Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did

https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

> The costs in this case were significant, with Vardy being ordered to pay a substantial proportion of Rooney’s legal fees. Initially, the court ordered Vardy to pay £1.5 million in costs, earlier this month, it was revealed that Vardy had been ordered to pay an additional £100,000, bringing the total to £1.6 million.

https://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/news/noel-clarke-ordered-to-pay-...

> In August, after a six week trial, the High Court upheld the Guardian’s defences of truth and public interest speech.

> The trial judge, Steyn J, has now ordered Mr Clarke to pay £3m on account within 28 days, in respect of a likely eventual costs liability of over £6m.

Those are cases where the defence won. But in those cases, (a) they have to front the legal fees themselves for a period of several years during the action and (b) there is a real risk that the person who filed the libel action may not be able to pay it.

It very risky for an individual to defend a libel action, so almost everyone folds instantly on receiving a letter, or settles.

An exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_v_Hopkins - peak Twitter, sadly. Fortunately in this case justice prevailed and Katie Hopkins lost her house and life savings.

I'm pretty sure the truth wasn't even a defense in UK libel law before 2013. It was entirely about whether you had the intent to harm someone. If you want to disrupt a thief's business, that's intent to harm someone, as a lot of people who wrote about quack doctors found out.

I would not have been surprised if the 5 million user thing was couched as some sort of "we need to generate some realistic test data to load test our systems - please create 5 million accounts very similar to these paying ones, remember this is testing so they need to be as realistic and believable as possible ".

If I got that request (perhaps without the winking!) come down the line through the usual channels I'd probably have gone along with it without realising it was for anything nefarious. ...but then would that be a viable defense?!

Context is everything.

The client saw my first version where I marked an "indeterminate" buffer zone to account for the precision problem. They complained it was "confusing" and insisted I use the raw value without any buffer. Oh, and also, round the numbers in such a way to put all indeterminate points inside the denial zone. This would effectively add hundreds of square miles to the denial zone. A denial zone set by law, i.e. this was the some the government was allowing the insurance company to blanket deny flood coverage.

Giving them the benefit of doubt, I explained that the proposed changes didn't make mathematical sense and would over count people near the edge of the denial zone. I had access to some market data at the time and was able to estimate it would be a few thousand extra homes. They did the standard "avoid acknowledging the issue" whenever someone is trying to pressure you into doing something unethical it illegal.

I told my boss at the consulting company. He started putting the screws on me. Told me we needed to do this. Told me my job was on the line. Intimated it would be hard to find a new job considering the client was the largest employer in the area. Told me he could get anyone to do it.

I had two weeks of PTO planned, during which I was supposed to come back to Pennsylvania and move my stuff out to Illinois. After my PTO, I was supposed to show back up in Illinois. Instead, I went to our HQ in PA (much to the surprise of everyone, "what are you doing here"), told the CEO what happened, and when he doubled down on doing the wrong thing, I quit on the spot, no notice period.

I learned later they did not "get anyone to do it". My actions put the contract in a lurch, the client dropped my former employer, and cancelled the project.

I feel pretty good about that one.

There have been other issues since then, but I've noticed a pattern. They always happen at places I had to talk myself into joining. There were red flags and I rationalized them away, "well, I'm just over reacting. I don't have any evidence anything is wrong here. It's just the way people talk that's bothering me. And I really need this job." Since I've gotten more stable and better about not taking jobs that show red flags, somehow the ethical issues seem to have magically gone away.