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"You don't send an executive to jail because a guy several layers down did something wrong" Why not? You PAY him based on what that guy several layers down doe

by al2o3cr 13y ago

"You don't send an executive to jail because a guy several layers down did something wrong" Why not? You PAY him based on what that guy several layers down does...

fennecfoxen 13y ago
Because you send people to jail for committing crimes, actually doing things that violate the law. Simply being employed by a company to manage some lawbreaker isn't a crime. And if you'd like to propose making it a crime, I'd encourage you to first think about how exactly it could be twisted - how to separate the really-morally-responsible the scapegoats, in advance, with nothing but legal language.
- dspillett 13y ago
  You can go to prison for being an accessory if it can be shown that you were consciously aware that the crime was going on but did not stop/report it, or that you not being consciously aware is due to gross negligence on your part.
- dasil003 13y ago
  Of course the outrage comes from the fact that corporate structures offer so many layers of plausible deniability. At the end of the day, we would have to be fools to believe that billions in money laundering or price fixing are happening at these banks orchestrated, as the executives would have us believe, by a small group of malevolent peons expertly covering their tracks. It's just common sense that lots of people know what's going on and turn a blind eye because it's good for business and there's virtually no chance it'll actually get pinned on them.
- ajross 13y ago
  I think you're missing the point. The issue here is that we have two prosecution regimes at work: one for the banks which works by more or less the rules you propose, and one for "everyone else", which very much doesn't. Your idea of only prosecuting bank employees with direct connection to the crimes seems like cold comfort to all the people threatened with arrest, in prison (or hell, even shot) because of the activities of their husbands and roommates. Strangely, libertarian hacker types tend not to come to their defense as quickly as they do bank executives.
- rhizome 13y ago
  In the US, something like this is already a crime under Sarbanes-Oxley.

by al2o3cr 13y ago

"You don't send an executive to jail because a guy several layers down did something wrong" Why not? You PAY him based on what that guy several layers down does...

fennecfoxen 13y ago

Because you send people to jail for committing crimes, actually doing things that violate the law. Simply being employed by a company to manage some lawbreaker isn't a crime. And if you'd like to propose making it a crime, I'd encourage you to first think about how exactly it could be twisted - how to separate the really-morally-responsible the scapegoats, in advance, with nothing but legal language.

dspillett 13y ago
You can go to prison for being an accessory if it can be shown that you were consciously aware that the crime was going on but did not stop/report it, or that you not being consciously aware is due to gross negligence on your part.
dasil003 13y ago
Of course the outrage comes from the fact that corporate structures offer so many layers of plausible deniability. At the end of the day, we would have to be fools to believe that billions in money laundering or price fixing are happening at these banks orchestrated, as the executives would have us believe, by a small group of malevolent peons expertly covering their tracks. It's just common sense that lots of people know what's going on and turn a blind eye because it's good for business and there's virtually no chance it'll actually get pinned on them.
ajross 13y ago
I think you're missing the point. The issue here is that we have two prosecution regimes at work: one for the banks which works by more or less the rules you propose, and one for "everyone else", which very much doesn't. Your idea of only prosecuting bank employees with direct connection to the crimes seems like cold comfort to all the people threatened with arrest, in prison (or hell, even shot) because of the activities of their husbands and roommates. Strangely, libertarian hacker types tend not to come to their defense as quickly as they do bank executives.
rhizome 13y ago
In the US, something like this is already a crime under Sarbanes-Oxley.