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Comment by jamesred | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn’t there be a distinction between the person writing the code and the person who chooses to use the code? An engineer shouldn’t be responsible for knowing the law and doesn’t have access to corporate lawyers that executives do. You could argue that there are legitimate reasons to write code that’s illegal for research purposes but never implemented. Why should an engineer be responsible for that?

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Per the article this engineer was an executive.

I'm in favor of punishing the people in charge, but I'm reluctant to overlook rank-in-file just because they were just following orders. It feels hypocritical, as an engineer, for me to say that engineers should be recognized not just for raw technical experience but for their ability to be creative artists and humane leaders, and then argue that senior engineers and their ideas and work have no agency or worldly responsibility beyond a requirements document.

According to the OP:

> Federal prosecutor Mark Chutkow countered that Liang was a "pivotal figure" in designing the systems used to make Volkswagen diesels appear to comply with U.S. pollution standards, when instead they could emit up to 40 times the allowed levels of smog-forming compounds in normal driving.

This wasn't just someone who wrote some code that he didn't intend to be misused. This is someone who used his expertise to direct the implementation of an unlawful system. To be successful in that, it seems you'd have to have a decent understanding of the law that you intend to break.

In addition, I would say there is value in trying to tell people, "Don't stick your neck out for corporate boss! Otherwise you may go to jail and they may go free."

The real crime here is 40 months in prison for violating the clean air act.

That is the whole slippery slope of plausible deniability. An engineer doesn't know every nuance of the law but some people had to actively know they were breaking the law. Those people should be punished, regardless of their level.

I'm in favor on increased whistle blower programs. There were lots of people who knew what was going at Enron and VW and others. If companies are morally bankrupt and think of profits at all costs, we should reward the grunts who can expose it.

That depends, was the engineer told "here is your spec", where the spec was they could have higher emissions than the law actually says, or was the engineer told here is the law, but you can ignore it if it gives us better numbers. In the first case the engineers who broke the law was mislead by those he should be able to trust to explain the law, while in the latter he knew he was part of breaking the law.

The law is generally written in legalese. It is really hard to understand how X volts on some sensor relates to emissions regulations. Therefore the engineers doing the work are easy to mislead, they probably don't even have access to sensor values that can directly tell you something in the law. Rather it is a mechanical engineer explaining that when the temperature is X and (pages of sensors they do have) you change these actuator settings. Give wrong information here and the engine will run as design and the programmer who made the mistake won't even know.

I would argue that he should have known that it is highly likely that any code would end up being used, despite how much they're told it's "for research" or a "prototype".

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