacy moving forward despite political gridlock in Albany. Personal information from consumers gets used and gathered more and more, which puts the huge data breaches at Target, health insurer Anthem, the Internal Revenue Service, and Ashley Madison at center stage, he said.
The proposed legislation, Schneiderman said, would set a broad baseline of protections for consumer data, but could adapt as technology changes. It would also reward companies that follow best practices under the bill, by allowing them some protection from some legal consequences. “We have to get ahead of this game,” he said. “Strengthening security before a breach is the way to prevent large scale breaches altogether.”
