Should programmers perform unethical or illegal work?

Last week, a post appeared on the Web written by the programmer and teacher Bill Souuro. It's called "Code I'm ashamed of."

How the discussion began among programmers

In his post, Sourur tells the horrible story of a young programmer who got a job and was tasked with creating a website for a pharmaceutical company. The whole post is worth reading, but the point is that the programmer had to help the company create a cheating ad that was supposed to convince young women to take this or that drug.

Later, he learned that the drug was known for its ability to aggravate depression and at least one young woman committed suicide by taking it. He also learned that his sister was taking this medicine, and warned her about the consequences.

But even decades later he still feels guilty about this work. To write this post he was inspired by Robert Martin's talk titled "The Future of Programming". Martin is a popular personality in the world of programmers, although here he is better known as "Uncle Bob".

Software developers "kill people"

In this conversation, Martin argues that software developers need to find out what they take responsibility for, and it needs to be done quickly. "Let's decide what it means to be a programmer," says Martin in the video. "Civilization depends on us, although it does not understand this until now."

The fact is that in the modern world everything we do, including buying things, phone calls, driving cars, flying in airplanes, can not do without software. Dozens of people have already been killed by faulty software in cars, while hundreds have died for the same reason during air travel.

"We kill people," says Martin. - We came into this business not to do it. But the situation only gets worse. "

New issues

Martin noted that, in his opinion, there are signs that developers in the coming years will increasingly face some real problems. He cited the example of Volkswagen's CEO in America, Michael Horn, who first accused software engineers of the emissions that companies produce. During the scandal that erupted during the hearings in Congress, Horne stated that the programmers acted on their own "for one reason or another". Later, Horn resigned after US prosecutors accused the company of making this decision at the highest level and trying to hide it.

But Martin said: "The most bizarre was the behavior of software developers who wrote this code. Some programmers wrote code that helped the company break the law. Do you think they could have known about this? I think they probably knew. "

Call to action

Martin ended his speech with a call to action, in which he warned that one day a software developer would do something that would lead to a catastrophe that would kill tens of thousands of people.

But Souror points out that it's not just about accidental killing of people or deliberate air pollution. Firms on Wall Street are already using software to manipulate stock quotes. "This could not happen without any programmer who creates fake orders," says Sowor.

Recognition of programmers

Post Sourora appeared on Hacker News and Reddit and caused the publication of a long list of confessions from programmers about unethical and sometimes illegal things that they were asked to perform.

One wrote about his work in a company that signed people for their bulletins by e-mail even after they refused them (which could violate federal law). The programmers then wrote scripts to help the company's sellers determine the targeted audience. When this guy told the technical director his opinion about the unethical nature of this work, he was ordered to write a statement of resignation. And now, he said, these same programmers are working on startups to determine a huge array of data about the location of people.

Another programmer was hired by writing software for the radio device. He was asked to use the channels reserved for rescue services, since this would speed up the operation of the device. "It's faster, but illegal, and it's dangerous in case of emergencies," he said. He refused to fulfill this order, but says there is always a programmer who is ready to follow orders without question.

Another programmer said that during the internship he was given some code copied from the site of competitors. The guy was asked to create a demo version for investors on his basis. He realized that the leadership needed to deceive them.

There was also a story about how another programmer was asked to change a backup of some financial data and run the annual report again, by restoring the backup copy of the changed one. This programmer refused the assignment. A few years later, he learned that his former customers had been arrested for tax evasion.

One programmer also said that most recently he was asked to create a gambling game for children under the guise of one that is aimed at managing resources. According to him, he no longer works for this company.

Lack of ethics

A common theme among all these stories is that if a developer refuses to do such work, the company will simply find someone else who could do it. Perhaps this is true now, but may soon change.

"We rule the world," Martin said. "Other people believe that they rule the world." But in fact they only write down the rules and pass them on to us. And then we write the rules that help the machines work and fulfill all that is necessary for humanity. "

Martin warned that if programmers do not begin to take responsibility for their actions now, after some apocalyptic event that can kill thousands of people, legislators will start doing it for them, dictating all the rules of the work, up to the language that they will be allowed to use.

Solution

The obvious solution is to teach the basics of ethics. And they are largely obligatory for every student of computer science who graduated from a four-year program of study. The Bible of this course should be the work of the author Sarah Baas "A gift of fire: social, legal and ethical problems for computers."

Unfortunately, many of today's software developers are self-taught or are learning through the so-called Bootcamps encoding.

In this case, their education rarely includes any kind of training on ethical issues. Particular attention should be paid to people who can write code very quickly to satisfy a growing and insatiable market.

Sowor calls on all programmers who use Bootcamps and online learning sites to start talking about the ethical responsibilities that come with writing code.

Work control

But what programmers really need is an organization that will manage them and regulate their profession. Other branches, as is known, already have such control for a long time. At present there is nothing like this for developers, although the Association for Computing Engineering has already started creating ethical documents for programmers.