Item — HN Reader

Unclear whether this is legit, or if you're being facetious to demonstrate a point. I'm gonna bet on the latter, seeing as this is HN!

You intended to supply a local gang with guns and ammo to earn profit from it, along with the other actions you took. You purposefully set out to profit from their criminal behaviour in full knowledge of what that entailed.

I'm not surprised your wife left you. Good on her.

Here is a circumstance where your point is not valid, where there is no malicious intent:

- Developer A in dept X finds out developer B in dept Y is working on Z. Is uncomfortable with anything to do with Z.

- Dev A raises this with line manager C and gets pushed back.

- Dev A tries to raise this up higher. Gets push back.

- Dev A decides to leave the company because the workplace has now become increasingly hostile.

Dev A tried to do the right thing and raise up the fact that project Z was unethical. By presuming guilt by association, Dev A is treated exactly the same as Dev B.

Consider engineers at Google. Did every Google engineer work on project dragonfly? Did every engineer know about it until it was leaked to the press? Do the project zero team work on ad tracking?

Bringing it back to your example now. If you were an accountant for a printing shop that just happened to be a front, but you never knew about it or suspected it, that's another story. There's no intent to profit from or knowledge of the criminality. Now you're an innocent bystander who was taking advantage of.

If your wife left you in this situation, I'd feel for you.

This is why we presume innocence until guilt is proven. I, for one, would rather some guilty people slip through the net of justice if it helps us to not habitually punish innocent people for crimes they did not commit.

The world is not perfect, nothing is ever black and white.

2 comments

Facetious? Whatever gave you that idea?

Anyway, we can evaluate the permissibly of moral actions using the principle of double effect. As you suggest, we do not always have the luxury of choosing courses of action without some kind of negative side effect. At the same time, it is not morally permissible to engage in intrinsically immoral acts (sorry, utilitarians/consequentialists) nor is it permissible to intend the evil effect. We may also not use the evil effect as a means of attaining the desired good. Finally, there must be a proportionality between the good and bad effects that justifies the toleration of the bad effect.

I am genuinely confused by your comment. Are you, again, being facetious or are your arguments just bad?

> it is not morally permissible to engage in intrinsically immoral acts (sorry, utilitarians/consequentialists)

How would anyone define an intrinsically immortal act? It seems dishonest to discard well-established schools of thought while ignoring the very premise that makes them relevant.

> We may also not use the evil effect as a means of attaining the desired good.

> Finally, there must be a proportionality between the good and bad effects that justifies the toleration of the bad effect.

These two statements directly contradict each other.

Cool, so there are areas with shades of grey. Claiming that you somehow were not aware of what NSO is doing is just not one of those, at least I won't give you the benefit of the doubt if you're working there as a dev. Likewise, if you work for Hacking team, you know what you are doing.

> Claiming that you somehow were not aware of what NSO is doing is just not one of those

The parent comment of the comment I replied to (try saying that twice as fast backwards) was attempting to point out that we should avoid using guilt by association. i.e. We should focus on innocence for the individual until guilt is proven.

How do you know for absolute certainty that at least one developer (who has ever worked at NSO at any point in time) never said "this is completely illegal and I'm not comfortable with being near it."?

How do you know for absolute certainty that at least one developer (who has ever worked at NSO at any point in time) never said "You know what, I'm really not comfortable doing this work. I thought this was a good gig and I'd be okay with type of work... but I'm really not. It's killing my soul and I can't stand it."?

> at least I won't give you the benefit of the doubt if you're working there as a dev.

Fair enough. You're entitled to that position.

For me: People can make mistakes. People can get in over their head. People can mistakenly believe the lies other people tell them. I'd rather assume someone is innocent until guilt is proven by evidence.

> Likewise, if you work for Hacking team, you know what you are doing.

What even is a "Hacking" team?

Project Zero could be considered a "Hacking" team. Are they bad people for doing what they do? We know about loads of new zero days thanks to them. Extending this, am I part of a hacking team? I do white hat research. Does that mean I'm bad?

Do you mean "malicious adversary" perhaps? Because that is an entirely different concept. Then we are dealing with malicious intent. That's when someone may indeed be guilty (if backed up evidence, of course).

> What even is a "Hacking" team?

I believe @black_puppydog is talking about the company that literally is called "Hacking Team"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team

> HackingTeam is a Milan-based information technology company that sells offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities to governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations.

Ah fair enough! Thanks for pointing that out.

As @svane pointed out, "Hacking Team" are exactly one of the companies that are on my personal list of companies where if you work for them, you lose (my) benefit of the doubt.

From your comment I do take the point that maybe not everyone is aware of all of these actors. But if you sign a contract with them, you either know what you're doing and are cool with it, or you didn't care enough to google them. (And I have a very hard time believing the latter.)

The former I find morally wrong, the latter I find negligent (note the "I find", indicating personal choice here) and I do think both should be disqualifying if not explained well.

Edit: even though my personal attitude towards this doesn't matter in the grand (or even small) scheme of things, I'd consider this a situation where I'd invert the burden of proof. Yes, being associated with these companies should put a burden on the person working there if they want a different job. They should have to think about that before they sign. High-skilled people who consider their offers should have a strong incentive to decline.