by David Walton
Naomi held out her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You took me by surprise. I’m Naomi. Apparently we’re going to be working together.”
CHAPTER 16
Tyler’s suit itched. Lauren had bought it for him, and though he hadn’t seen the price, he was pretty sure it was the most expensive outfit he’d ever worn. It fit perfectly, so his discomfort probably had less to do with the suit than with his nervousness about giving testimony in court. He and Lauren had practiced until he could deliver his responses confidently, but practice was very different from the real thing.
He sat in the front row of the audience, waiting for his turn in the witness box. Just in front of him, Lauren sat at the plain-tiff’s table with Andrea Copeland, whose long-sleeved blouse concealed the tattoos covering her arms. He had never seen a more intense woman. Copeland sat straight up and glared at the man in the witness box as if she could bore a hole through his head with her gaze. She didn’t move, but it was a stillness full of energy, like a coiled spring.
The courtroom looked newly renovated: clean and bright, 15 8
but bare. The only decoration was the American flag standing to the left of the judge. White walls featured not so much as a clock to break the monotony. Instead of benches, the audience sat in rows of folding chairs. Judge Carter, at least, sat on a traditional-looking wooden platform, and glossy oak railings separated the audience from the lawyers and the lawyers from the jury. Tyler had never been in court before, but the whole effect was much more modern and spare than he had expected.
The man in the witness box, a Mercedes-Benz executive named Tom Berkowitz, raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He didn’t look at Andrea Copeland.
Lauren stood and walked around the table with a light step, as if questioning Berkowitz was the highlight of her morning. And maybe it was. After three days of trial, today would be the day that made the case for the plaintiff, one way or another. Lauren had already established the emotional touchpoints of the case, interviewing people who could speak to the character of the dead motorcyclist: his impeccable driving record, his concern for others, his tenderness for children and puppies. It had disgusted Tyler a little, since it was a purely emotional appeal, with little to do with fault. It shouldn’t matter, in the eyes of the law, whether Andrea and Hal had talked about having a baby someday, and now they never would. It made the tragedy sad. But it didn’t affect the question of whether Mercedes was responsible.
Today, probably the last day of the trial, Lauren would try to establish responsibility. Even though he was about to testify on her behalf, Tyler found himself torn. It seemed to him that Annabelle Brighton’s car had responded reasonably, if not perfectly, and that no human driver could have done better. He wanted the public to trust self-driving cars, not fear them. On the other hand, Mercedes was hiding things from their consumers, important things that directly affected their safety. Those choices could mean lives lost, regardless of whether Hal Copeland’s had been one of them.
He was ready to speak up, if he had to. If Berkowitz told the truth, Tyler’s testimony probably wouldn’t even be necessary. If he lied, however, as they thought he might, Tyler was going to take the stand and reveal it to the world.
“Mr. Berkowitz,” Lauren said, “could you begin by explaining to the court what your responsibilities are at Mercedes-Benz?”
“Certainly,” Berkowitz said. He had a salesman’s voice and larger-than-life smile. “I’m the engineering director for the F 015 series, our self-driving model. I’m responsible for making sure we deliver the best quality, safety, and luxury experience to our customers every day.”
The trial was televised, and it occurred to Tyler that depending on how this turned out, this could represent a lot of free publicity for Mercedes. Berkowitz certainly talked like a walking commercial.
“Does your responsibility include the software that drives the car?”
“Our software is developed in-house, and there’s a team dedicated to that task, but yes, they report to me.”
“Has the software team ever been late for a milestone? Ever failed to deliver software on time?”
Berkowitz smiled indulgently. “Every software development effort in the world misses milestones from time to time.”
Lauren looked confused. “Everyone? In the whole world? How do you know?”
His smile faltered. “I just mean it’s common.”
“Mr. Berkowitz, I’m not asking you about every software development effort in the world. I’m asking you about yours. Please restrict your answers to things about which you actually have knowledge. Has your software team ever been late for a milestone?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And what did you do in those circumstances?”
“I encouraged them to catch up. I discussed with them the obstacles to timely completion, and encouraged extra effort, including overtime, if necessary.”
“You didn’t encourage them to cut corners, skip tests, lower standards?”
“Certainly not.”
The attorney for the defense, Philip Sullivan, a middle-aged white man with the physique of a football player, came lazily to his feet to object. “Inflammatory, your honor. These questions are prejudicial. Mr. Berkowitz is not on trial for his personal work ethic.”
“Your honor,” Lauren said. “The witness is representing Mercedes-Benz in this trial. If he is aware of unethical practices, that speaks directly to the reliability of the software that killed Mr. Copeland.”
“Sustained,” the judge intoned. “Ms. Karelis, if you have evidence of such practices, you may ask him about them, but this is not a fishing expedition.”
Judge Carter was big and white and red-faced, much like Sullivan, the defense attorney. Tyler had no reason to believe they knew each other, but if he’d been told the two were old high school football buddies, he would have believed it in an instant. For the whole trial so far, Carter had sustained Sullivan’s objections while overruling Lauren’s, like a local referee siding with the home team.
“Yes, your honor.” Lauren accepted the ruling with good grace and turned back to Berkowitz. “Are you aware of the Mercedes F 015 ever being hacked?”
Tyler worked to keep his expression neutral. This was the question he’d been waiting for, the point where things would get exciting, but he didn’t want to tip off the other side.
Berkowitz donned a comfortable smile. “It depends what you mean by ‘hacked.’ Since the very beginning, Mercedes-Benz has encouraged security testing by the public. We’ve offered a ‘bug bounty’—a cash reward for any software defects identified by people who are not employees of Mercedes-Benz. We’re particularly interested in security holes, ways in which clever perpetrators might subvert the usual controls.”
“You encourage people to hack your cars.”
“That’s a dramatic way to put it, but yes. All the major automotive companies do it. If thousands of people try to hack our software to earn the cash, and they can’t, then we feel pretty confident nobody can do it in secret for any other purpose either.”
“And has anyone ever collected on this ‘bug bounty’?”
“Oh, yes. Mostly tiny things, problems with the entertainment system, or whatever. In the early days, when we were first fielding these cars, there were a few security holes, but not anymore. We’ve been through twenty version upgrades without any serious vulnerability.”
“But you don’t make your code available to these bounty hunters? You don’t actually let them see the software they’re trying to poke holes in?”
“Oh, no.” Berkowitz chuckled. “This is a business. We can’t just give it away, any more than we give away our cars.”
“So you consider this software proprietary. You protect it as a trade secret.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Lauren ran a hand through her hair, nonchalant. “And have you ever included security holes intentionally? Purposely included
interfaces to allow for remote control of your cars?”
“Of course not.”
“Never? Not even in response to a particular request, such as to give law enforcement the ability to stop vehicles on demand?”
The question provoked a buzz of conversation from the audience. The defense attorney leaped to his feet. “Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.”
“I’m not assuming anything,” Lauren said. “I’m asking the witness.”
Sullivan stood. “Your honor, no evidence has been presented to the court to suggest any such idea. Counsel is attempting to plant unwarranted fantasies into the minds of the jury.”
“Sustained,” the judge said. “The question is stricken from the record.”
He glared a warning at Lauren, who, clearly frustrated, tried again. “Mr. Berkowitz. Have you ever included in your software, or instructed anyone on your team to include, the capability for the government to stop or take remote control of cars without the permission or knowledge of the owner?”
“Your honor,” Sullivan said, leaping to his feet again, his tone aggrieved, “this is the same question. Counsel is testifying.”
“Sustained,” the judge said. “Stricken. Ms. Karelis, you are putting words in the witness’s mouth.” He turned to the jury box. “Members of the jury, you are instructed to disregard the question. What counsel says is not evidence. You are not to regard any implications she makes as facts, nor accept as evidence anything not stated by the witness.”
“Your honor!” Lauren said. “This is not fishing. I’m asking the witness to answer a simple yes or no question. If there is no truth to it, let him say so.”
“I’ve already ruled, Counselor,” the judge growled. “Ask a new question or sit down.”
That’s when Tyler saw it. A look, barely a glance, passed between Berkowitz and Judge Carter. It was over in a moment, and even caught on camera, would be evidence of nothing. But when Tyler saw it, he knew. There had been communication in that glance. A shared knowledge. Carter wasn’t just taking Sullivan’s side because he liked him, or because he was a man. Mercedes had him in their pocket.
Lauren struggled with her facial expression and got it under control. She paused for a moment, and then tried a third time. “Mr. Berkowitz. To the best of your ability, have you sought to make it impossible for anyone outside of one of your cars to seize control of it?”
Berkowitz looked at Judge Carter.
“You may answer the question,” the judge said.
“Yes,” Berkowitz said. “Of course we have.”
“No more questions, your honor,” Lauren said.
Sullivan avoided the subject of remote control on cross- examination, and Lauren waived the chance to ask more questions on redirect, choosing instead to proceed to her next witness. “The plaintiff calls Mr. Tyler Daniels to the stand.”
Tyler stood, feeling the eyes of the courtroom on him. The overhead lights seemed suddenly bright. The witness box, as he approached, seemed a lot bigger and more exposed than it had from the audience. He sat, surprised to see that the box contained only a simple folding chair.
Lauren smiled reassuringly at him as the bailiff swore him in. He raised his right hand, wondering idly when they had stopped using Bibles to swear in witnesses. He had seen a million courtroom dramas, had imagined himself doing this, but now that he was here, he was a lot more intimidated than he’d expected. He wasn’t a passive observer anymore. He was right in the middle of it.
She started easy, with his name and degrees in computer science from Penn. She asked him to describe the code as it had been received from Mercedes, and the steps he and Yusuf had taken to make it comprehensible.
“So, the source code you received was not as it would have been written by software developers?” she asked.
“No,” Tyler said. “Not at all. When people write software, they give names to things. A function might be called ‘Determine Tailgating Distance,’ which would calculate the distance between the car’s front bumper and the next car. That function would have many pieces of data in it, like the returns from the lidar system, or the time required to get an acoustic reflection, and all of those pieces of data would have names.”
“And were those names included in the source code you received?”
“No. All the names were changed, to names like aaaaa, aaaab, aaaac, etcetera. Names without meaning.”
“And it couldn’t have been programmed that way?”
“Not possible,” Tyler said. “And there would be no reason to. Names are the only way we know what something does. The computer doesn’t care—it can operate the code either way. It doesn’t care what we call it. But humans need names to provide meaning.”
After asking permission to approach the witness, Lauren produced a document and handed copies to the court recorder, Judge Carter, Sullivan, and finally to Tyler. “Do you recognize this exhibit?” Lauren asked.
“Yes.”
“Would you please tell the court what it is?”
“It’s a small excerpt of the Mercedes software. On the left side is the obfuscated version as we were given it. On the right side are explanations I’ve made by assigning meaningful names and adding comments.”
Lauren turned to the bench. “Your honor, we request permission to show plaintiff’s exhibit number five to the jury.”
Sullivan stood up. “Your honor, we have never seen this exhibit before.”
At this close range, Tyler could see the twinge of annoyance in Lauren’s eyes, but she kept her countenance serene. “Of course you’ve seen it,” she said. “You provided it to me in discovery.”
“The original code, yes,” Sullivan said. “Not this edited version. Your employee’s changes to the software are inadmissible.”
“He didn’t change the software. He annotated it for clarity because your client—”
“Counselors,” the judge barked.
Lauren turned back to the bench. “Sorry, your honor. This exhibit is not a discovery violation. The annotations are a visual aid for the testimony Mr. Daniels is about to give.”
“Approach the bench, both of you,” the judge said.
As the lawyers walked over to stand in front of the judge, an aide flipped a switch to pipe white noise over the speaker system, masking the sidebar conversation. Closer than most, Tyler could hear the general tone and pick out a few words, but not actually follow the exchange. He heard the pitch of Lauren’s voice get higher, angry but trying to control it. When the aide turned the white noise off, Lauren stalked back to her table, her face flushed.
The judge tapped his gavel to quiet the court, which had dissolved into idle chatter while the sidebar was going on. “To establish a clear differentiation between evidence and expert opinion, the annotated material supplied by Mr. Daniels will not be admitted as evidence or published to the jury. Counsel will supply the jury with only the evidentiary portion. Mr. Daniels may then supply his opinion verbally, through direct examination.”
Tyler gaped at him, amazed. It was worse than unfair. Not only had the judge permitted Mercedes to supply obfuscated code, he wasn’t even allowing Tyler’s unobfuscated version to be shown to the jury. It would have been hard enough to explain clearly named logic to a jury unfamiliar with programming. This way, it would be next to impossible.
Lauren made her way along the jurors’ box, savagely tearing copies of the exhibit in half and handing the left half to each of the jurors. She returned to her table and dropped the stack of right halves with a bitter flourish.
For the next half hour, she led Tyler through an explanation of the code. It was a short segment, about twenty lines long, that was the core of the module that would allow police or federal agents to take control of a car remotely. Making that clear, however, was a tedious exercise.
“And the next variable, named abkwbj,” Lauren asked. “In the course of your analysis, what name did you assign to this data?”
Tyler could see the jurors losing a
ttention, their eyes glazing over as they attempted to keep track of what he was telling them. At this point, Lauren might as well forget the code and just ask Tyler for the punchline. She had wanted to show them the code and get them to understand it, arguing that it would have more impact if they could see for themselves what it did. She said juries appreciated when you respected their intelligence. Without the annotations, however, Tyler was afraid the strategy would backfire. They wouldn’t understand it all, and might not trust that Tyler did either.
Finally, they finished reconstructing the meaning of the code. “Can you summarize for us, then: what does this software do?” Lauren asked.
“Every time through the primary loop—the loop during which the software checks all the sensors, reevaluates the current state of the car, and decides what to do next—a check is made for inputs from the satellite radio system, which is intended for entertainment and navigational aids.”
“Why would the primary loop have to make such a check?”
“It wouldn’t, not normally. It means the programmers expected input from the antenna that would make a difference in its decision-making.”
“And looking at the code in front of you, what difference in decision-making does a signal from that antenna make?”
“It’s a complete override. It replaces whatever decisions the AI might make with instructions from the outside. It’s a way to remotely control the car through the satellite radio.”
It had taken them longer than planned to get to this point, but they got the reaction they wanted. The courtroom exploded into noise. Tyler could feel the cameras on his face, like a bright sun on a hot day. This would make the evening news, he was pretty sure. Mercedes might have bought the judge, but they couldn’t control the jury. They still had a chance at this.
Lauren took her seat. “No more questions, your honor.”
Judge Carter declared a recess before cross-examination. When they reconvened, Sullivan dropped his lazy act and paced in front of the defense table like a leopard eager to escape its cage. When Carter prompted him to begin, Sullivan veered toward the witness box and attacked.