It’s already been set in other industries, the financial industry springs to mind.
Everybody in a bank is responsible for detecting and preventing money laundering. Failure to report money laundering if you suspect it is a criminal offence (this is true in the UK, I assume similar laws exist in the US). If your boss refuses to acknowledge your report, then you’re obligated to whistle blow.
There is no reason why a similar framework can’t exist elsewhere. A requirement that engineers report abuses of data, or corrupt behaviour, and an obligation to whistle blow of management refuse to acknowledge the issue.
These laws of-course place a heavy burden on C-suite execs, making it clear they can be held criminally liable for the misbehaviour of their organisation, even if they weren’t aware of. The simple act of not being aware of criminal behaviour is criminal.
It sounds to me that you're misreading my comment on purpose, to make an us-vs-them argument that I fundamentally disagree with. This isn't about engineers vs bosses, it's about doing the right thing no matter what's on your business card.
The argument "if we can't shift the blame up, it'll automatically go down" simply doesn't make sense to me. You, and you alone, can choose to stop building evil shit.
And I'm not misreading your comment on purpose, trust me I had to read it 4 times just to make sure I wasn't crazy and I was actually reading what I thought I was: someone advocating that bottom of the food chain employees be criminally liable for code they write.
You are making an us-vs-them argument, to be sure. Your "us" is consumers and your "them" are employees, rather than corporate executives that make the decisions.
I'm not a lawyer. I expect if I'm being asked to do something, it's been vetted by our corporate legal team. I should not be expected to know every aspect of criminal and civil law to protect myself from my employer.
What you are suggesting is absurd, but fortunately, I think most would agree with me on that.
Getting the same result in different ways can legal or not:
Obvious example:
Saving a x amount of money from taxes using a legal loophole is legal.
An exact equal company trying to save the exact same amount of money by lying to is doing something illegal.
Far less obvious example:
Around here (and possibly elsewhere, I don't know) if you make a drink from wine and spirits you have to pour the spirit first because increasing the strength of wine is illegal, but decreasing the strengt of spirits are OK.
I thought it was an old joke, but someone I have reason to believe said it was true and you could get in trouble for it.
Consider the example of engineers getting the details of tax compliance in a payroll system wrong because their boss provided the wrong instructions. To my mind, they should not be at fault for this unless they demonstrably knew what they had been asked to do was illegal.
I'm not a lawyer. I expect if I'm being asked to do something, it's been vetted by our corporate legal team. I should not be expected to know every aspect of criminal and civil law to protect myself from my employer.
That's you. I've quit jobs before because I was not willing to do something that went against my principles. I think it's pretty simple to ask yourself how you'd feel if you were on the opposite end of some questionable corporate action and later found out that you had been deceived or exploited.
Which is exactly why this is such a horrible idea.
"I have been only following orders" had stopped being a valid defense quite a long time ago.
But even then, the programmers working on ICEs can find a different job in a heartbeat.
I'm not asking the other people working at these, or any, companies to do the same. I'm asking people with top in-demand skills to start considering the ethics of their jobs.
Not even close.
As a former embedded software engineer for the automotive sector, moving to another industry was a very difficult task, as in automotive you pidgenhole yourself in some tech that's specific to this industry and is outdated or not used everywhere else.
Thank God I got out in time.
Sure, executives will always try to push the blame downstairs. That's why you should be willing to sell them out if necessary.
This is the entire point. If the "corporate decision" involves doing bad things, and then you go ahead and implement those bad things as an engineer...you deserve to be held responsible for your part in it.
No, I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Many young engineers can't see societal potential in what they do. They see solving the technical problem and completing the task.
Senior engineers with a lot more experience have insight into "why" but that's often the point when they're given responsibility to guide others.
The "should we do this?" question rests on the shoulders of those with insight that faces the outside world, and not just the programmer's editor on the screen. That's management.
What do I know about it? Was an engineer (programmer), and now I run teams of engineers. I often have to direct them on how not to solve a problem, for reasons of customer privacy, security, or responsibility, as much as to what problem we must solve.
Responsibility increases the higher up you go in the management chain.
If you had worked at Ford and designed, say, the steering wheel or transmission of the Pinto, you might well be excused for not appreciating the flaws in its design. But if you were one of the engineers that was asked to put the gas tank up near the rear fender where it was much likelier to rupture in the event of a wholly foreseeable collision, then you had a responsibility to consider and push back against cost-saving measures that were likely to jeopardize riders' safety.
In general, if a manager is telling you not to worry about something, it's shady.
Then they are defective citizens. Citizenry before a job is just not that complicated.
Everyone is complicit in dirty work and I've very happily fired clients and quit jobs for being dirty. Do thou likewise or have your fellow citizens find you wanting for it. It's not hard.
Seems HN is primarily comprised of people without families that can just quit their job and it's not big deal, all in the name of their particular set of moral standards. You can tell when they say things like "it's not hard" when deciding to quit their job.
For the fast majority of people, it is hard. Most peoples ethical guidelines shift rapidly when the alternative means harming their loved ones.
It's definitely not hard to proclaim things aren't hard. Reality is often different.
I worked in free to play games for a time and I rationalized you could get entertainment value up to a point and if you wanted more you paid. However, we all know certain people can't stop at that point. Same reason why casinos flourish.
Ethics CAN be clear cut but even things like drones or surveillance equipment can have both good and evil applications.
This horrible precedent and pushes the blame for everything downstairs. Meanwhile, corporate execs have the very corporate shielding you're advocating that engineers don't. Maybe you think they too shouldn't have such protections, but how you can advocate for personal liability for programmers without first implementing personal liability for executives is beyond me.
This so incredibly short-sighted.