alt Hacker NewsSorry I mistyped, it meant to be responsible engineer given the industrial exemption.
I worked in HW before for home electronics that had to be certified. There was no responsibility for the engineers, the cert house had to take on this responsibility, and they had a shell certification company hired who would conduct the tests and take on the responsibility. At one point there was a litigation due to an RF leakage from a LATAM-bound device causing signaling issues to public infra and causing an accident, but it went nowhere because of the layering of responsibility made by the cert houses. No engineer was responsible.
That type of HW certification is different than what I’m talking about. Yes, there are certain quality standards and certifications for something like J-STD, but importantly the domains that use them, like aerospace, still fall under industrial exemptions when it comes to a licensed engineer taking responsibility. Again, the license is attached to a real life person, not a trail of shell companies. If a bridge fails, you can literally look at the license number stamped on the design drawings to find out who is responsible.