You get it. To make the concept of accountability operational requires some standard of accounting. The historical accountability for a business agent meant t

You get it. To make the concept of accountability operational requires some standard of accounting. The historical accountability for a business agent meant to literally present oneself and provide an explanation. That where the term "accounting" comes from. But different systems have different systems of account. Firm management is accountable to the board via budgets, reports, presentations, and interviews as described in the incorporation documents. Publicly-traded firms are accountable via quarterly filings. Legal disputes require physical presence and verbal interrogation. But your example of a debugging session or logs and register traces are also an accounting! But not one admissible in traditional forums. They usually require an expert witness to provided the interpretation and voice I/O for the process. The reason you can't accost the CEO of Boeing isn't because they aren't accountable. It's because they aren't accountable to you! Accountability isn't a general property of a thing, it is a relationship between two parties. The CEO of Boeing is accountable to his board. Your contract was with Delta (or whoever) to provide transport. You have no contract with Boeing. You are 100% right that the average consumer often zero rights to accountability. Between mandatory arbitration, rights waivers, web-only interfaces, and 6-hour call-centre wait times, big companies do a pretty good job of reducing their accountability to their customers. Real accountability is expensive.