Re:

[Al Mac Wheel <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxx>]

There's also the burden of proof which person actually made the programming 
updates.

We had an employee off sick & needed to get into her PC password.
I think there's a real serious flaw in audit trails when some other person 
is in there using the name of the person the PC is normally used by.
An IT collegue said THIS IS WHY he needs to know everyone's passwords, and 
hates my practice of changing master security passwords every few months.

There's also the issue of code that might be legal at one time in history.
We write programs based on today reality, then reality changes, and we nmay 
be oblivious to what software is affected.
Are the tax rates correctly computed & updated when the tax rates change?

> I suspect there would be a burden of proof to prove that the programmer
> knew it was a crime, and that he intended to commit a crime.  The paper
> trail could become very important in that regard.
>
>
>
> Gary Monnier wrote:
> > I would hope you are correct but, I do not know for certain.  If a
> > programmer is directed to write code that violates the law and the code
> > is discovered is the programmer culpable?  I suspect the courts would
> > say yes but again, I do not know for certain.