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This of course could place the company under serious fire for invading
users' privacy when we get found out. In fact, as far as my country's
laws go, it not only illegal, it is unconstitutional.

You're being asked to break the law and do things that might land you in prison or otherwise in serious trouble.

This argument fell on my CEO's deaf ears, citing the legalistic "terms
of service" that users would be made to agree upon, and he pointed out
in jest that I should not question his business ideas.

And you've already explained this to the CEO.

Your problem isn't how to explain it, your problem is how to get out before the business is shut down.

1) Document everything that is going on. You might need it for future "courtroom" reasons.

2) Get out.

If you want to try explaining it again you can talk about it being illegal and unconstitutional, but imho you're past the point where "the boss doesn't know" and into "he don't care".

Since your boss doesn't care that this is incredibly invasive, warn him that starting on Android Q, to be released later this year, Android will (finally) block apps from recording video and sound while not in the foreground. Therefore, it will be the same situation you have with iOS.

Of course it will take sometime until Android Q has a significant marketshare, but you could ask him if developing a functionality that will be rendered useless in the near future is worth the trouble.

Therefore, you don't need to be "diplomatic". You can show him hard, technical facts.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17091104/android-p-prevents-apps-using-mic-camera-idle-background

Disclaimer: I've misread the article. Apparently background recording is already blocked on Android P, the current version, which means there should already be a larger marketshare where this kind of stuff wouldn't work.

Since it seems that your CEO is either a bit clueless (at best) or morally bankrupt I don't think you're going to get anywhere with persuading them that this is abhorrent. Especially given they are just casually brushing off such fripperies as it being rather illegal. What you might have some success with is point out some of the myriad ways that this could easily become utterly ruinous for both them and the company.

e.g. If this "feature" captures images/video of an underage person getting changed - congratulations your company is now on the hook for producing, transmitting and storing indecent images of children! Can't see investors flocking to a company with that one on their record.

But I have to say why waste your time? At the end of the day scumbags gonna scumbag and life's too short to waste it working for or being diplomatic to scumbags. I'd honestly just recommend leaving as soon as you have something else to go to and make sure no-one you know ever installs or uses this app or anything else the company produces.

1) Document everything, starting now. You will likely need it.

2) Do not start building this feature. Do not prioritize it, do not write tickets for it, do not task your team with anything to do with it.

3) If management wants to chastise you over dereliction of duty, allow them to do so, and simply ignore everything they say. Document these situations as well.

4) Go as high as you can in the food chain. If your boss won't listen, go to their boss. If their boss won't listen, go to their boss. And so on. What you should explain to them is the worst-case-but-possible scenario that you could get in trouble for. Other answers suggest going the child porn route, and that's not a bad idea, but if you can think of something more dangerous then go for it. I would do something like this:

(to CEO) Hey, John [or however you want to address the CEO], I'm having an issue with this new feature we're developing. I know the purpose of the feature is [explain what product management told you], but I feel like we could get in a lot of trouble for this. For example, what happens if we're recording and we accidentally record an underage child changing their clothes? That gets us in a lot of trouble, not with the customer, but with the police directly. I don't think an EULA handles that use case, because minors can't legally give permission to record pornography of themselves. We should rethink this.

Another way you can come at this is from a user engagement perspective:

Hey John, [...]. Because this feature uses the camera constantly, it will use a lot of battery power. Since it uploads the video to our servers, it also uses a lot of user data. What do you think would happen if our users suddenly see their batteries decreasing rapidly and their data usage spiking, and then find out it's our app that did it? Would you use an app which causes a significant drain on your phone like this? Do you think our users will? What will you tell your investors if user engagement falls off a cliff due to these issues?

See what he says. If this doesn't convince him, then:

5) Make them fire you, or, better, make them force you to quit. Come into work every day and do everything they ask as normal, except do not do this project. Then they have 2 choices: Abandon the project, or fire you and bring in someone who will do the project. In the first case, you win! In the second case, if they fire you then you should contact a lawyer. Bring all the evidence you have concerning the project, the concerns you raised, who you raised them to, everything. Remember, document everything. You likely have a case (IANAL). If they force you to quit, then on top of the above legal case, you may also have a case for constructive dismissal; the tl;dr of Wikipedia is that the definition (IANAL) is when your company makes your life a living hell, but does not fire you, to the point at which you have no choice but to quit.

6) If you get wind of the project being redirected (i.e. your team is removed from it and another team is given the task instead), contact the local authorities ASAP. You likely have protection as a whistleblower. Dump everything you have to the authorities as soon as you can and in as much detail as you can.

TLDR: Openly, brazenly start collecting documents that prove you were not a decider in this matter, that you advised management against this feature for privacy reasons, and are simply following orders to retain your good job status. Ask the boss flat-out to give you a letter stating exactly that. This may sober him up.

The eavesdropping is a very big deal

Eavesdropping is a criminal charge that varies by state or nationality. Some are "1-party states", where if 1 party in the room gives permission, it's legal.

Most others are "all-party states", meaning everyone being recorded must give permission.

The user doesn't know about your company's eavesdropping, which makes this 0-party; no one in the room is aware. That makes it a crime just about everywhere. What will your criminal defense be? Language buried deep in the EULA? Juries aren't going to accept that because then you would be accusing your customers of breaking the law by not reading the EULA thoroughly enough. Juries, who don't either, will say "no sale".

The feature would send customers through legal hell

But it gets worse. Consider Curtis, your customer, and imagine he's in a civil lawsuit about something totally unrelated. The plaintiff subpoenas from you all the data you have about them. You hand over the eavesdropped content (which makes perfect sense to your boss, since he's such a help-the-police guy). Plaintiff recognizes the eavesdropping, and blows up, assuming Curtis did this.

• In an all-party state: Curtis is up the creek. This smokes any chance of a settlement, and horribly prejudices the civil case: Curtis loses HARD. Then the judge refers it to the DA for criminal prosecution; Curtis must be punished. The whole time, nobody knows how this happened. All parties assume Curtis did it on purpose. Curtis assumes he accidentally turned on some feature he's unaware of.




• In a 1-party state, Curtis is safe from legal peril, because he had a right to eavesdrop. But if he says he did it on purpose, he enrages the plaintiff. So he is better off saying the app did this without his permission, which will not be believed. Showing it's true will calm the plaintiff and create a "common enemy".

Both of these end in an interesting problem for you. Curtis's best bet is to prove that you do indeed eavesdrop. He already has subpoena power because of the civil suit. So he'll use it to get the same records about any of plaintiff's staff (turnabout is fair play) -- or better, the judge. Can you imagine the civil court judge looking at photos of himself naked?? The judge will have confidence he did not turn this on. He will say to the D.A. "At first I didn't believe defendant, but the company did it to me too". Curtis is out to save his bacon, not get your company, but to save his bacon he must nail you.

All this to say, getting caught is inevitable. It will be viewed by every US state as your company committing a criminal act for money, and presumably lots of other nations and provinces as well.

It will particularly enrage the EFF, ACLU and privacy organizations, especially if it's uncovered that part of your boss's motivation was to "help law enforcement".

Now, when your company gets caught, I don't know how things work in the Philippines, but it sounds like there'd be an internal scramble to blame the next guy. Your boss would obviously have an advantage there, and would try to sell it as "I had no idea OP and her developers were doing that, send them to jail not me".

Sober up your boss, by covering your tail

So your top job is to cover yourself (CYA) and your team against that possibility. What you want is a "get out of jail free card" that shows management was fully aware of the privacy issues and wanted the project built anyway, and their reasoning. Now, when your boss sees you trying to collect those CYA documents, that's going to sober them up right quick: Why do my subordinates think they need this? The boss may have indulged in fantasy when it comes to the legal implications, now he's thinking. Fair chance you will get a memo saying "drop the feature".

I don't disagree with the answer by Dark Matter, but I wanted to offer you an option that isn't mentioned there.

In many companies there is an ethics officer, whose job is to ensure that the company complies with ethical standards. I'm guessing your company doesn't have one, but future readers of this might try that. Also sometimes contacting the company lawyer is effective. Lawyers have an obligation to uphold the law, and if they know their client is engaging in illegal activity they are much less able to ignore it than other people.

The final option is to gather enough evidence to document what you are being asked to do, and then send it to the authorities. Or the news media. Or both.

It goes without saying that this is a nuclear option. While it is possible to do anonymously (Wikileaks?) there is a pretty good chance you will be at least suspected of being the leaker, and probably fired. Technically you are also exposing confidential information, and there is a chance that you could be pursued in the courts. In my country you would be protected by whistleblower legislation, but I don't imagine the Philippines has that.

So the consequences for you might be severe. Don't take this action unless you are prepared for them. But on the upside you would be exposing a corrupt CEO and possibly a corrupt company, which would be a serious deterrent to other companies who want to do the same thing.

Some very powerful and unpleasant people in the past have used technology (for example old fashioned audio tapes) to record meetings secretly. They get the victim to admit to disliking another powerful figure and then use the tapes as a form of blackmail or simply to set opponents against each other, e.g. "This is what X said about you, and I've got the tape to prove it."

[Note: I will find some evidence for this online and come back to edit my answer.]

It is not impossible that someone has been searching around for a firm willing to produce this sort of software and there might be considerable bribes involved.

You didn't say what the app does. Could it be used for blackmail, or spying for industrial secrets in a certain sphere? Could it be used to predict fluctuations in the financial markets?

I would get out ASAP because if anything like this is going on, it won't be the big players who get prosecuted, it will be the ones at the bottom of the chain.

Slightly different approach than the other (mostly very good) answers.

This answer is an attempt for you to keep your job and not have to write the feature.

the product owner explains to me that while the feature is truly useless, it still has to be made so as to attract investors

My alternative is to approach the company lawyer directly.
You have a legal issue that could sink the whole company that he might understand.

Approach the lawyer like this: (use an innocent / concerned expression)

"Hey [lawyer], I previously had a problem with that video feature - CEO may have mentioned this. But after talking to him I told [product owner] about it he said we had to do it anyway. So I went back to try to figure out how to do it because it looks like everyone is on board with it."

You are just playing the good employee so he will listen closely to what you are saying (instead of just nod and pay half-attention to someone that doesn't want to do what the CEO and the investors want to do).

"One pretty big legal issue occurred to me that I thought I should run by you."

"Because the customer doesn't know about the video, they could be in their home unknowing filming their children while they get dressed. Even if the EULA TOS exempts us from this, if it comes out that we have taken images of naked children and stored them on our servers - wouldn't that be a PR nightmare for both the company and the investors?"

"All it would take is a Mom or Dad using another app while changing a baby... or being in a bathroom with their small child. I don't know how to detect this, so I cannot prevent our storing compromising pictures on our servers.

"That would be a big deal, right? Especially since we aren't telling the parents?"

"There are apps that track how often an infant goes to the bathroom, so it is reasonable."

Best wishes on this.

Hope you will tell us how it comes out in a few weeks.

As an aside... whistle-blower laws in the US only protect you from legal action when you tell the authorities. Tell the press, or anyone else, and you're open to be sued.

I'm not a lawyer, but this information came from a lawyer who was speaking at a conference I attended several years ago.

Presumably the OP has reason to suppose that this app is "intended" to be used illegally, but stepping back from the general feeling of moral outrage in this thread, there is not much evidence (if any) to support that.

I can't see anything in the OP's post which doesn't fit a use case like "this app converts your cellphone into a dashcam for use in your car". In that situation, battery usage is irrelevant since the phone would be running from the car battery. And dashcams are perfectly legal in many countries (including the UK, for example), and used as police evidence in court, just like images from any other type of security camera. In some countries, the use of dashcams is almost a necessity to support road accident insurance claims and protect oneself against insurance fraud by other people, who may well be criminals themselves.

Of course the app could be used for illegal purposes as well, but so could many other items which it is perfectly legal to buy an sell - kitchen knives, for example.

If the OP doesn't want to be involved in this software project for personal reasons, that's a perfectly reasonable position to take, but IMO there is far too little information given here to jump to the conclusion that the whole project, or the project leader, is operating outside of the law.

Ask your CEO whether he will be using the app. Or whether it is possible police or politicians will use the app.

If so, tell him it is a security risk because all the engineers in the company will be able to spy on him and on others. Maybe it works as a deterrent if he is concerned himself.

Also make him aware of the commercial risk of doing this: he might lose his entire user base if they find out. Play on his ego, surely he is too smart to take such a risk?

I'm adding this answer because you explicitly ask for a diplomatic solution. Simply quitting or paper trailing is not necessarily diplomatic.

I would like to approach a resolution to this issue in a slightly different way. The question was specifically:

How to be diplomatic in refusing to write code that breaches the privacy of our users

There are two ways to approach this:

1. Refuse to write the code


2. Make the case that this feature will negatively impact the project vision and you feel responsibility to steadfastly object to anything that will derail the project success

They both result in the same thing -- a refusal to implement the feature -- but the latter approach roots the refusal in the general desire for the app and business success, rather than for the users privacy. User privacy is a means to application success, but vise versa is not necessarily true.

To do this I would:

• Seek to establish common ground and good intent


• Ground any justifications in risks that I deem are important for the CEO


• Be enthusiastic about the project and the company, but steadfast in the refusal to implement

i.e. "I am really sorry but I cannot continue with this as it stands."

For example:

Dear ${CEO},



I am a member of the software development team working on ${APP}. I am passionate about ${STATED_APPS_PURPOSE} and have enjoyed working on ${PREVIOUS_NON_CREEPY_THINGS}.



However, I recently learned of this new feature that will require the recording of users at all times through their camera. While I understand the benefits of this feature, including:



 - ${CREEPY_BENEFIT_A}

 - ${CREEPY_BENEFIT_B}

 - ${INVESTORS_HAPPY_C}



I feel compelled to note that this new feature deviates significantly from ${STATED_APPS_PURPOSE}. It may be that I have misunderstood the nature of the requirements from this feature, but as the feature has been requested I see significant new project risks introduced, including:



 - User backlash at discovering the unexpected behaviour of the application

 - Potential violations of users privacy law ${EXAMPLE} in Manilla and within other locales

 - Punitive damages associated with the aforementioned violations of law



It is my assessment that this feature has deviated enough from ${STATED_APPS_PURPOSE} that I no longer feel comfortable with the tradeoffs the application has made, and I am thus not a suitable candidate for the ongoing development of this application.



I am reaching out to you now such that I may understand more the nature of this feature to clarify whether it should be implemented as stated, or whether our project would better grow in other areas.



Kind regards,

${YOU}.

Couching a justification in moral grounds that we know and understand are different from our own is an uncomfortable process. However, while it might be easier if our friends and colleagues shared our own values we each arrived in each others company via a different path and arguing a point to a given audience will be much more successful at homogenising the practical outcomes of our values, if not their roots.

If I were in this situation, I would give the CEO 2 choices, either A he could stop this highly illegal (at least in the USA) project and everything else can go on as normal or B he can accept your letter of resignation and you will be getting a lawyer and reporting his activities to the proper authorities, whom can do what they need to do as soon as he releases this piece of software. It is expected that you may have to do things that you don't want to do for your job, but once the issue crosses the line to illegal, there is no longer any grey space. Personally my job is definitely worth ruining my life over by spending years in prison or in court battles.

Your boss is ordering you to engage in crime. By proceeding, you will become their accomplice because you will be knowingly engaging in criminal activity.

So threaten to quit, but not because you dislike whatever but because they can't possibly pay you enough to compensate several years of your life spent in jail. (Or maybe they can? Provide this as an option -- they will surely refuse to pay such an astronomical sum but this will open their eyes on how inadequate their demands are to what they are paying you. (Note that income from illegal activity will probably be illegal, too, so more trouble for you and the company to conceal it!) The fact that they can't demand of you more than their pay is worth is something they can't argue with.)

Share the above with your co-workers and they will probably come to the same conclusion.

While IT is not as professionalised as many other occupations, there are still professional standards organisations which will provide advice and assistance in these situations. In your instance, you should contact the Philippine Computer Society and notify them you have been instructed to breach their Code of Ethics.