J.C. Penny knew best
JC Penney, Wet Seal: Gonzalez Mystery Merchants [link to http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/jc-penney-wet-seal-confirmed-as-the-gonzalez-two-mystery-merchants/ no longer works]
JCPenney and Wet Seal were both officially added to the list of retail victims of Albert Gonzalez on Friday (March 26) when U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock refused to continue their cloak of secrecy and removed the seal from their names. StorefrontBacktalk had reported last August that $17 billion JCPenney chain was one of Gonzalez’s victims, even though JCPenney’s media representatives were denying it.
and
[The judge said] both retailers should have announced their involvement from the start, that consumers had the right to know. He said he would not provide the companies “insulation from transparency.” The judge stressed that the companies were seeking privacy as though they were individual victims, which he said was like “hermaphroditing a business corporation.”
Wired picked up the story and wrote:
It’s a bit jarring to see a lucid pro-transparency, pro-security argument from a federal prosecutor. For years, law enforcement has had an informal policy of protecting companies from the public relations consequences of their poor security — a kind of omerta among intruders, the companies they hack and the feds, where only the public is left in the dark. To be sure, it’s never been set in stone, and not all feds have played ball. But it’s a common practice, and it corrodes accountability.