Sony has declined to testify before congress this week following an epic fail in the company's security that could have potentially compromised the personal details of what now totals more than 100 million accounts. The Congressional Subcommittee dispatched a letter to Sony Chairman Kazuo Hirai, which asked the company to answer several questions related to the Playstation Network hacking, a list that was dispatched before it was discovered and announced that Sony's online gaming branch, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), had also been compromised this week, adding another 24 million plus to the list of over 77 million accounts possibly compromised.

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style="font-style: italic;">Will Sony get the South Park BP treatment following their latest announcement?

The Congressional Subcommittee will be holding a hearing on Wednesday, May 4th "regarding the threat of data theft to American consumers." Sony was invited to attend and testify at the hearing but declined to attend according to a report from Kotaku in which an official in Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack's office told the gaming site that Sony had declined to testify because its internal investigation is ongoing. Kotaku's report also states that Sony is cooperating with a list of questions the committee members have requested answers to. A number of the questions asked regard Sony's delay in informing its customers, the depth of the breach, how the breach was discovered and more.

Massively recently managed to corner SOE PR Representative Ryan Peters to get a few questions answered about the recent announcement that SOE customer data had been compromised. The short Q&A session is in large part made up of the released PR information, but does offer a couple of news nuggets relating to the depth of the breach.

Sony is already facing a class action lawsuit from the California-based Rothken Law Firm over the breach of personal information and now the company faces a second from Toronto law firm McPhadden Samac Tuovi, who has proposed a class action suit against Sony "for the breach of privacy." An MSNBC report claims that the lawsuit claims damages in excess of $1 billion, including Sony footing the bill for the costs of credit monitoring services for fraud and identity theft for two years.

We're now pushing the third week of downtime for the Playstation Network and the second day of downtime for all SOE games, which is a long time in MMO terms. Sony has no ETA for the resumption of services for either as of yet, but PSN is expected to begin a phased resumption of service this week. Whether or not the latest SOE development will impact that time frame has yet to be announced.

They say that things always get worse before they get better. One thing is for sure, if this isn't the turning point for better and things get worse, Sony and its customers are in a lot of trouble. Stay tuned and we'll update you when we have more.

Sources:

MSNBC

Massively

Kotaku

Letter to Sony Chairman Kazuo Hirai