Slashdot Mirror
FBI Arrests Volkswagen Executive On Charges Related To Dieselgate (cnet.com)
According to CNET, the FBI has arrested Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt over the weekend on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. relating to the ongoing Dieselgate emissions scandal. From the report: Schmidt headed VW's regulatory compliance office in the U.S. from 2014 to March 2015. The FBI's official Criminal Complaint states that during that time VW employees -- Schmidt included -- knowingly installed secret "defeat device" software in 475,000 diesel cars in the U.S., hiding during emissions testing the fact that those cars emitted up to 40 times the legally allowable pollution levels when on the road. The complaint asserts that by knowingly installing this secret cheat software, Schmidt and VW conspired to defraud the U.S. by impairing and impeding the Environmental Protection Agency and violating the Clean Air Act, leading to the arrest on Saturday. Schmidt is due to appear before a Federal Court in Miami on Monday.
What you gonna do if Bill Gates is ever involved in a scandal? Call it Gatesgate?
Here's hoping this leads to some actual changes.
Nope, no sig
Why is this worthy of Slashdot? This is just an executive being busted by the FBI.
Because the exec was responsible for validating code that was found to not be doing what he said it did.
Do you have anybody in your company doing QA? Or auditing code? Think they might be interested in this?
Nope, no sig
Speak for yourself. I find this, as a former developer, to be very interesting. People aren't generally arrested over bad programming. I couldn't care less about yet another review of whatever the latest el-cheapo hobbyist gadgets are.
I don't respond to AC's.
... or a banker. The whole financial system collapse in 2007 and banks knowingly laundering money for mexican drug cartels (look it up, I am not kidding) and not one arrest.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I agree. Since this boils down to someone writing software whose explicit purpose is to cheat on government-mandated tests, I'd say it's a very interesting technical story that involves a scenario that may play out in many areas of development. Being a programmer doesn't mean moral, ethical and legal considerations cease to exist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I expect they will be arresting Elizabeth Holmes as well? Or is this an American philosophy arrest, where defrauding the health of people isn't nearly as offensive as financially damaging defrauding.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
2007 financial crisis cost 22 trillion dollars, nobody was jailed.
love is just extroverted narcissism
About fucking time. How the bank robbers at Wells Fargo?
I do not see anybody 'down in the trenches' just out of the blue or love for the job decided to do it single-handed. I would be surprised any of the softies there realized this is very illegal. Ethically perhaps they may have doubts quickly resolved by their bosses.
I'd expect that in big corporation, like VW, the programmers are just gears in the machine. I am one for sure. They were told to improve test results and performance results. Sbdy (likely team+1/2 levels of mgnt) there decided to optimize these two cases separately hence detecting each use case. They even consulted this with VW legal team and upper mngmnt, got approval and went ahead. Than they all collected the bonuses.
If there is not written evidence for all of these then their document retention policies are "well tuned" albeit since they must be ISO9xxx certified they must have something left in the decision chain. Hence Schmidt was charged with conspiring to fraud, evidence must exist he knowingly allowed it as he's not charged with negligence of duties of sorts (AINAL).
4wdloop
Performance wise it was very good software, it "knew" when it was in a test environment and behaved in a manner totally at odds with normal day to day operation. Sadly for them, researchers began a study on emissions discrepancies between European and US models of vehicles, Portable Emissions Measurement Systems showed totally different values from test rig results and the rest is yet to be played out.
They would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky kids at the International Council on Clean Transportation!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Not quite true that *nobody* was jailed. Here are 35 bankers sent to prison:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/2...
Also some who didn't go to prison did get fines over over $100 million.
Compared to the 1980s S&L crisis, there were certainly fewer prosecutions. One career prosecutor who is knowledgeable about both says that one reason for that is the the Obama administration, unlike the Reagan administration, was hostile toward white-blowers who could have enabled prosecution.
Where my post says "white-blowers", that should be "whistle-blowers". In the 1980s, whistle-blowers gave leads to investigators and testified against bosses. The Obama administration has of course been hostile to whistle-blowers.
Take a look at page 64 of this presentation (PDF): http://roma.faster-it.de/temp/...
Some guys decompiled the firmware and found the tables that control the engine modes, based on time and distance travelled. Note how the very narrow low emissions bands match the European test cycles perfectly.
It was clearly very deliberately, very carefully planned, must have required extensive testing and couldn't have been done without the assistance of Bosch who designed the control unit.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC