Engineers are not somehow separate from society. When you say "let's get the law to handle it", that "us" includes engineers. Politics is just people, including engineers, figuring out how to organize society.

If you think something is wrong, the first step is to not do it. If you think it's so wrong it should be illegal, you can take the optional second step of trying to change the law.

There are some circumstances where you think something is wrong, but not doing it would be impossible or require really drastic life changes. For example, maybe you think driving a gas-powered car is wrong because it contributes to climate change, but you can't afford to buy an electric car or move somewhere that doesn't require a car. This is not one of those cases. The author has 10 years of experience at Google and could easily find a very well paying job either at another department inside Google, or at another company.