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How Did Volkswagen Cheat Emissions Tests, and Who Authorized It?
Lucas123 writes: The method by which Volkswagen diesel cars were able to thwart emissions tests and spew up to 40X the nitrogen oxide levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency was relatively simple. It was more likely no more than a single line of code used to detect when an emissions test was being performed and place the emissions system in an alternate mode — something as simple as a software "on/off" switch. Volkswagen AG CEO Martin Winterkorn, who stepping down as the result of his company's scandal, has said he had no knowledge of the emissions cheat, but software dev/test audit trails are almost certain to pinpoint who embedded the code and who authorized it. You can actually see who asked the developer to write that code," said Nikhil Kaul, a product manager at test/dev software maker SmartBear Software. "Then if you go upstream you can see who that person's boss was...and see if testing happened...and, if testing didn't happen. So you can go from the bottom up to nail everyone."
Correction: "You can nail everyone that's in the official audit trail."
The people at the top that authorized it (or at least didn't condemn it) probably never actually sent a traceable e-mail to anyone. Nor did they touch any code. Nor do they appear in any meeting minutes. These sorts of discussions tend to happen over a drink in a bar somewhere, and for good reason.
It's cute how he thinks no one thought about this and sanitized the audit trail. I'm sure he also thinks his 4096-bit disk encryption thwarts even the most determined ne'er-do-wells.
#DeleteChrome
I *highly* doubt it was a single line of code. To toggle the car's "EPA Cheat" mode, maybe, but by all accounts, the system used a variety of inputs to detect artificial driving conditions (including, apparently, barometer data), as well as needing code to define what engine parameters to change once the mode was entered.
I did get an email verifying that I had questioned it, but then I found out that all our emails are automatically deleted after 6 months or something like that.
Nothing prevents you from printing emails of instructions to implement dubious decisions. I've done this from time to time just to protect myself when I worked at a large company.
You get fired now, or you implement something dubious - what do you choose?
If it is clearly illegal or will be very likely to cause major problems then you should seriously consider walking. If it isn't so clear then you get them to document their instructions to you and you keep a copy (print if you have to) for your records to cover your ass should it be a problem down the line. Make sure you document your objections and make it clear that you have taken every reasonable effort to ensure that what you are doing is legal. If the decision is merely dumb but legal, same thing but don't worry so much about ensuring legality.
Professional Engineers have the power to say no and they have Ethics rules to fall back on.
Somebody knew, somebody high up knew, but I rather doubt that everyone on the engineering bench knew, and that means that they had to be fed plausible stories along the way.
Spare me. The engineers were the ones that eventually spilled the beans on this. They weren't fooled by some clever management strategy. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew or should have known that it was illegal. While maybe not every engineer involved knew, more than a few certainly did without question. The engineers at VW aren't dumb. I know a few personally. Please stop with the attempts to find clever ways to not have to blame the engineers who were guilty of helping to commit fraud. Management may have ordered the crime but the engineers were the ones that carried it out.
It's fascinating to see how many posters here automatically assume that it must be the PHBs who pressured the engineers into this. Very few assume that the engineers saw an opportunity for a bonus or for the PHB to owe them one, and added the cheat function voluntarily. I've not seen any posts so far that suggest an engineer thought of the cheat and suggested it to a PHB.
A reminder that we tend to think of our peers as being much more ethical than "them" and look for reasons to think of them as victims of force or circumstances, and assume that "they" are only motivated by sheer callous greed. Whoever the "them" is.
And I find it hilarious that everyone here states that programmers and engineers work without requirements or documentation. I've worked places where the verbal meeting would have the engineer agreeing with everything, then when it's not written in the requirements document and signed off by 10+ people, it doesn't get built. Seems like all the programmers on Slashdot have never worked in a company larger than 10 people.
Learn to love Alaska
It's an American thing.
Employers here don't care about holding onto skilled programmers or other skilled people, because PHBs think they can just hire replacements on a whim.
Yes, in reality new ones are hard to find and take a while to get up to speed. The PHBs will even acknowledge this when they're trying to hire.
But once they have one employed, they don't care about keeping him happy, because they think they're al interchangeable cogs.
If you're seeing a giant disconnect here, yes, there is. This is how American corporations think; it makes no sense at all. I can't explain it. It's the same phenomenon where corporations will give a big salary offer to a new engineer, but once he's employed there, they'll just freeze his salary or give him paltry CoL raises, while giving new hires even bigger salaries, causing employees to switch jobs every 2-4 years (in Silicon Valley, it's 12-18 months).
While it is likely this was a sin of commission it remains plausible that no one did this at all. My thinking is that if instead of being programmed explicity the computer program was allowed to train itself for it's emission and performance tuning that a very natural outcome would be for it to learn to minimize emissions during emission type testing. Then on the test track it would learn performance and handling. etc... and so you end up with something that cheats but no one told it to nor was anyone even trying to make it cheat. It's just the result of getting what you optimize for.
One reason that I like that theory is that if you consider the opposite, that it was a conspiracy, then this is not the sort of thing you can keep secret easily. You might succeed but that's pretty hard especially considering the time span and the inevitable entry of new personnel and suppliers into the supply chain. So I don't think this was intentional. The exception might be if if it's a conspiracy of one. that for some reason there was just one guy who could pull off everything. THen you would have a shot of keeping this secret.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.