S4 E27: Equifax & Iran Nuclear Deal: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

[Music] [Applause] what welcome welcome welcome to Las week tonight and thank you so much for joining us it has been yet another hectic week from wildfires in California to continuing problems in Puerto Rico to more horrifying details concerning Harvey Weinstein and it's not just his behavior that was troubling it's the way that people around him excused it and perhaps nothing is more emblematic of that than this story told by actress Angie everheart she says while she was sleeping on a boat at the can film festival Weinstein broke into her room and masturbated in front of her I told people on the boat I told people at the dinner I was at and everybody was like oh that's just Harvey what the so everyone knew and they just went with it oh yeah Harvey's going to burst into your room and masturbate that's just Harvey he's he's like a sex criminal version of the Kool-Aid man and and while most now have condemned win sing's Behavior incredibly some initially tried to defend him from Oliver Stone whose first response was it's not easy what he's going through to longtime friend Donna Karen who took an incredible Tac how do we display ourselves how do we present ourselves as women what are we asking are we asking for it it's not Harvey Weinstein you look at everything all over the world today you know and how women are dressing and you know what they're asking by just presenting themselves the way they do excuse me one that is Absolut absolutely appalling and two how would Donna Karen know how women are dressing right now it's not 1993 her most recent work included this hat well howy there your Excellency if it ain't Pi the kid the cowboy pulp now now both Stone and Karen did later apologize for their remarks and just yesterday the motion picture Academy made a big announcement the Board of Governors voting overwhelmingly to immediately expel the On's power power ful and feared producer saying the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity and sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over yes finally the group that counts among its current members Roman palansky Bill Cosby and Mel Gibson has found the one guy who treated women badly and kicked him out so congratulations Hollywood see you on the next osters where and this is true Casey Affleck will be presenting best actress so so for now let's move on to president Trump the silver lining for anyone who died in 2015 he spent his week continuing efforts to sabotage Obama era policies beginning with the Affordable Care Act first he signed an executive order intended to make it easier for people to buy cheaper shittier health care plans which based on his signature he did by putting a pen in his mouth and having a seizure but more importantly he also decided to eliminate $7 billion in subsidy payments to insurance companies subsidies which help offset Healthcare expenses for around 7 million Americans and reduce premiums for many more and the results of that could be severe the nonpartisan Congressional budget office has estimated ending these subsidies will push up premiums by about 20% in 2018 and actually add $200 billion to the deficit over 10 years yes Trump's plan is going to make Insurance more expensive and lose the federal government more money it's a strategy that you can read about in his book The Art of being bad at stuff parenthesis including book titling no end parenthesis and even members of his own party know this is bad politics when he's raised the prospect of cutting off these subsidies in the past some have managed to talk him out of it the problem is Republicans are playing checkers and Trump is playing checks that's right checks the game of stress eating checks mix because you do not understand your job because that was not the the only case this week where Trump acted without seeming to fully understand the consequences it is official president Donald Trump has said that he will no longer certify that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal or that it is in the United States national interest this goes against what his own National Security team and all the allies and Global powers that signed the deal actually believe exactly Donald Trump seems to be pretty much alone on this his defense secretary thinks Iran is in compliance as does his secretary of state and I'm pretty sure that minuchin does as well but I'm so blinded by that guy's movie star handsomeness that I can no longer hear anything he says Prime Beef right there right Prime Beef right am I right the guy's hot you don't mean it now thankfully thankfully Trump's move does not instantly kill the deal it's a little complicated but basically Congress passed a law where the president has to recertify the deal every 90 days no other nation has a requirement like this because it is a stupid idea and now it goes to Congress whose options range from doing absolutely nothing to restoring sanctions which could blow the whole thing up and that would be insane because essentially everyone including the agency whose job it is to monitor this agrees that Iran is in compliant so why is Trump doing it well on Wednesday he explained his what we'll call thinking I think it was one of the most incompetently drawn deals I've ever seen $150 billion given we got nothing we got nothing they got a path to nuclear weapons very quickly and think of this one $ 1.7 billion do in cash this is cash out of your pocket what you know how many airplane loads that must be okay for a start stopping Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not getting nothing it literally makes life on Earth safer as for the money we didn't give it to them all of it was theirs to begin with it was just frozen under sanctions that we've now lifted or in the case of that plain load of cash it was money that they paid us for military equipment in 1979 that we never delivered so he's wrong he's just wrong he just said a string of things that were factually inaccurate and you all know what this means oh yes we got it we got it we sh him yes wait wait wait wa wait wait wait stop stop stop stop stop stop we didn't get him stop stop I I I just got a news alert he he he's he's still the president he's still the president we didn't get him I'm it turns out nothing matters nothing matters anymore I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry he didn't know what he was talking about I thought that was meaningful so as I was saying the Iran deal now goes to Congress but they can't renegotiate it because the deal isn't Just Between the US and Iran it's between all of these parties and they have been pretty clear where they stand EU leaders are defending the current agreement and the UK Germany and France all say they are committed to the deal as is yeah of course they don't want to reopen the deal that's not how deals work if you buy a lamp on Craigslist for $40 then the deal is one person gets $40 one person gets a lamp also one of you will get murdered but figuring out who gets murdered and how is really the jiv of Craigslist and as Iran's foreign minister points out this decision May severely limit the ability of trump or indeed any future presidents to make deals from now on nobody else would trust any us Administration to engage in any long-term negotiation because the length of any commitment the duration of any commitment from now on with any us Administration would be the reminder of the term of that President and that is a huge problem countries need to know that America will honor its agreements because if they don't that's going to be an issue no matter who that next president is whether it's president Warren or president president Kane or let's be honest more likely president Donald Jr followed by President Eric followed by President Jared and Ivanka there is no reason to expect that that won't happen so so this Iran deal decision is equal parts dangerous and bizarre Trump is asking Congress to fix a deal they don't realistically have the ability to fix fixes incidentally that may violate the deal itself which already has a process for restoring sanctions if Iran doesn't comply which remember everyone agrees that they are doing and and he also threatened to pull out of the deal himself even though his secretary of state had already said that he wouldn't but who knows if those two are even speaking anymore considering tillison apparently called Trump a and Trump publicly challenged him to an IQ contest this week look as foreign policies go this is incoherent you you can't call it realism or idealism or neoliberalism you can barely even call it foreign policy honestly the thing it's closest to is a scared monkey in a submarine randomly pushing buttons and sure that might be fun to watch until it suddenly hits you oh we're all on the submarine with that monkey and now this and now it's all and that means only one thing oh boy pumpkin spice latte this is a whole season in a cup of coffee isn't it yeah pumpkin spice latte it is now officially pumpkin spice latte time try to walk in and get a pumpkin spice in the summer you can't get it no you can't pumpkin spice latte and the pumpkin spice latte have you had it holy cow that one Sent Me to the Moon you creamer loves pumpkin spice latte you know I'm waiting for the pumpkin latte and I'm trying to lose weight so I had to stay away from it the pumpkin latte shut up just drink it pumpkin f latte forget about the leaves as soon as Starbucks has that pumpkin spice latte or PSL good one Steve when they take away the the pumpkin spice latte I I I like have I cry a little don't cry handsome after man pumpkin spice latte will return pumpkin spice lattes are delicious they seem wholesome and after all they're only a beverage but are they also racist a you pumpkin spice latte by the way love your your pumpkin spice latte color oh I've got so much to tell you on that I was so ahead of this curve but I don't even want to go pumpkin latte are big no it's not wait what did he a pumpkin spice latte pumpkin spice latte the bigger deal is this new Maple pan latte all right so this is going to push the pumpkin spice to the side Maple pan spice L forever moving on our main story tonight concerns Equifax the company whose name sounds like a theatrical production in which Daniel redcliffe plays a horse that a fax machine now Equifax is one of the big three credit reporting agencies the companies who keep financial data on all of us so that people like uh lenders and landlords can decide whether or not we are trustworthy so Equifax controls some of our most sensitive information and about a month ago we learned this breaking news from the credit monitoring company Equifax cyber thieves making off with private information of 143 million Americans near nearly half the US population it's actually worse it's now 145 million Americans and I've got good news and bad news here the good news is that by private information they don't mean your Google search history so nobody yet knows about the time you searched for Wario porn parenthesis real or world's richest dogs looking for assistance or can loneliness cause the farts but the bad news is the information they got could well be all this it's your name social security number birth date driver's license and addresses where you lived information that is mostly permanent unless you're in federal witness protection wow okay so that does sound bad but here is a simple solution just move 145 million people into the witness protection program that means Jones's uh you are the Thompsons uh Thompsons you're the Campbell uh Campbell you're the mendozas mendozas you're the Joneses wait wait hold on Joneses you shouldn't be there I made you the Thompsons no Thompsons I I made you the Campbell Campbell you're the mendozas mendozas why are you there you should be living in the Jones's house in Phoenix oh no I shouldn't have said Phoenix oh God the Jones are dead the Jones are dead forget the whole plan I was just trying to help I'm sorry for trying oh they're dead and and I know I know that might be some younger people watching this saying well hold on who cares we're the first generation to routinely send pictures of our junk to each other over the Internet why should we give a about someone seeing our social security numbers but you should know criminals can do a lot more with that number than they can with a picture of your dick this information is going to be sold left and right on the black market people are going to be able to open up credit cards for the rest of your life once they have that information they can go out and purchase a home in your name they can open bank accounts take car loans someone who has your social security number could actually take a job they could file taxes and even claim your kids as dependence and be gone with your refund before you ever actually file a tax return no no no the tax benefit is the whole point of having children without that all you're left with is your actual children which you know the point here is it's a huge problem and in any other ERA this would have been the biggest news story for a month but but now that everyday's headline is simply the words everything batchit bananas again today slipped under the radar but it is worth asking how the hell did this happen because the short answer is the people in charge have done literally everything wrong and let's start with just just the way that Equifax told us about the hack in early September their then CEO Rick Smith a man with a face and name so Bland he may as well be called human person or frasia rerun he issued a taped apology but his remorse seemed a little less than heartfelt on July 29th of this year we discovered that attackers had had gained unauthorized access to certain Equifax data files this is clearly a disappointing event and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do holy Rick Smith is so alarmingly mechanical you probably have to put him in rice every time he gets wet now notably he mentioned there that Equifax learned about the breach on July 29th but even more notably that video was uploaded in September which is and this is true after July so facts knew about the breach for nearly 6 weeks before telling the public and they claimed that they needed that time because the investigation was complex and timec consuming although that's not all that happened in that time span three Equifax Executives sold nearly $2 million in Company stock days after the data breach was discovered wow selling stock before the public knows there's a problem is one of those things that look suspicious whether or not you're actually doing something wrong it's like walking into a petting zoo with a bib on what exactly are you planning on messily devouring in there and Equifax defended that saying none of the executives in question including their Chief Financial Officer knew about the data breach which raises another question how is that even possible did they just ignore emails with the subject lines breach following up on breach where the are you breach breach breach and just spoke to you in person about breach and you just stared blankly at me and then said I'm going to order from that salad place and if you are getting frustrated already with this kind of incompetence you're going to need to pace yourself because this story gets a lot worse apparently there were multiple points where this hack could have been prevented and one of them is incredible because Equifax were alerted by Homeland Security back in March that they needed to fix a critical vulnerability in their software but as lawmakers discovered at a recent hearing that's not what happened there was one person apparently who forgot to tell somebody that they had a P of software that needed to be patched yeah it is not ideal that a company guarding such valuable information leaves something that important down to one person it's like finding out that chase bank has a big red button labeled lose everyone's money and the only thing stopping anyone from pushing it is Frank and look I love frank I love the guy but what if he has to pee and I want to tell you that this is an anomaly but Equifax has had multiple headline grabbing breaches over the years and that is not even counting smaller incidents like this I checked my credit report the other day online with Equifax that was it and next thing I know I have 300 pieces of mail sitting in my mailbox every single one of these is addressed to her but they're not hers instead she got other people's credit reports now names Social Security numbers dates of birth current and previous addresses bank and Loan account numbers all stacked up on a kitchen table in bitterford yeah I mean that's not great is it and it really should have set off red flags at Equifax when hundreds of different credit reports were being mailed to the same address what exactly did you think had happened there that every single fraggle checked their credit at once down at Fraggle Rock down at Fraggle Rock now very nice and and I know that other companies have had breaches but non remotely as damaging as this new Equifax one remember this isn't Target exposing customers credit cards this is compromising Social Security numbers the things that thieves could use to open new credit cards in your name and if your information was stolen which remember is about a 5050 chance it could haunt you forever you don't change your birth date you don't change your social security number those who have been uh jeopardized by this hack will have to protect themselves for years until they're dead it's true and just think about that there is only one other thing that you have to constantly protect yourself from until you're dead and that's death and you would hope that Equifax would do a decent job of mitigating the damage after all they did have nearly six weeks to work on a response but instead their fuckups continued for instance they created a website for concerned consumers to go to but then this happened the site that eifax started is called Equifax security 2017 but a developer named Nick sweding wanted to show how easy it is to create a similar fake site so he did he called it security Equifax 2017 exactly someone created a fake site and if you're thinking well who would be dumb enough to fall for that Equifax that's who because they tweeted links to that fake site at least eight times despite the fact that site had a couple of tiny clues that it might be fake from the headline reading why did Equifax use a domain that's so easily impersonated by fishing s to the fact that when you clicked on their frequently asked questions this [Music] [Applause] happened well played pranksters you have my respect but look don't worry Equifax says that they are tightening up their operation and to see how well that they've done on that you you can just go to Equifax fraud prevention.com not because it's their site but because it's our site we bought it two days ago and if you go there you'll find the message how are we still able to do this why haven't you learned anything but wait wait because there is even more cuz e Equifax also offered consumers a year of free credit monitoring but when people tried to sign up for the service they noted something guess what you lock into Equifax terms of service when you sign up for it which means that you can't sue the company you've got to resolve any disputes en forced arbitration exactly you'd be giving up your to sue so legally your best recourse at that point would be shaking your fist at the heavens while shouting Equifax now they they've since rescinded that Clause although many frustrated people are now signing up for third-party credit monitoring services like LifeLock who've been advertising everywhere and they have seen a real surge in business in the wake of this breach although if you are considering LifeLock because you are mad at Equifax there is something you're going to need to know according to filings with the SEC lifelong purchases credit monitoring services from Equifax and that means someone buys credit monitoring through LifeLock LifeLock turns around and passes some of that Revenue directly along to Equifax is that right Mr Smith that is correct it's true some of some of the money that you pay to LifeLock goes right back to Equifax which could only be more infuriating if you then found out that the rest of it goes to Toys for Todds a charity that purchases sex toys for grown men named Todd buy your own sex toys Todd we can't carry you on this one and look Equifax connections aside LIF lockers had repeated issues itself including settlements with the FTC and a truly disastrous ad campaign a few years back I'm Todd Davis and I'm here to prove just how safe your identity can be with LifeLock that's my real real social security number yeah liel's then CEO Todd Davis actually put his real social security number 45755 5462 on a truck and billboards for a time it was impossible to escape his social security number 45755 5462 and that was a very cocky move and one that resulted in him having his identity stolen 13 times and I'm guessing that the defense for the people who took it was I didn't steal his identity I literally got got it off the back of a truck so to put it mildly LifeLock may not be your best solution to the Equifax crisis which brings us to the question what is well consumer Advocates told us that the one big step everyone should take is to go to all three large credit reporting companies that's Equifax Experian and Transunion and freeze your credit that way no one can access it including you until you unfreeze it now the companies also offer their own credit protection products with names like trusted idid or credit lck plus but they are often more expensive and offer fewer consumer protection so if you need a way to remember this locks are something you don't want think of Justin Bieber's dreadlocks a terrible decision to be avoided whereas freezes are great uh think of this tiny penguin losing its frozen [Music] mind see so to recap locks oof freezes wee now now here is the thing here's the thing on this freezing and unfreezing your credit can cost money which will go back to these companies because seemingly they just can't lose on this and if you need any more proof of that on the very same day the Congress was yelling at equifax's former CEO it emerged that the company had just been awarded a $7 million contract by the IRS to prevent fraud which led one Senator to make a pretty brutal comparison you're right to many Americans right now that looks like uh we're giving lindsy Lohan the keys to the mini bar I understand your point that was the pause of a man thinking do I let that pass do I correct him on how to pronounce Lohan or do I double down and pronounce her name lingonberry Loney baloney and you should know you should know that IRS deal has been suspended not canceled by the way just suspended and that might make you angry but the problem is that anger won't have much impact on Equifax because they make most of their money selling our data to businesses like Banks so in their eyes we are not the consumer with a product to think of it in terms of KFC we're not the guy buying the 10piece buckets we're the chickens so for the time being businesses are the only ones who can exert influence here and as one colorfully dressed expert pointed out that's not going to happen anytime soon I haven't heard any big company came out come out yet and say we're not going to use Equifax anymore for their credit scores so far everybody's been quiet and I don't know what they're waiting to hear this is outrageous they should be done but I bet you because it's America they'll be okay here's the truth that angry business casual farm animal on Fox Business is talking sense and that sentence alone shows just how bad things are so in the long term there should clearly be major reform to this industry and how it's regul but that is going to take time so until then you need to freeze your credit reports with all three of these companies and only unfreeze them when you need to apply for credit and because the freeze option can be hard to find on their sites if you go to our Twitter feed we will give you the exact links to do that and when you do they will give you a PIN number that you need to unfreeze it so do not lose that number or at the very least make it something memorable I don't know like 4557 55 5462 but not that cuz of course that's Todd Davis's social security number and now this and now New York City mayoral candidate Bo deetle makes a splash at this week's debate We Begin now with one minute opening statements beginning with bodle first of all I got to say go Yankees I was moed 500 times I was stabbed I was shot at I was hospitalized 30 times what' you make last year I made 1.8 million okay if I had head my head in a potato field and I popped it out and listened to this mayor I say I'd vote for him too he hired that ninko py py from Maine the guy was guarding some mooses up there Mr dle we're going to you first well you know what hold on I haven't asked the question yet go to rers island with the mayor I'll lock up for two days me and you general population this is just one of the issues in which our mayor has what is that freaking wall you put up around Gracie Mansion what are we hiding is it the Berlin Wall cut your off if you don't if you don't follow the rules well let's follow the rules my question is this is to the assembly member what about me assem sorry get only on only one turn turn off dles Mike I cut off your mic Mr deedle because you keep interrupting and we'll do it again if you continue to do that you said that a quote Muslim guy who works for the state was to blame for your problems you referred to your attorney as my quote Jewish lawyer and you said that you and you said that you knew that you had lost your court battle when you were trying to run as a democrat in this race because the African-American judge you said looked like Bill deblasio's wife Charlene McCrae first of all you're wrong on that what you just said all I said was the judge was very familiar looking as the mayor's wife with two beautiful eyes and a smile and they look very similar I never used the word africanamerican you look very similar okay all right yeah no just turn off the mic just turn off the mic thanks for watching please vote next month have a great evening that's our show thanks so much for watching we're off next week we'll be back October 29th good [Music] night p l