3 ms·

Not necessarily. A lot of prisons these days have pretty good work-release programs.

by uptown 4y ago

siva7 4y ago
But the engineers didn't know, they're innocent
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  Please tell me people are not this naive? Look, I'm fairly certain Cerebral has not incurred any criminal liability here. I could be wrong, but based on the information available right now, I don't think they have anything to worry about. That said, if new information comes to light, and it turns out crimes were committed, you can't say "I didn't know." You can't seriously believe that you can help someone commit a crime, and not incur any criminal liability for that act on the grounds of ignorance? Do you think you can be caught with drugs at an airport and expect to be released because "you didn't know" they were there? Engineers, please protect yourselves. It doesn't matter what legal relationship you have with your employer, one of the first principals of criminal law you're exposed to in law school is that one cannot contract away criminal liability. It's not possible. Keep this in mind when you're working at whatever random crypto firm you're at that wants to build an "exchange". Keep it in mind when you're working at Boeing and they ask you to sign a quality document for a part you worked on. Keep it in mind when you're working at a health care startup and they ask you to sign the quality documents they need to register with the FDA for 510(k). (By the way, the way the attorney at my first medical imaging startup explained it to us, each signature is a single count. So you signed a document and initialed it in 7 places? OK, guess what? That's 8 counts of lying to the federal government when everything goes south. We were advised to always keep that in mind.)
  - yawnxyz 4y ago
    Then how come you don't hear many engineers working at big banks who regularly break the law get slapped with either jail time or fines? Actually curious— are there any examples of engineers getting jail (or even fined) for being an employee at a company that did a lot of wrongdoing? Even for Theranos, I don't think any regular scientists were on the hook?

Not necessarily. A lot of prisons these days have pretty good work-release programs.

by uptown 4y ago

Not necessarily. A lot of prisons these days have pretty good work-release programs.

siva7 4y ago

But the engineers didn't know, they're innocent

bilbo0s 4y ago
Please tell me people are not this naive? Look, I'm fairly certain Cerebral has not incurred any criminal liability here. I could be wrong, but based on the information available right now, I don't think they have anything to worry about. That said, if new information comes to light, and it turns out crimes were committed, you can't say "I didn't know." You can't seriously believe that you can help someone commit a crime, and not incur any criminal liability for that act on the grounds of ignorance? Do you think you can be caught with drugs at an airport and expect to be released because "you didn't know" they were there? Engineers, please protect yourselves. It doesn't matter what legal relationship you have with your employer, one of the first principals of criminal law you're exposed to in law school is that one cannot contract away criminal liability. It's not possible. Keep this in mind when you're working at whatever random crypto firm you're at that wants to build an "exchange". Keep it in mind when you're working at Boeing and they ask you to sign a quality document for a part you worked on. Keep it in mind when you're working at a health care startup and they ask you to sign the quality documents they need to register with the FDA for 510(k). (By the way, the way the attorney at my first medical imaging startup explained it to us, each signature is a single count. So you signed a document and initialed it in 7 places? OK, guess what? That's 8 counts of lying to the federal government when everything goes south. We were advised to always keep that in mind.)
- yawnxyz 4y ago
  Then how come you don't hear many engineers working at big banks who regularly break the law get slapped with either jail time or fines? Actually curious— are there any examples of engineers getting jail (or even fined) for being an employee at a company that did a lot of wrongdoing? Even for Theranos, I don't think any regular scientists were on the hook?