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Comment by pweissbrod | Hacker News Reader

Given the minimal information in this article you cant help but wonder if this is a blatant attempt at designating someone to take the fall for a larger conspiracy, or if higher-level indictments are on the way. At a company like VW decisions like this are never made at the engineering level.

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It contains the complete 16-page plea agreement in it. I think that's pretty satisfactory.

In summation, the defendant is looking a 5 years prison and $250,000 in fines, as the defendants representation agrees the charges rate at least that much, plus possible restitution to any identified victims, but the court may agree that if he testifies fully and willingly it will be reduced. So yes, it looks like there's a wider-ranged investigation in progress.

Thanks for pulling that out. I'm hoping these charges are just to squeeze him into testifying, building a bigger case against executives, and the sentence (prison especially) will be substantially reduced. He committed serious crimes but I have trouble believing he was a ringleader.

>decisions like this are never made at the engineering level.

True, but the law has long held an obligation to "fall on your sword" disobeying illegal orders, even if it comes at great personal cost. See the lack of success of the "just following orders" defense at the Nuremberg trials.

That only happens if you lose a war.

With that logic you can blame a sales man for selling the car to a customer who planed to drive it in the US.

There is a undefined line between following orders and following the law.

The sales man does not know that it is illegal to sell the car. It is his own responsibility to not commit crimes. To not commit crimes one must know the definition of what a crime is. That definition can be found in the law book. In the Law book one can find that the car in question is illegal to sell.

It would be very hard for him to find that information but it is still his responsibility.

Selling something you didn't know was illegally polluting is a large distance away, legally, from designing the system specifically designed to break the law.

Do you really think VW salespeople should go to jail for this? Should salespeople do their own emissions testing? Should they all buy multiple versions of the same car and crash it to see if it's really safe? How does that system work? VW has a clear set of emissions rules to follow because they build the cars, why should the salespeople be on the hook? This isn't Tesla, VW salespeople don't even work for VW.

"One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens"

He's proposing a Reductio Ad Absurdum argument, implying strict adherence to the "fall on the sword" principle causes prosecution of salespeople.

Because there's an implication, if you accept his argument, then you either reject strict adherence to the principle(modus tollens) or accept prosecution of the salespeople(modus ponens).

You interpreted his comment as accepting prosecution of the salespeople, but I believe he intended you to conclude rejection of strict adherence to the principle.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you for that piece of information. I did not know that it was called that. Very interesting.

I don't know if I entirely agree with the "fall on your sword" argument. Sometimes it applies, but not always. There's definitely a grey area. At some point, the leverage becomes coercive, and to deny that allows force to hide in the guise of distributed responsibility. It allows the corrupt to shift blame onto middlemen who are sometimes just as much the victims of force as those down the line.

Were soldiers on trial in Nuremberg? Seems to me everyone was at least a "middle manager". The comparison is hyperbolic and I don't see the similarity here. VW is German? Is that what we're working on?

It's also the first principle of engineering ethics. Your first duty is to the public, followed by your client, followed by your employer. Which means that sometimes you will have to say "no" to your employer.

Yes. There can be consequences. You could lose your job. Acting ethically despite potential personal consequences is what is demanded of a professional engineer. If you're not willing to uphold the code of ethics, you shouldn't become a licensed engineer.

The licensing requirement is supposed to help people refuse unethical demands. The business needs a license, and anyone they would hire to replace him needs a license. The engineering professional association thus has some leverage to enforce standards. Probably not enough to entirely eliminate personal consequences, but they at least reduce the number of unscrupulous people you have to compete against.

> At a company like VW decisions like this are never made at the engineering level.

He was the manager of the entire Diesel department – that’s not "engineering level".

He just happens to be an engineer, too – because VW mostly promotes engineers to managers (even a previous CEO was a housegrown engineer)

I don't know really what the legal penalty would be, but I can see why someone might take the fall for a company if the company offered some big incentives.

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