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Comment by okreallywtf | Hacker News Reader

Why will they not, do they fear they will not get a fair trial in the US or will be punished worse than their crimes dictate?

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Honestly, US penal standards are so out of whack with those of the rest of at least the "western" world, that no country ought ever consider extradition as an option.

If they are German citizens, then the German constitution prevents the state from extraditing them (to a non-EU country).

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_16.html

It's strange to me that many countries sign "bilateral" extradition treaties with Germany or other countries with similar policies such as Brazil.

Well. Is there any case where any western country did extradite their own citizen for non-spionage, non-military, non-war and non-capital crime? I hope not.

I certainly do not approve of the scam and deception VW did (and possibly other automobile manufacturers?), but I think I do not approve extraditing citizens of your own country for some non-capital crime. Or even some capital crimes for that matter. I (and most of the other Germans and EU citizens [1]) oppose death penalties. So extraditing someone to the US, which could result in death penalty if someone committed a murder, would be a really big ethical and/or diplomatic issue.

[1]: http://www.eidhr.eu/highlights/death-penalty

There are several examples where the US has successfully extradited people from the UK on charges related to financial crimes:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/british-trad...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three

The US doesn't always gets what it wants, for example with Gary McKinnon: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138

Interesting. They served an initial time in the US and then the rest in the UK. I do not know how to feel about such high-profile fraud cases by banks and companies. Yes, someone should pay their debt, but maybe work on some arrangement across borders? I do not know, prosecute them together and let them serve in their home country. Cross border legal issues seem to be hard problem, especially between common law systems (UK, US) and civil law systems (almost all of Europe).

Fair enough on the death penalty, but I don't see how that's relevant for any other crimes.

It's already hard to understand the culture in a country. I see also the difficulty of handling administrative matters for my American wife, from taxes to mortgage contracts. Everything of course in a second language. Even people's gestures or their facial expressions are different.

To have to navigate the juridicial system in another country is a huge disadvantage. You will make errors which a native will never make. You will not know about options that are very clear to long term citizens. Etc. Etc.

All in all, whatever the crime, you would like to have everybody the same chance in your juridicial system. Foreigners will have a disadvantage however.

> To have to navigate the juridicial system in another country is a huge disadvantage. You will make errors which a native will never make. You will not know about options that are very clear to long term citizens. Etc. Etc.

All of that is the lawyers' job, not the defendant's, and these guys will be able to hire very good local lawyers.

No judicial system composed of humans can ever be perfectly fair and free of bias, but that doesn't mean we should let criminals go free.

because american prisons are shit to the point that prison rape is somehow a funny meme and joked about on tv, default sentences are ridiculously inflated, and people openly admit that you won't get justice unless you have money.

America does not have to extradite its own nationals to Germany, either. From the US-German extradition treaty:

Article 7

EXTRADITION OF NATIONALS

(1) Neither of the Contracting Parties shall be bound to extradite its own nationals. The competent executive authority of the Requested State, however, shall have the power to grant the extradition of its own nationals if, in its discretion, this is deemed proper to do and provided the law of the Requested State does not so preclude.

In fact, Germany has quite a few outstanding arrest warrants against US citizens, too: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/31/usa.germany

In the land of "rolling coal" (0.0), and no TÜV+AU (0),(1), any sudden punishment of violators from outside reeks of market protection.

(0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technischer_Überwachungsverein

(1) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abgasuntersuchung (non english WP link, basically it means "emission checking")

Edit:

(0.0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

There's a big difference between a few rednecks illegally modifying their personal vehicles and a company selling millions of vehicles that fail emissions standards and trying to cover it up.

Not really, both are stupid and should be punished.

> selling millions of vehicles

VW sold approximately 475000 affected diesel vehicles in the US (compared to approx. 84.5 million car sales in the same time period).

This has always been my problem with the whole case. Yes they violated the law and yes they probably should be some punishment but the real impact was almost nothing, the vehicles would have met the restrictions of only a few years prior, and the limits are almost entirely arbitrary and politically motivated.

I agree. If we weren't on a forum filled with mostly people from CA who take for granted things like byzantine HOA rules and intrusive bylaws we'd be questioning why emissions requirements made "screw it, we're cheating on this one" a defensible decision for anyone at VW. You shouldn't have to break the law to be competitive.

How many other car manufacturers broke the law in this way? We're none of the ones that didn't competitive? What a patently ridiculous argument.

Last time I checked all tested diesel cars displayed anomalies between their supposed emissions and their actual emissions. So at this point: Likely all car makers.

And while this hasn't been public knowledge, it is not that surprising, because it has been public knowledge how much the mileage tests are gamed, so it's not surprising that all other tests are gamed as well (and, specifically, using defeat devices is also illegal).

The technology exists for diesel engines to meet emissions regulations. However, German car-makers secretly formed an agreement not to use certain emissions reduction technologies (such as large, refillable AdBlue tanks) in order to save money:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/24/16021292/german-car-compa...

There were a few who actually didn't cheat, or pulled out of the market. Opel is a prominent one as I remember.

"Screw it, we know how to meet the law, but we want to save money" is what VW did. Not only did it result in people dying from air pollution, it also left their competition wondering how VW did it so inexpensively.

the competition didn't get caught.

It likely resulted in multiple deaths from air pollution.

Now, yes worldwide 100,000's of people die every year from air pollution but simply giving up is a poor solution. Further, you can't make getting caught have similar penalties vs. cheating or you promote cheating as having zero downsides.

They knew the law, knew their obligations under the law and broke it with clear intent. How is prosecution arbitrary or politically motivated?

"Rolling coal" remains an illegal modification, practiced by scofflaws. TÜVs are not immune to conflicts of interests.[0] And while generally not a separate sticker from annual car registrations, annual or biennial emissions testings are carried out by most states.[1]

>any sudden punishment of violators from outside reeks of market protection.

Perhaps it's because the EU lacks the authority of the member states to regulate & police emission laws. They started legal proceedings against their member states precisely because of their inaction.

"The European Commission on Thursday began the so-called "infringement procedures," calling Germany, Britain, Spain and Luxembourg to account for not imposing the same kind of penalties Volkswagen faced in the United States for using illegal software to mask health-harming emissions."[2]

Isn't that market protection as well?

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/business/international/co...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...

[2]: http://www.dw.com/en/eu-launches-legal-case-against-germany-...

Most states emissions testing requirements are not stringent. Having lived in Washington, Oregon, and California I can say that WA's and OR's tests don't do much.

This "hack" by VW should have been caught in weeks by the EPA. It was detected simply by driving the car around with a sensor in the tailpipe.

And yes, when emissions testing switched to relying on the OBD codes, all was lost. Even I thought about hacking the ECU to report "all good"

This intentional evasion of emissions standards couldn't have been caught by the EPA test process. That should be changed (which will open other doors for other ways to game the tests) but it doesn't have anything to do with VW's willful violation of the law.

They updated their testing shortly after announcing VW's emission violations. "Testing vehicles in new and unpredictable ways is the new normal"

http://www.autonews.com/article/20160307/OEM11/303079956/aft...

Did you even read the article about rolling coal? It's illegal in the US.

Our constitution forbids extradition of citizens to foreign countries.

There's an exception for other member states of the European Union, but that's it.

Because they knew it upfront. The whole Diesel testing system was rigged to eliminate costly end machine testing as done in the US, which historically led to costly cheating on the roll by the US manifacturers. They paid experts passing those tests which were paid as much as a Formula 1 driver. So the Europeans improved that to reproducible test cases, and much cheaper, only with the engine.

So when the problem with the overly large AdBlue tanks came up, the Europeans knew they can cheat that away, because legally they thought they can get away with it. The engine test passed legally, and there was no legal framework to protect actual sold cars from emitting too much NOx. This is of course entirely the fault of the politicians, which were of course lobbied into that, and didn't ask much. That's why VW insisted all the time that they acted legally in Europe. In the US of course not, because in the US the big three always had the advantage of special drivers to pass the emission tests. So they still don't fear any legal woes in Europe.

So the strategy is to keep calm, and protect the rest of the industry, the politicians, the workers, change the ECU's, and either add bigger tanks or change AdBlue more often. It's insane to ask for 2 years AdBlue storage anyway. 6 months if enough. And the good engines can pass the new EURO 6 limits, because their injection system is highly optimized. Those engines are miles better and more effective than a normal otto, which enables them to actually use the crap diesel oil. Problematic are only the overly large engines or the cheap ones.

Maybe because the Volkswagen AG employs 0.6 million people worldwide, 220 thousand of them in Germany?

If the Volkswagen AG would be the only culprit. So far it looks like Audi persuaded Bosch to add the cheat detection code into it's ECU used in almost every Diesel car, and consequently almost every car was using it. The scandal is much bigger than VW.

FYI: Audi is part of the VW AG.

FYI: Audi is the technological part of VW who actually develops and produces the engines. VW has not much to do with engines. Audi and Porsche also do own VW.

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