Comment by crazygringo
3 years ago
Generally I'm not part of the crowd that wants to send CEO's and management to jail for what are ultimately just bad business decisions.
But this should absolutely result in jail time. This is literally no different from if the managers of the company physically snuck into trainyards and snipped wires and removed valves or whatever.
It's literally just sabotage. It's a crime that should result in years of jail time for everyone in management who participated in this decision.
Yup. And this isn't sabotaging some random webshit SaaS. This is sabotaging critical national infrastructure - infrastructure that's of military relevance, and need I remind anyone, there's a hot war being waged over our eastern border right now.
I feel a good enough prosecutor could pin charges of treason here.
As much as I like to rake the executives over the coal for this, I'm disturbed by the trend of calling anything vaguely against the national interest as "treason". Nowadays if I hear someone is accused of treason absent any context, it could mean anywhere between "knowingly selling nukes to iran" to "lobbied for/against a policy that the accuser thinks is bad". In this case they're arguably scamming the government out of money, but that can hardly be compared to the crime knowingly aiding a known adversary.
> In this case they're arguably scamming the government out of money, but that can hardly be compared to the crime knowingly aiding a known adversary.
If you're crippling infrastructure then you are inherently then you're most certainly aiding adversaries. You cannot fight an adversary if you cannot get goods moved.
If you're scamming the government out of money then you are inherently aiding adversaries. You cannot fight an adversary if you are penniless.
It sounds very comparable to me.
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People are tired and demand better. It's a spectrum for sure, but crossing the line is crossing the line.
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> In this case they're arguably scamming the government out of money, but that can hardly be compared to the crime knowingly aiding a known adversary.
I don't really get your argument. In this case they're intentionally crippling a capability of the Polish state. There does not appear to be any particular intended beneficiary (other than themselves), but any and all enemies of the Polish state foreseeably benefit when the Polish state's abilities are curtailed.
Furthermore, the general understanding of treason does not require aiding a known adversary - it requires attacking, injuring, or otherwise betraying whoever has authority over you.
> I'm disturbed by the trend of calling anything vaguely against the national interest as "treason".
I guess what I'm saying here is that this involves something that is contrary to the national interest in very specific ways. The connection is not vague.
If I'm an American and I arrange to kidnap Joe Biden and hold him for ransom, does that sound like "treason" to you? All I want is money. But someone might think there's an important difference between the effect I'm trying to produce and the effect I actually do produce.
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It's passenger train. No more "critical national infrastructure" than city bus.
It's not like you couldn't transport troops on a passenger train, so I'd say may they never see the light of day again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. In reality though, I doubt this will result in any serious repercussions for whoever called the shots.
While passenger trains nor city buses are not likely to be used for troops transports, passenger trains and city buses would most definitely be used in the transportation of civilians to places of safety – both modes of transport could be considered critical national infrastructure in a time of crisis.
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It's some two dozen passenger trains.
There are update logs of the train software. Because of them it is known that workers of the company literally snuck into waiting trains and updated the software without the owners knowing. So really, but far from that.
Oooh, now that's fascinating. What you say is known because of update logs wasn't in the article that I recall. Could you kindly provide a reference to where you learned this part of the story? Thanks!
> Generally I'm not part of the crowd that wants to send CEO's and management to jail for what are ultimately just bad business decisions.
This attitude is rare. Much more common is wanting to send them to jail for deliberately breaking the law -- or presiding over widespread flouting of the law by other management. E.g. The Wells Fargo cross selling scandal created literally millions of fraudulent accounts, and nobody went to jail.
>or presiding over widespread flouting of the law by other management. E.g. The Wells Fargo cross selling scandal created literally millions of fraudulent accounts, and nobody went to jail.
"presiding over widespread flouting of the law" isn't a crime though, and it's difficult to make that a crime without running into due process issues (eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea)
I think calling it gross negligence and making it criminal is fine.
The implication of running a company is that you're charge. Obviously you can't control every employee so one offs are fine, but at a certain level of widespreadness it becomes a matter of, well, gross negligence.