9 ms·

IMO everyone related to a corporate crime should be responsible. If a company dumps toxic waste in to a river, the person who pressed the dump button, the perso

IMO everyone related to a corporate crime should be responsible. If a company dumps toxic waste in to a river, the person who pressed the dump button, the person who told them to and any management that signed off on the idea should all be personally as responsible as if I just took a bucket and walked down to the local river. Perhaps some exceptions for people who could not be expected to understand the law, for example an untrained retail staff being tricked in to violating laws usually only understood by management or legal teams.

Escapado 6y ago
And with (financial) protection for those who refuse to partake and report the crime. I guess the person pressing the dump button would usually make just above minimum wage and would be considered unimportant enough to fire if he stood up for what's right so there is no incentive except for a moral one which I would argue is not enough for most people.
- Spivak 6y ago
  As much as the liberal-libertarian crowd on HN likes to be vocal against most forms of government licensure, protection from ethical breaches like this is one of the best things about them. You can tell your employer to pound sand because neither you nor anyone they could replace you with will be willing to risk their license to do something unethical. And even if they could find someone sketch to try and push it through you’re protected by your professional review board.
  - hurt_and_afraid 6y ago
    I really love this term you've used: 'liberal-libertarian'. It succintly sums up the odd attitudes held by so many posters who barrack so strongly for near-radical left-wing views, and then balk at the idea of holding corporations even remotely responsible for their actions.
  - bitcharmer 6y ago
    I'm not leftist and I haven't observed any strong bias here. HN crowd is leftist only by US standards but then US is a country where most people think public health care is communism.
    - adventured 6y ago
      ~42%-45% of the US population is in Medicaid, Medicare or other government healthcare solutions. It's very clear that most people in the US do not think socialized / public healthcare is tantamount to Communism. The US is left leaning compared to the majority of all nations. Besides that, the US is far more progressive than eg Europe in many respects (and that's ignoring parts of Europe still ruled by actual fascism and dictatorship, countries where it's perfectly legal to beat your wife if you so choose and being gay is practically a crime). In the majority of Europe gay marriage is still illegal. How much more regressive and backwards can you get? The US is at least a decade ahead of Europe when it comes to gay rights and identity / gender matters. In Denmark they're committing vast human rights violations against minority Muslims while the world looks the other way. Is that left by US standards? I don't see the US forcing cultural eradication upon Muslims or taking their children away from them and indoctrinating them with nationalistic propaganda. Across Western Europe de facto Neo Nazi parties hold immense political power. In France Macron has practically declared open cultural war against Muslims. Formerly open immigration nations like Sweden have become hyper xenophobic and have locked down access. Neo Nazism is rampant in Germany and so is xenophobia. Meanwhile the US is one of the few affluent nations on the planet that still welcomes the poor and the non-skilled, you don't need to be rich or successful to immigrate into the US (and that's before Biden's Presidency begins, in which the Democrats will dramatically liberalize immigration). Progressiveness is vanishing from Europe, while the US is becoming more progressive by the decade. So where are all these nations around the world that are a lot further left than the US? There are maybe a dozen, tops. The US now spends more on its welfare state as a share of its economy than either Canada or Australia. In the next 10-15 years it'll catch up to Britain on that point. The US is also progressing much faster on drug decriminalization and legalization than Europe is. And half of Europe is guaranteed to remain backwards, regressive, on all of the previously mentioned items.
      - 6y ago
- hchz 6y ago
  CWA, CAA, CERCLA, and RCRA provide these protections for whistleblowers and a framework for financial incentives, though these incentives are paltry compared to SEC whistleblower rewards. https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations https://www.whistleblowers.gov https://www.whistleblowers.gov
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    The problem is also that the power imbalance is severely stacked against the whistleblower. Sure, retaliation isn't allowed, but it's a far stretch to think it doesn't happen. I've seen it happen, or what probably was retaliation, but how do I know for sure? They said the person wasn't competent or doing their job when they got fired. I don't know for sure if that was true, but I do know they reported significant theft that would likely have involved someone higher up, and not long afterwards he was fired.
    - hchz 6y ago
      My point was only that such protections and rewards already exist. I find it obvious that such retaliation happens, otherwise it would be strange to have such laws.
wpietri 6y ago
I agree, and I would go slightly farther. One of the lessons the mortgage bubble taught us is how much executives benefit from plausible deniability. For corporate crime, I think the standard of "knew or should have known" should apply. If CEOs are going to hoover up a lot of the profits when things go right, they should hold at least as much responsibility when things go wrong on their watch.
- harry8 6y ago
  For criminal behaviour from the organisation, the burden of proof needs to be reversed. The CEO should need to prove they did not know and did not endorse tacitally or otherwise and would have reacted strongly to prevent and effectively sanction those responsible if they had found out in advance. It's their job to know. Only if they are a victim of a genuine criminal conspiracy performed by other employees and it can be shown without the CEO's knowledge should there be any defence. CEO's are quite happy to tell people to do things without telling them to do the thing. That has been going on for centuries. Shakespeare wrote whole plays about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
  - will_pseudonym 6y ago
    OT, but "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" reminds me of a funny Mitchell and Webb sketch about evil villains using ambiguous phrases when ordering their henchmen to kill someone. (NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cake3bwnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cake3bwnY
    - interestica 6y ago
      Corporations will hire 'plausible deniability officers' specifically to obfuscate decisions.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    I don't think CEO is the right level. It may be the top position with high pay, but a CEO is so high up the food-chain that they touch very little. Any level of management with a direct responsibility is where blame should lie.
gameman144 6y ago
I like the concept of this, but it seems like it'd be tough to validate that something was actually illegal from the individual actor's level. For instance, if management made clear that the hack here was illegal, the individual person doing the typing is just as culpable. It seems like it'd be very easy to mask that from above, however (e.g. telling a junior developer that there was a contract with Songkick and they needed to just do a database dump).
- rectang 6y ago
  > I like the concept of this, but it seems like it'd be tough to validate that something was actually illegal from the individual actor's level. By design. The corporate structure of plausible deniability protects executives, and ultimately shareholders, when lower level actors are subtly "encouraged" to commit criminal behavior which advantages the company — and then cut loose if they get caught. The incentives provide a strong force ensuring corporate criminality in the aggregate which completely overwhelms the weak force discouraging it at the individual level.
- saghm 6y ago
  Okay, so whoever lied about there being a contract (and anyone who authorizatied the lie) should be culpable.
  - canofbars 6y ago
    I guess the problem is the higher ups know not to put any of this on record and the new person doesn't know that they should be recording this info so when it gets investigated its all "I never told him to do that".
Uhhrrr 6y ago
Should be that the board of directors is responsible.
himinlomax 6y ago
> the person who pressed the dump button That person would often be paid minimum wage, have at best a high school education and so on. That may not exactly be fair in all cases.
nswest23 6y ago
plausible deniability at every level makes this impossible.
wieghant 6y ago
During my time in conscription, one thing that stuck with me was 'Forbidden Order'. If a superior gives you an order that violates set rules or laws (e.g shoot civilians). You HAVE to obey and BOTH parties will be accountable. It's crazy how severity of ignoring an order can be worse than tribunal. However I totally agree with accountability. Though corps would figure out a way to weasel past this regardless.

Escapado 6y ago

And with (financial) protection for those who refuse to partake and report the crime. I guess the person pressing the dump button would usually make just above minimum wage and would be considered unimportant enough to fire if he stood up for what's right so there is no incentive except for a moral one which I would argue is not enough for most people.

Spivak 6y ago
As much as the liberal-libertarian crowd on HN likes to be vocal against most forms of government licensure, protection from ethical breaches like this is one of the best things about them. You can tell your employer to pound sand because neither you nor anyone they could replace you with will be willing to risk their license to do something unethical. And even if they could find someone sketch to try and push it through you’re protected by your professional review board.
- hurt_and_afraid 6y ago
  I really love this term you've used: 'liberal-libertarian'. It succintly sums up the odd attitudes held by so many posters who barrack so strongly for near-radical left-wing views, and then balk at the idea of holding corporations even remotely responsible for their actions.
- bitcharmer 6y ago
  I'm not leftist and I haven't observed any strong bias here. HN crowd is leftist only by US standards but then US is a country where most people think public health care is communism.
  - adventured 6y ago
    ~42%-45% of the US population is in Medicaid, Medicare or other government healthcare solutions. It's very clear that most people in the US do not think socialized / public healthcare is tantamount to Communism. The US is left leaning compared to the majority of all nations. Besides that, the US is far more progressive than eg Europe in many respects (and that's ignoring parts of Europe still ruled by actual fascism and dictatorship, countries where it's perfectly legal to beat your wife if you so choose and being gay is practically a crime). In the majority of Europe gay marriage is still illegal. How much more regressive and backwards can you get? The US is at least a decade ahead of Europe when it comes to gay rights and identity / gender matters. In Denmark they're committing vast human rights violations against minority Muslims while the world looks the other way. Is that left by US standards? I don't see the US forcing cultural eradication upon Muslims or taking their children away from them and indoctrinating them with nationalistic propaganda. Across Western Europe de facto Neo Nazi parties hold immense political power. In France Macron has practically declared open cultural war against Muslims. Formerly open immigration nations like Sweden have become hyper xenophobic and have locked down access. Neo Nazism is rampant in Germany and so is xenophobia. Meanwhile the US is one of the few affluent nations on the planet that still welcomes the poor and the non-skilled, you don't need to be rich or successful to immigrate into the US (and that's before Biden's Presidency begins, in which the Democrats will dramatically liberalize immigration). Progressiveness is vanishing from Europe, while the US is becoming more progressive by the decade. So where are all these nations around the world that are a lot further left than the US? There are maybe a dozen, tops. The US now spends more on its welfare state as a share of its economy than either Canada or Australia. In the next 10-15 years it'll catch up to Britain on that point. The US is also progressing much faster on drug decriminalization and legalization than Europe is. And half of Europe is guaranteed to remain backwards, regressive, on all of the previously mentioned items.
    - 6y ago
hchz 6y ago
CWA, CAA, CERCLA, and RCRA provide these protections for whistleblowers and a framework for financial incentives, though these incentives are paltry compared to SEC whistleblower rewards. https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations https://www.whistleblowers.gov https://www.whistleblowers.gov
- ineedasername 6y ago
  The problem is also that the power imbalance is severely stacked against the whistleblower. Sure, retaliation isn't allowed, but it's a far stretch to think it doesn't happen. I've seen it happen, or what probably was retaliation, but how do I know for sure? They said the person wasn't competent or doing their job when they got fired. I don't know for sure if that was true, but I do know they reported significant theft that would likely have involved someone higher up, and not long afterwards he was fired.
  - hchz 6y ago
    My point was only that such protections and rewards already exist. I find it obvious that such retaliation happens, otherwise it would be strange to have such laws.

wpietri 6y ago

I agree, and I would go slightly farther. One of the lessons the mortgage bubble taught us is how much executives benefit from plausible deniability. For corporate crime, I think the standard of "knew or should have known" should apply. If CEOs are going to hoover up a lot of the profits when things go right, they should hold at least as much responsibility when things go wrong on their watch.

harry8 6y ago
For criminal behaviour from the organisation, the burden of proof needs to be reversed. The CEO should need to prove they did not know and did not endorse tacitally or otherwise and would have reacted strongly to prevent and effectively sanction those responsible if they had found out in advance. It's their job to know. Only if they are a victim of a genuine criminal conspiracy performed by other employees and it can be shown without the CEO's knowledge should there be any defence. CEO's are quite happy to tell people to do things without telling them to do the thing. That has been going on for centuries. Shakespeare wrote whole plays about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
- will_pseudonym 6y ago
  OT, but "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" reminds me of a funny Mitchell and Webb sketch about evil villains using ambiguous phrases when ordering their henchmen to kill someone. (NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cake3bwnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cake3bwnY
  - interestica 6y ago
    Corporations will hire 'plausible deniability officers' specifically to obfuscate decisions.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  I don't think CEO is the right level. It may be the top position with high pay, but a CEO is so high up the food-chain that they touch very little. Any level of management with a direct responsibility is where blame should lie.

gameman144 6y ago

I like the concept of this, but it seems like it'd be tough to validate that something was actually illegal from the individual actor's level. For instance, if management made clear that the hack here was illegal, the individual person doing the typing is just as culpable. It seems like it'd be very easy to mask that from above, however (e.g. telling a junior developer that there was a contract with Songkick and they needed to just do a database dump).

rectang 6y ago
> I like the concept of this, but it seems like it'd be tough to validate that something was actually illegal from the individual actor's level. By design. The corporate structure of plausible deniability protects executives, and ultimately shareholders, when lower level actors are subtly "encouraged" to commit criminal behavior which advantages the company — and then cut loose if they get caught. The incentives provide a strong force ensuring corporate criminality in the aggregate which completely overwhelms the weak force discouraging it at the individual level.
saghm 6y ago
Okay, so whoever lied about there being a contract (and anyone who authorizatied the lie) should be culpable.
- canofbars 6y ago
  I guess the problem is the higher ups know not to put any of this on record and the new person doesn't know that they should be recording this info so when it gets investigated its all "I never told him to do that".

Uhhrrr 6y ago

Should be that the board of directors is responsible.

himinlomax 6y ago

> the person who pressed the dump button That person would often be paid minimum wage, have at best a high school education and so on. That may not exactly be fair in all cases.

nswest23 6y ago

plausible deniability at every level makes this impossible.

wieghant 6y ago

During my time in conscription, one thing that stuck with me was 'Forbidden Order'. If a superior gives you an order that violates set rules or laws (e.g shoot civilians). You HAVE to obey and BOTH parties will be accountable. It's crazy how severity of ignoring an order can be worse than tribunal. However I totally agree with accountability. Though corps would figure out a way to weasel past this regardless.