Few things are more painful for a company than the prospect of heightened levels of federally-mandated paperwork. New laws and bureaucratic oversight represent an expense that companies would rather not incur.

In the best case scenario, businesses convince the government they can police themselves. We have seen this in segments of the financial industry, where breaches of privacy have revealed millions of credit card numbers and other personal information to criminals.

That industry has well-financed lobbyists on Washington's K Street, which is probably why large scale break-ins at CardSystems Solutions and TJX haven't led to fast-track legislation to better regulate the handling and security of financial details.

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