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F.B.I. Arrests Volkswagen Executive on Conspiracy Charges in Emissions Scandal
- alexandercrohde 10y agoGood. I'm tired of high-ranking high-status members of society dodging consequences of multimillion or billion dollar catastrophes while the lowest classes get life sentences for ruining a single life. I think the only way to stop the white-collar crime problem (which I think is a bigger problem than the physical crime problem) is by holding people accountable.
- legulere 10y agoI agree, however it seems like they only use VW to exemplify the issue, when pretty much all manufacturers are cheating.
- Pyxl101 10y agoI have not been closely following this scandal, so I was unaware that other car manufacturers have been indicted in emissions cheating. Could you share a source with more information about this?
- davewritescode 10y agoNot even just emissions, lots of companies play software tricks to game efficiency numbers. Chevy and Ford have both played games with the manual V8 sports cars that locks out the 1 -> 2 shift and force the driver to go 1 -> 4 to save gas when the computer sees the car accelerating at the same rate as the EPA test. The funniest thing was the Ford would sell you a software update to defeat skip shift under the guise of a "performance tune", at least that's how I defeated it while still keeping my warranty.
- jdhn 10y agoI was under the impression that unless you bought an aftermarket tune the 1 -> 2 (and maybe even 1 -> 3) shift was always locked out no matter your rate of acceleration. Has this changed in the past few years?
- mcguire 10y agoNot on my 2002 Corvette. First gear and low throttle opening invokes CAGS, the computer assisted hear selection.
- robin_reala 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#Transgressions_by_other_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#T... A French government report in 2016 investigated 86 different cars, and about 1/5th of those were found to comply with emission laws. Most did not.
- hx87 10y agoHow many of those are sold in the US?
- falkooo 10y agoHave a look at this talk of the latest CCC at 13:11 https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7904-software_defined_emissions https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7904-software_defined_emissions He talks about how it is possible that the cars achieve the low results in the testcycles but produce much higher emissions on the real road. The reverse engineering in the beginning of the task is also very interesting.
- CommanderData 10y agoI was about to post this. VW have been playing dirty tactics even after the scandal.
- holri 10y agoHe demonstrated the same for Opel / GM.
- AndyMcConachie 10y agoThe companion talk about how the Dieselgate cases are transpiring is also worth a watch. https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8131-dieselgate_a_year_later#video&t=81 https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8131-dieselgate_a_year_later#vid...
- saiya-jin 10y agoI thought it's a common knowledge most/all are doing it in one way or the other. Same as professional athletes in many sports, ie cycling - you cannot be really successful without any hacks/borderline cheating, it's more a matter of being few steps ahead of doping tests and current rules, thriving in the gray area. I simply don't believe anymore there are any clean athletes in first 3 places in any sport where there are significant money involved. And most people are happy to support this indirectly via their support of things like Olympics which became lately just hunt for sponsors. (I don't watch those anymore, rather will spend the time actually training, with friends, in the nature etc.) Same for cars.
- alex_duf 10y agoThat's an interesting parallel
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoWow. This makes me really glad I don't buy cars and don't patronize sports. What a load of crap!
- celticninja 10y agoAlso it helps that it is not a US company.
- eeZah7Ux 10y agoAnd it happens to be from a country with a strong economy.
- hueving 10y ago>multimillion or billion dollar catastrophes while the lowest classes get life sentences for ruining a single life. Is the implication here that causing economic harm is the same as murder?
- tomp 10y agoPollution is murder (statistically).
- justinjlynn 10y agoAs is reproduction, in general. Of course, there's little point in pedantry.
- bottled_poe 10y ago7% of humans ever born are not dead. Pedantry is alive and well here.
- usrusr 10y agoMaking cars is "statistical murder". Bad schools are "statistical murder". Selling cheesecake is "statistical murder". Enforce the laws you have to help keeping honest people honest, but please do not selectively blow individual cases out of proportion with gut appeal tactics.
- tomp 10y agoAll these examples are regulated by laws that control the extent of damage done. Clearly the society believes that the existence of these is, after accounting for the positive and negative effects, better than nonexistence. But, skirting the laws in most of these cases can result in harm/death, and should be treaded as such (e.g. selling cars with faulty brakes, selling cakes with too much trans fats... a bit harder to say for schooling noone has really figured out how to do it well on a large scale).
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- aibottle 10y agoExactly.
- easytiger 10y agoYou fell for it.. this is US economic imperialism, and nothing to do about emissions.
- imagist 10y agoMaybe, but it's also justice being served. When a poor black man in America is arrested for a rape, it's racism and classism because a rich white man is far more likely to get away with that crime. But it's also justice. I don't think you would argue that we should let poor black men get away with rape just to make things more fair.
- stefantalpalaru 10y ago> it's also justice being served Is it really? All the diesel manufacturers cheat and VW cheats the least: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/wide-range-of-cars-emit-more-pollution-in-real-driving-conditions-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/wide-ran... http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-vehicle-tests-show-dramatic-variation-nox-emissions-modern-diesel-cars-new-eu http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-vehicle-tests-show...
- zipwitch 10y agoWhen certain groups are exempt from the force of the law, while others feel its full weight, it is not justice, but rather a mockery of it.
- imagist 10y agoSee my response to your sibling comment.
- iheartmemcache 10y agoIt's selective justice. Imagine driving down in a 2009 Toyota Camry with your well dressed family on a well paved highway in Alabama at 78 mph in a 65 mph zone on a nice, clear sunny Sunday a safe distance away from the preceding car at the same velocity as quite literally every other car in every other lane you see. Clearly not posing a safety threat, not lane-weaving indicating any form of compromised faculties or dangerous behavior, no threat at all really. However, Smokey the Bear state trooper Bob decides he doesn't like the way you look. You could be black, you could be wearing a Ralph Lauren Polo with a NORML insignia on it and Bob just happens to hate pot, you could have an atheist bumper sticker and Bob just got on shift after a rousing sermon from Pastor Jedidiah. Justice imposed on selected individuals is not justice. Ethically, were he to enforce the law to the letter with an egalitarian approach, the first person he saw as he got on shift exceeding 65 should have been pulled over. As soon as that ticket was issued, he should have done so for the next person, ad infinitum until he was off-duty. In actuality, if every single arrested individual stopped one day and decided to exercise his or her constitutional right to see his day in court like that prep school[1] individual did, we'd see what would amount to be a DDoS on the system incapable of handling a caseload of such magnitude. Pragmatically, an ADA will use a very effective method - known colloquially as "charge stacking" - to intimidate the accused into pleaing out a charge he would likely beat[2]. Though I'm totally with you on the classist component - should Michael Jordan's son commit a crime, he'd be far less likely to be convicted than whitey-mc-Kentucky-Meth-Mouth Tim's son due to the same lack of resources afforded to him. [1] RE: your rape scenario -- Compare this aggressive attorney http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/28/us/new-hampshire-prep-rape-trial/ http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/28/us/new-hampshire-prep-rape... vs these less fortunate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case [2] Even more compelling is the motion for dismissal those defense attorneys could raise in aggregate on 6th amendment grounds. In the state of California, the 45 day cap could be breached fairly easily if all of the defense attorneys concurrently suggested to their clients to enter a not-guilty plea. You'd also see a marked decline in arbitrary traffic stops, as arresting officers would be forced to spend the day in court rather than in speed traps.
- devoply 10y agoMust not have invested money in lobbying DC. VW needs to spend a few million on lobbyists.
- troisx 10y agoExactly. Ships cause enormous amounts of pollution but are practically unregulated thanks to the lobbying influence of companies that import and export.
- mcguire 10y agoShips are also pretty efficient per ton-mile, so there's that.
- cardiffspaceman 10y agoMaybe. It was trivial to find this. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV%3Al24123 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV%3... In addition to that, the EU marine shipping system seems to be in some turmoil over some required major capital expenditures due to a double-hull regulation, which I also wanted to mention, but I can't quite find it.
- TempleOS 10y agoI could swear Jimmy Carter worse a sweater indoors. Weird. What a faggot, conserving energy. Thermostat is 65% of energy. God says... putsch's crape trouper's scissor inferior Hals Brits adulterer's spoils shortening nurseryman's blank confess Philistine honester coliseum's Waring's Dictaphone's deactivate gladiola acetates bluish dabbled colones nag's rendezvous Blackburn's Lovecraft teacher's safest kinda tenderized
- dubyah 10y agoSouth Korea sentenced a Volkswagen executive to 18 months in prison on Friday. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-southkorea-idUSKBN14Q0VR http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-southkorea-idUS...
- pvlima 10y agoMost amazing is that in Europe VW does not have to pay anything. And car owners are forced to do a software update that reduces engine power and increases risk of malfunction. VW never again.
- dovdovdov 10y agoIf this blows up it's over for most german car manufacturers. They sold a lot of diesel cars, and most of them probably have some hacks to meet Euro standards. They should be forced to fix all cars, reimburse buyers for any losses, and be forced(!) to go green asap (which probably means at least 10 years, so yeah there should be some force)!
- sintaxi 10y agoI think it would be a reasonable to forbid VW from ever making a combustible engine ever again. Forcing them to go green or perish. It's some Lex Luther level shit they pulled.
- stefantalpalaru 10y agoActually, VW is one of the least polluting offenders: http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-vehicle-tests-show-dramatic-variation-nox-emissions-modern-diesel-cars-new-eu http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-vehicle-tests-show... Volvo, Renault, Hyundai, Opel and Audi are much worse, as you can see in the last graph. There's also a highly polluting Jeep at the top: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/wide-range-of-cars-emit-more-pollution-in-real-driving-conditions-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/wide-ran... So this whole "let's make an example out of VW" has nothing to do with the scale of the crime.
- _nedR 10y agoIt seems to be game over for diesel cars in general, even if you ignore their eventual replacement with electric cars. They have been getting a lot of bad press lately. Their popularity was due to their higher fuel efficiency; But for diesels, it seems that there is trade-off between fuel efficiency and NOx emissions (http://www.livescience.com/52284-volkswagen-scandal-clean-diesel-challenges.html http://www.livescience.com/52284-volkswagen-scandal-clean-di...). With many cities and countries trying to curb smog and air pollution, diesels are on the top of the hitlist. edit: reworded, and changed link
- freddealmeida 10y agoDon't get me wrong. I find it interesting that the FBI will arrest anyone for conspiracy when they so clearly ignore it in numerous other cases (such as in banking, real estate). I doubt though that this will be an emerging pattern for the FBI. I'm sure many more horrible conspiracies against the American people will be ignored efficiently.
- mox1 10y agoJust so everyone else understands how our justice system works (at the Federal level anyway). The FBI does not just "decide" to arrest someone. An agent can start an investigation and want to arrest someone. But if a federal district attorney is not on board, usually no arrest will happen. 99 times out of 100, a Federal District Attorney (usually in the region where the company / person is headquartered) makes this decision and then the FBI (or other federal agency) acts, especially in major cases like this. Many times there is a working relationship. An FBI agent might call a district attorney and "shop" his case: "Hey Jim, it's agent Bob, I have a slam dunk case for you here, call me." Other times the crime is serious enough its totally obvious that everyone is going to peruse it (murder, child exploitation, major drug stuff, etc.) And other times, the District Attorney calls the agent and says "Bob, these Volkswagen people need to pay for what they have done, lets throw the book at them, start investigating." We will probably never know what happened in this Volkswagen case, but make no mistake that people inside the White House, FBI headquarters and Loretta Lynch's office all had to "thumbs up" a persecution on this level. One lowly agent doesn't make these decisions.
- vostok 10y agoAs someone who works in finance, I'm shocked at the level of fraud and corruption that is tolerated in other industries. I'm glad to see that at least some action is being taken.
- chopin 10y agoYou forgot the /sarcasm tag...
- Jgrubb 10y agoI took that to mean that OP is shocked that the level of fraud and corruption tolerated in other industries is so much lower than in finance.
- fuck_google 10y agoPerhaps the general lack of ethics and morality in society is the product of the culture of incompetence, corruption and greed that the finance sector seems to nourish.
- robhu 10y agoHave the FBI taken similar action against American car manufacturers, or only European ones?
- tantalor 10y agoDid you read the article? The arrest is for lying to the feds, not the emissions issue.
- gst 10y agoI'm surprised that he decided to stay in the United States. Germany doesn't extradite its own citizens to countries outside the EU (except in very limited cases such as war criminals), so he would have been perfectly safe if he'd moved back to Germany. And even if he would have been sentenced in Germany the sentences handed out in such cases are _much_ more relaxed than the potential sentence he's facing in the United States.
- londons_explore 10y agoMaybe he was an american? He wouldn't have citizenship in Germany then.
- bluGill 10y agoGermany will extradite in most cases. Here is the treaty if you want to read the fine print http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Germany%20International%20Extradition%20Treaty%20with%20the%20United%20States.pdf http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Germany%20International%20Ex...
- germanier 10y agoArticle 7 clearly states that they are not required to extradite their own citizens and the German constitution actually prohibits extraditing German citizens to outside the EU (Art. 16. Abs. 2).
- xenadu02 10y agoIt's called "Faling on your sword". The idea that VW would come out of this with no executives going to prison is laughable. They broke black-letter law. It wasn't just recklessness. There is no plausible deniability. They straight-up cheated. They knew they cheated. Management endorsed the cheating. When the initial investigation got going they lied about cheating. My guess is a number of execs will plead guilty before this is all over.
- mattybrennan 10y agoI wouldn't have taken the jail time for granted. Goldman Sachs managed to escape their admitted fraud with no executives going to jail.
- JohnGB 10y agoI wonder if the same would have happened to an American company in the USA. If so, what's the deal with the bankers that did orders of magnitude more damage?
- josu 10y agoIt would be interesting to see the opposite too, an American GM or Ford executive being arrested in Europe.
- edanm 10y agoI think it depends on whether they did anything illegal. Doing damage is not by itself enough to arrest anyone, there has to be something illegal about having acted in the way that caused the damage.
- mpweiher 10y ago> I think it depends on whether they did anything illegal. Less than you might think. Have you seen Three Felonies a Day[1] ? Or heard of "indict a ham sandwich"[2]? The law being what it is today, and prosecutorial discretion being what it is, it is almost entirely up to whether someone wants to prosecute. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp... [2] http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/indict_a_ham_sandwich/ http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/indi...
- eumoria 10y agoHarley Davidson was caught doing the same emissions scam and no one seems to care. Granted there's less vehicles from them compared to the 11 million Volks but still.
- sbov 10y agoDoesn't seem to be the same from what I can tell. AFAIK the Harley Davidson "defeat device" would still emit unacceptable levels of emissions during an emissions test. And that they were intended for track/racing use. This is very different from purposefully hiding your emissions levels from testers. Whether that difference is material when meting out punishment is up to judgement. But calling it "no different" seems pretty wrong.
- jdimov11 10y agoTitle is wrong. Should be "US-based competition paid FBI to arrest VW exec because why not heh. Good timing. "
- madihaawan 10y agoNowadays, I am seeing many cases of cyber bullying, FBI attacks etc. It means that we are not saved,
- zde 10y agoI don't get this. VW (and other car manufacturers) did NOT cheat. Their cars have (AFAIK) passed all the emission tests required. Do they produce more emissions outside the test envelope? You cry on wrong grave then...
- snsr 10y agoVW did cheat, the cars produce more emissions when not being tested, and it looks like their executives lied about it. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/international/vw-diesel-emissions-scandal-explained.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/internation...
- ddeck 10y agoCars aren't only required to pass emissions tests, they're required to have their emissions within the specified limits at all times. The purpose of the tests is to ensure compliance.
- zde 10y ago/sarc?
- londons_explore 10y agoThis is not the case. If it were the case, the regulations would say "No more than X NOX emitted per mile, even when climbing Mount Everest, even when 5 years old, even when poorly maintained, and even when used with low quality fuel, and in all other conditions anyone might put them in." That clearly isn't reasonable, so instead the rules are written to say "They must pass XYZ tests". As long as those tests are passed, they meet the standard. IMO, the main culprit here is the lawmakers for not correctly designing the rules and test procedures to be sufficiently realistic. Specifically, they shouldn't allow the CO2 test and NOX tests to be done in different conditions. They should instead say "your car will be assigned to one member of EPA staff every day for a month. They will drive their regular daily journeys with it, and all emissions recorded. If you aren't happy with the test results (for example due to a cold week), you may ask for a retest.".
- swiley 10y agoA lot of compliance tests are like this. Most companies run different software during tests than they would in the field and are just expected to have the product behave similarly in good faith. It's one of the best arguments for open source firmware IMO.
- dhosek 10y agoDon't worry, VAG will invest in a Trump property and all the charges will be dropped.
- bflesch 10y agoThis is way overdue. Unfortunately in Germany they don't touch VW executives at all. You could build the same cases here, but there is no political will. Our corrupt ministry of transportation even sends out their reports on the VW fraud scandal over to Volkswagen and lets them review/amend/retract passages of their report. You can't make that shit up. It's a disgrace to Germany and the EU that this company has so much leverage.
- athenot 10y agoIt's called the Home Advantage. Ford/GM enjoy that in the US so if this scandal were to take place at those companies, you'd see harsher action in Europe than in the US.
- bflesch 10y agoIt's called corruption and cover-up of criminal activities, and should be prosecuted that way.
- dba7dba 10y agoEverybody roots for their local boys. The only court system that gave Apple a major win over Samsung in the patent case was in Silicon Valley, CA. Not in Germany, Japan, and other 3rd party countries...
- tn13 10y agoAre we supposed to say well done Sherlock?