Regulators break the law, violated firms have to apologize

Really it is not that big a deal - customer data was illegally distributed to an attorney by regulators and nothing will ever come of it that would impact customers. However, the WSJ reports that the Alabama Securities Commission obtained confidential customer information related to their investigation into Morgan Keegan's own personal subprime debacle. When an attorney who is suing Morgan Keegan requested unrelated data from the ASC, they went ahead and just sent him 14,000 clients, names, social security numbers, etc.

So, Morgan Keegan was required by law to give up the information, and then the ASC broke the law by disseminating, even if it was unintentional, and finally Morgan Keegan has to foot the bill for notifying customers, setting up credit monitoring, etc. Morgan Keegan may be a bad guy here in the big picture, but the regulators continue to violate their duties and public trust in a big way with no repercussions. After Madoff, there should have been public lynchings - where is the outrage - we don't need new laws, we need new deputies!