Is there a programmer's criminal liability in case of death of people due to an error in the code?

Question

Law in IT

For example, in aircraft construction or medicine. Were there precedents?

Answer 1

The product is made not only by the programmer. There is testing that (usually) in aircraft and medicine takes more time than actual coding.
Well, there is a boss who, according to the testers' reports, decides whether the product is ready or not. But the programmer will obviously not be held criminally liable, except that the investigation of the incident will show that it was deliberate sabotage.

Answer 2

Does not exist. There is a Criminal Code, if it does not contain such responsibility, there can be no precedents.

Answer 3

Want to kill someone?

Answer 4

No.
Therefore, modern programmers are extremely lazy, irresponsible and write buggy, unreliable, heavy, inefficient, low-quality code. This is especially good for programmers in non-strict and dynamic languages ​​(PHP, Javascript, Ruby).
You can see that the code is the way I wrote it by looking at the source code of almost any site or application.

Answer 5

=P Probably you can try to pull for such a code. In general, in our country, obstetricians, firefighters and ... Programmers are not punished for mistakes =) Hooray!
if (user === "Иванов АА"){
voltage = 220;
}else{
voltage = 5;
}

Answer 6

What, screwed up somewhere?))
In fact, I don’t remember a single case. When multi-million satellites fell due to errors in the code, there seemed to be no special responsibility.

Answer 7

There is no direct specific law, but through the laws on malicious software, a programmer can be charged with everything from petty hooliganism to treason. Everything, of course, depends on the situation.
I personally, once faced with the fact that a programmer was presented with a very significant administrative violation for an error in the code. Not UK, but the scheme works.

Answer 8

Responsibility lies with whoever, oddly enough, is responsible for the product. It can be a project manager, a test manager, etc. etc. In big, serious projects, there is always someone who signs papers saying that everything is fine. It is for this reason that bosses usually get more money, as there is more responsibility.

Answer 9

Yes.
Read Greenberg's monograph "Technical Crimes", everything is there.
www.lawlibrary.ru/izdanie3687.html

Answer 10

Somewhere on Habré this question was already raised. Try searching.

Answer 11

I'm not sure, but it seems that for some cases, it can be attributed to criminal negligence.

Answer 12

Does not exist. Especially for a programmer. And who will sign up for it?

Answer 13

If a causal relationship is established, yes.

Answer 14

With a stretch, negligence can be attached here:

In accordance with the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Article 293), negligence is understood as the failure to perform or improper performance by an official of his duties due to dishonest or negligent attitude to the service, if this caused major damage, that is, damage, the amount of which exceeds one hundred thousand rubles. The punishment is aggravated in the event of negligent infliction of grievous bodily harm or death of a person.

However, any programmer makes mistakes in the code, which is why some particularly important software products need to be licensed (checked by the relevant organizations / bodies), and, accordingly, part of his responsibility is eroded. Plus, we must not forget about the most important stage - testing / debugging. This is not just a programmer. And a lot also depends on the testing methodology when sorting out “who is to blame”.
Actually, because of this, when accepting any pieces of hardware with software stuffing in areas where the life / health of people depends on it, they undergo all possible tests, a series of experiments, a run-in by testers, etc.

Answer 15

Of course not in Russia. But I read somewhere about the USA or saw that they have a private company that develops software for space systems and all developers subscribe under such responsibility. But this case is rather isolated and is an exception.

Answer 16

I have never heard of such a thing, in Russia at least this most likely does not exist. Of course, unless it falls under the article about malware, but there it is clearly not an accidental error.

Answer 17

Exist. I work with the programming of technical processes, so the responsibility is very sickly - I have to check both the code and the capabilities of the equipment ... and how can I not remember the disaster of a transport airbus whose engines were cut off due to an error in the code ... the disaster on Sayano-Shushenskaya ... many different cases, not all of them (and thank God) get into the media.