Yep. Also: sale, acquisition, merger, as well as government requests for data, and third party access. Speaking from experience selling a company, it’s difficult to plan for unknown eventualities, and even more difficult to keep any promises about what happens to data you have. The only effective way I know of to guarantee data you have doesn’t get shared is to delete it.
IANAL and I don't claim to understand any of this well, but I would naively assume that if Company A collected data under a binding legal agreement that they can only use it for X, then they go bankrupt, that shouldn't give Company B the ability to buy the data as a "liquidation asset" then do anything they feel like with it. Shouldn't the binding restrictions "move" with the data?
This depends on how the company is liquidated/sold. In the cases I mentioned of sale or acquisition, often the corporate entity remains in existence through the transition, so the effect is that nothing changes wrt the binding legal agreement, but a large group of new people gain access to the data. Also while legal agreements are binding, they can usually be changed, it takes some careful planning to prevent a contract from being changeable by the new owner of the contract. Think about the question of who owns the collected data in the first place. If the company owns it, and the investors own the company, the company might have a tough time getting investors to agree to waive their right to sell what they consider to be a valuable asset in the case of bankruptcy. If the company doesn't ask the investors, or can't get them to agree, then whatever they do has grounds for future legal challenge. It's all around better to delete any such data before anything changes hands.
I honestly don't think it's that simple, and in fact I suspect it gets harder the bigger the company. They could have every intention, even a plan and an working implementation today to keep any data they collect out of the hands of a buyer or the government, and still have a very hard time ensuring it when the time comes. It does sound like @pc is actively committed to it though.
I don't think anyone's playing dumb. I am completely speculating, yet absolutely certain, that they have actually considered future scenarios for collected data, and I believe that there are legitimate reasons to still need to discuss this and other scenarios that come up with a legal team every time. If it's not clear why this can happen, it will become clear if/when you run a company.
It's true that not collecting any data is a foolproof way to guarantee it doesn't get into the wrong hands, but that's tying both arms behind your back in the online world, and it would mean in this case choosing to not train any fraud detecting neural networks. There could be an even bigger mob if Stripe knew how to prevent certain kinds of fraud and chose not to for ambiguous privacy reasons.
Yep. Also: sale, acquisition, merger, as well as government requests for data, and third party access. Speaking from experience selling a company, it’s difficult to plan for unknown eventualities, and even more difficult to keep any promises about what happens to data you have. The only effective way I know of to guarantee data you have doesn’t get shared is to delete it.