Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

All programmers beware

There was a time when writing computer code was a pretty low-risk occupation.

Unless you were writing the control systems for the world's nuclear weapons stockpile or critical medical software responsible for the control of life-support systems, you were unlikely to be facing prison-time for simply doing your job.

Sadly, a new precedent set in the USA last week has changed all that and effectively made the job of computer programmer a very high risk one -- if you value your freedom and a clean criminal record.

What am I talking about?

Well imagine if you worked in a car factory, building a popular brand of vehicle and it was discovered that that one of those vehicles (one of the ones *you* personally had a part in assembling) had been used in a hit-and-run accident. How would you feel if the police arrested you, the courts convicted you and you were imprisoned for manslaughter because you built that car?

Sounds impossible?

I would have thought so too... until last week.

It wasn't a car and it wasn't an auto-assembler who set this precedent however. It was Andrus Nõmm, one of the guys who programmed Kim Dotcom's MegaUpload system and he's now facing a year's jail because the software he wrote was used by the company which employed him to allegedly commit a crime.

Let's get it very clear -- Nõmm was working as a programmer, operating under the directives of MegaUpload to create a dropbox site which had many, many legitimate and totally legal uses -- just as the car that you and I drive every day does.

However, the outrageous thing about his case is that he is being held responsible for the crimes committed with the software he wrote -- just as an autoworker might (based on this precedent) be held accountable for the crimes of a hit-and-run driver or an armed robber who uses such a vehicle in the commission of his crimes.

This is totally outrageous and speaks to the manner in which powerful corporate forces are twisting the law in the USA so as to destroy the very concept of justice. Most commentators agree that the US authorities have "cut a deal" with Nõmm who has agreed to a short term in prison in return for copping a guilty plea and offering to testify against Kim Dotcom. The alternative would have almost certainly been to face a raft of far more serious (trumped up?) charges and years in court until he was bankrupted by legal fees -- with no hope of avoiding a much longer jail-term.

What should be worrying for us here in New Zealand is that those same forces are at work and have already convinced our government to commit "unlawful" acts against Kim Dotcom, as well as changing our employment laws to suit their diktats.

If you're a programmer... you're effectively now on notice that if that handy little program or app you've written gets used for nefarious purposes, you may find yourself doing jail time as a result.

Of course as is the case with all high-level corruption of the systems that are meant to protect not persecute us, this precedent will be applied at the whim of those who pull the strings. Don't expect to see any of the programmers responsible for creating Google Earth or Google Maps from facing jail-time when those services are used by criminals to plan heists or even terror attacks. However, if you're some "low hanging fruit" that the MPAA or RIAA decide is ripe for the picking then you might as well kiss your liberty goodbye because these two organisations seem to have bought the US and NZ justice systems lock, stock and barrel.

Part of any employment contract that you sign in future as a programmer must now include indemnity against the mis-use of the code you write whilst in that employ -- lest you also are held accountable for any potential illegal activities committed by others with code that you've simply created to a spec that others have presented you with.

Every day I grow more worried that this world is being over-taken by an ever-smaller group of ever-powerful people who show contempt for justice, fairness and the concept of egalitarianism. I seriously wonder if the ultimate outcome of this will be some rather violent and nasty uprisings within the ranks of the disenfranchised peoples of the Western world when they finally realise what has been taken from them.

Please visit the sponsor!

Have your say in the Aardvark Forums.

PERMALINK to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font