🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bx7EtD.21B@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes...
> 
>There would have been little difference.  Corporations are required to
>keep certain books, have them audited, etc., and have the records 
>available.  Nothing now physically prevents such a firm from having
>its bookkeeper keep the "real" books in a highly secret place, in such
>a way that it is not available to anybody without major contortions, and
>having a public set of books entirely different.  If, say, only the
>bookkeeper and the CEO are even aware of it, and they can keep secrets,
>how would the government even know about it?
> 
>It is only the law, and the insistence of officers in a firm, which
>even require that anything like honest books be kept.  Make it too
>hard to keep an accurate backup, and devices to at least have approximate
>assessments of what really happened, and to give only a false image to the
>public, will be produced.  Other than brainwashing those with information,
>or some other procedure which gets out what they do not want to tell, will
>get this information, anyhow.

I think both the example and your response are off the mark.  I believe there
is a greater concern over encrypting R&D information being communicated between
a company's R&D researchers than dumping financial data out on the net.  In
fact, the only thing that would even closely resemble financial data would be
negotiation data.  Researchers communicate via computer nets.  Marketeers via
fax machine.

> 
>-- 
>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
>Phone: (317)494-6054
>hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
>{purdue,pur-ee}!pop.stat!hrubin(UUCP)

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