> Companies should defer judgement to the courts rather than make arbitrary moral judgements. Uh, no. Please no. I do not want the courts to arbitrate morality

> Companies should defer judgement to the courts rather than make arbitrary moral judgements. Uh, no. Please no. I do not want the courts to arbitrate morality. That's a far far far more dystopian world than one where corporations do (supposing I accept their false dilemma). Companies can, in theory, be created by any person, with any moral alignment. That is not the case with governments (minus authoritarian ones, which function in the context of moral-defining as more or less the same as a company). Additionally, deferring to the courts also leads to the ever terrible "this is moral because it is legal" and "this is immoral because it is illegal." There is not a correct authority on morality to which you can defer. You cannot offload such decisions and wash your hands. Any moral decision you make, including deferring to some other moral-decider, is entirely your responsibility. Note: I'm doing the naughty thing of morals=ethics. I know this is pedantically not the case, but I'm 99% sure that is what the article means. And, in general, this is also what everyone means outside of targeted discussions. > ...if someone is infected with spyware they're probably better off infected with secure spyware. I think this is a great ethical issue within the security community. There's many arguments against working for a company you have ethical disagreements with, but that becomes much more grey when it comes to security. Sure I might not agree with the mass surveillance of the government, but wouldn't I rather help the NSA not leave piles of malware sitting around on C&C servers than let it be exposed to even more malicious actors? Security could use a hippocratic oath. > FlexiSPY has not published a vulnerability disclosure policy or committed to no legal action against hackers. Both protective steps would be required should their program be hosted on HackerOne. I'm surprised HackerOne doesn't have a policy surrounding this already. Are hackers who submit issues to HackerOne not protected? > We will not take action against them based exclusively on moral judgements. Hooray, kinda. I think this is a maxim that HackerOne could extend to not making moral judgements relevant at all, and to instead institute policies that reflect HackerOne's current morals. This increases transparency and allows HackerOne to say "We reject you because your company's goals/actions/whatever explicitly contradict our policy that everyone wear unicorn hats on Tuesdays". > Their business conduct is not in line with our ambition to build a safe and sound internet where the sovereignty and safety of each participant is respected. I think now would be a good time for HackerOne to write this stuff down. A very brief look at their site and the only thing I can see relating to this is the tagline "Make the internet safer together." From which sovereignty implications can be drawn, but having such policies explicitly stated and publicly available not only allows for transparency in decisions, but also works as an advertisement, "Oh hey, this company wants to protect my digital sovereignty, neat!"