Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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There was also a settlement, although civil litigation continues.

> A former reporter for a weekly Kansas newspaper has agreed to accept $235,000 to settle part of her federal lawsuit over a police raid on the paper that made a small community the focus of a national debate over press freedoms.

> The settlement removed the former police chief in Marion from the lawsuit filed by former Marion County Record reporter Deb Gruver, but it doesn't apply to two other officials she sued over the raid: the Marion County sheriff and the county's prosecutor. Gruver's lawsuit is among five federal lawsuits filed over the raid against the city, the county and eight current or former elected officials or law enforcement officers.

> Gruver's attorney did not immediately respond to emails Friday seeking comment. An attorney for the city, its insurance company, the former chief and others declined to comment but released a copy of the June 25 settlement agreement after the Record filed an open records request. He also provided a copy to The Associated Press.

https://apnews.com/article/kansas-newspaper-raid-lawsuit-b0b...

Civil litigation basically means that the taxpayers are on the hook for any damages. I am betting if there were to be personal responsibility, these types are acts would be history.

Cops should shoulder responsibility and be insured individually. Like docs.

Should computer programmers also shoulder responsibility and be insured like doctors?

When I was programming as a consultant I had to have insurance for my LLC because some clients required it. It's not that weird an idea.

> Should computer programmers also shoulder responsibility and be insured like doctors?

Computer programmers aren't authorized and licensed by the government to inflict violence like police officers. Computer programmers are not licensed by the government to prescribe dangerous medications or perform surgeries.

And yet many computer programmers and hardware developers, with or without any kind of license or certification, write or design systems that are critical to life and limb; everything including medical systems, airplane systems, automotive systems including drive-by-wire and 'self-driving, engineering systems for design of life critical structures, etc., etc., etc. It's not all low-consequence or recoverable like front end web dev or accounting software. And conversely, many actions of physicians and cops are inconsequential (while many are also life-or-death).

Another problem is how much companies exaggerate the effectiveness of their systems and don't share the false positive rate.

To use a similar example, in my state, you can build your own custom car or airplane from scratch and get it approved, no mechanic or engineering license needed.

Also, if you aren't working as an engineer for another company but are self employed, it's not a bad idea to get some form of errors and omissions insurance, which is comparable to the malpractice insurance doctors get.

Ordinary developers are effectively just construction workers with a bit more creative freedom.

In al critical systems they are just one part of a chain and all their work has to be verified/validated by at least a few additional actors.

A policeman can just decide to randomly murder someone (and often face no repercussions). While a construction worker or a software developer can cause significant harm as well they almost never have near complete autonomy.

I have a note on my desk "If there is a bad tech option." It's a reminder not to get mad when my boss or their boss decides something stupid. Like using GraphQL to upload large amounts of data. Or deciding a 5 person team should be developing micro-services. Or moving everything to tailwinds.

As a developer I don't have the power to stop these bad decisions. I just have to stew in them. Holding me responsible for the bad code that gets written to kludge past the bad decisions.

Better I suppose than the company that had me build a rails app to move millions of records an hour, hosted on their personal windows laptop. (yeah rails on windows)

> Or moving everything to tailwinds.

What’s wrong with Tailwind CSS?

Computer programmers have ruined plenty of lives from the post office scandal to the gambling industry.

> Computer programmers have ruined plenty of lives from the post office scandal to the gambling industry.

That's like saying the cleaning crew at the local police station have ruined plenty of lives due to police brutality.

It’s almost like blaming Glock for police shootings…

It has nothing to do programmers and everything to do with Post Office’s management. If they bought buggy software they had years to seek recourse for that.

The post office scandal wasn't the programers fault, the fault was on the post for prosecution of individuals for something that was the result of a known bug that they chose to try and cover up instead of getting it fixed. Its also the fault of the law makers for passing law that assumes the computer is always right unless the accused can show otherwise but not letting the accused have access to the program needed.

Possibly, depending on the stakes of the applications they program.

Front end web dev? Nah, who gives a shit. Embedded system that's fail deadly? Um, yes.

>Front end web dev? Nah, who gives a shit. Embedded system that's fail deadly? Um, yes.

More likely that a frayed power cord (or one of a thousand other things) on your laptop will catch fire while you're on the client premise, causing thousands in damages, or that same laptop has some sort of trojan/virus that you spread through the client network, and you're on the hook for remediation.

IME, most of the time that's why an independent consultant needs business insurance. The quality of the work is generally handled by the contract.

But YMMV.

This scenario seems borderline Palsgraph v. Long Island Rail Road [1].

There is liability / duty of care / grounds to sue for negligence only when the injury / damages were directly related to the nature of the business, not when there is an incidental freak accident which happens to occur on the premise.

What does front end dev work have to do with the statistical random chance that wires somewhere in the building are frayed?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palsgraf_v._Long_Island_Railro....

General liability and Errors & Omissions[0] insurance are often required by various clients.

As I mentioned it could be a thousand different things that might trigger such liability.

I'm not telling you (or anyone else) what to do.

That said, I'm sure legal fees, if they become necessary, would be much less than insurance premiums. /s

[0] https://www.insureon.com/blog/common-consulting-business-ins...

If they use “engineer” anywhere in their job title, then yes, they should shoulder that responsibility and liability.

At the plc level? Yes, and they should and they are. They are also suspects to criminal liability laws.

Docs aren’t always insured, and when they are, they aren’t always insured individually.

Medical costs and insurance are already absurdly high

Police force is the largest expense for local governments, doubling or tripping the costs seems like an unwise and inefficient thing to do for a society

You’re already paying for it via settlements.

Requiring officer-named insurance would create immediate pressure to weed out bad behavior and prevent bad cops from being re-hired one county over.

Or spend the money on police training instead. More training seems it produces a more competent police force. Not really surprising.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733

Like this?

https://abc7ny.com/police-training-new-jersey-street-cop-atl...

There's a similar case unfolding in Massachusetts as well. And Google "killology" if you really want to be disgusted.

If this country had any form of adversarial oversight of police departments, this would be history.

Was “ adversarial oversight” a typo? Why would you want an adversarial anything with a department as crucial as the police? A solid working relationship with faith and trust running both ways is maybe what you meant.

In this sense "adversarial" has the same meaning that it does with respect to the relationship between the defense and the prosecution in a courtroom setting -- the best outcome is going to be achieved from the equilibrium of distinct organizations with incentives balanced against each other.

It's precisely because of the importance of policing that we don't want the people responsible for oversight and discipline of the police to have a "solid working relationship with faith and trust running both ways" -- there needs to be an arm's length relationship, with the watchdogs incentivized to monitor for wrongdoing, and the police somewhat afraid of being called out by them, certainly not buddy-buddy with them.

The county’s insurance is on the hook. I’m sure premiums go up but are taxpayers really on the hook if insurance is paying the damages?

> He also provided a copy to The Associated Press.

Interesting way to reduce the value of the info and effort for the request. Send a copy to the paper's competition first/too

It's the only way that he can guarantee that the information is distributed in its original form and not through the victim's bias. So I'd argue that from his perspective, that was definitely the best (read as: most democratic) option.

Does the defense pay for all the legal expenses incurred in addition to the settled amount? Lawsuits ain't cheap.

It depends. Often when a suit involves the government or the public interest then there’s a statute in place that awards fees to the winner.

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