3 ms·

Is it? Maybe I'm morally bankrupt, but if you think that's sleazy the world is a literal (figurative) ball of mud. A thing that can be cracked will be cracked.

Is it? Maybe I'm morally bankrupt, but if you think that's sleazy the world is a literal (figurative) ball of mud. A thing that can be cracked will be cracked. If someone's good at something, they will probably look to sell their skills. If it is within the law for police to perform this kind of thing (it probably definitely shouldn't be), they're gonna use whatever contractor can do it best (if they can't do it themselves). It just seems like the natural progression -- outside of the oddity of police being allowed to "break into" (in a sense) private property. I think this argument devolves into the does-tech-hurt-people (guns, security research) argument, and maybe I'm just way off base, but I don't knock the iphone cracking people in this instance... I mean I wouldn't necessarily do it but this isn't bad enough to pass muster in my book as sleaze.

paulsutter 9y ago
If they need to break the law to collect the data (the far over-reaching CFAA), what should they need? a search warrant? (honest question about civil liberties, I really am curious)
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  I'm definitely not the person to ask -- I don't particularly live in this space, and I'm fairly sure other people here do and could answer more completely, but: If you see modern society in a democratic environment with the (somewhat naive) outlook that a large enough group of people have consented to be governed by the laws of the land, then it's really up to the law on when this is allowed/disallowed. It's more of a reflection of the people (or.. who's making the laws), and what they've decided -- if people decide that personal privacy is protected under law then so be it. If people decide police are allowed to break the law (at all) then so be it. If people decide that police are somehow above what would normally be a law when they have certain piece of paper (search warrant) signed by the local wiseman (judge) who is likely looking out for the best interests of the community and country at large, so be it. Things get blurry really quickly, and this is a gross oversimplification of how any of these systems work, but it's how I tend to think about it. I sometimes think that it can't be any other way -- once a bunch of humans attempt to work together, there are some fundamental problems that just end up best solved this way (in terms of efficiency and other factors).
yzmtf2008 9y ago
You know, yes, this is morally bankrupt. This “if I don’t do it, someone else will do it” attitude really just highlights how much more ethics training do we need to have in part of becoming a software engineer. Try that attitude in the medical community, or civil engineering, or aviation engineering, or physics or chemistry, and see where that will get you. Computer Science as a field hasn’t encountered consequences: https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/975545527973462016?s=21 https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/975545527973462016?...
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  Yeah but that wasn't my argument... I didn't say that "someone else would do it so they should be that person", I'm saying that if you're good at taking apart washing machines, and someone's personal washing machine happens to have names and addresses of people who are considered government dissenters on it, the question of should you sell that knowledge to the government is up to you. It varies by case, but if you try to delineate where it's OK and where it's not, it will be endlessly subjective -- in the face of that, I lean in the "do what you want" direction. I don't think there is a single discipline that's unscathed in this discussion, it's just the level to which the morals are shared in each. In the medical community, "do whatever you can to save a life" is a pretty strong propellant, but also the medical system in the US (for one) is really fucked, and if the medical community is as ethically pure as you propose them to be, I get the feeling that wouldn't have happened. [EDIT] - Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but when I think of "ethics" I just think of agreed-upon shared moral values. That is inherently up to someone or some group to decide, at some point, is it not?
  - yzmtf2008 9y ago
    >... the question of should you sell that knowledge to the government is up to you. True. But that doesn't really free you from moral judgement. > It varies by case, but if you try to delineate where it's OK and where it's not, it will be endlessly subjective -- in the face of that, I lean in the "do what you want" direction. This really depends on your value system. Of course, you can do what you want (perhaps as long as it's legal), but again, moral judgement is a separate issue. It's totally okay to be immoral, and ethics itself doesn't really have any limitations on what you would do. From a utilitarian perspective, yes, perhaps everything is endlessly subjective, but I think for most people their ethics system lies somewhere in between deontological and utilitarian, that is, there are certain moral guidelines that are more applicable even in subjective situations. Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't do anything immoral. There are many other factors for one to consider: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc. Most of this have nothing to do with ethics at all, but none of it gives anyone a free pass for moral judgement. > the medical system in the US (for one) is really fucked That may be true, but we're not really talking about the system here. We're talking about the individual physicians. > "ethics" I just think of agreed-upon shared moral values Ethics is a system, sort of the "theory of morals". Ethics training is more about the logical study of these theories, and how one would apply a certain ethics system to evaluate a certain situation, rather than the "agreed-upon shared moral values". Endless engineering fields before us have faced these problem before, and the principles apply just fine in Computer Science.

paulsutter 9y ago

If they need to break the law to collect the data (the far over-reaching CFAA), what should they need? a search warrant? (honest question about civil liberties, I really am curious)

hardwaresofton 9y ago
I'm definitely not the person to ask -- I don't particularly live in this space, and I'm fairly sure other people here do and could answer more completely, but: If you see modern society in a democratic environment with the (somewhat naive) outlook that a large enough group of people have consented to be governed by the laws of the land, then it's really up to the law on when this is allowed/disallowed. It's more of a reflection of the people (or.. who's making the laws), and what they've decided -- if people decide that personal privacy is protected under law then so be it. If people decide police are allowed to break the law (at all) then so be it. If people decide that police are somehow above what would normally be a law when they have certain piece of paper (search warrant) signed by the local wiseman (judge) who is likely looking out for the best interests of the community and country at large, so be it. Things get blurry really quickly, and this is a gross oversimplification of how any of these systems work, but it's how I tend to think about it. I sometimes think that it can't be any other way -- once a bunch of humans attempt to work together, there are some fundamental problems that just end up best solved this way (in terms of efficiency and other factors).

yzmtf2008 9y ago

You know, yes, this is morally bankrupt. This “if I don’t do it, someone else will do it” attitude really just highlights how much more ethics training do we need to have in part of becoming a software engineer. Try that attitude in the medical community, or civil engineering, or aviation engineering, or physics or chemistry, and see where that will get you. Computer Science as a field hasn’t encountered consequences: https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/975545527973462016?s=21 https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/975545527973462016?...

hardwaresofton 9y ago
Yeah but that wasn't my argument... I didn't say that "someone else would do it so they should be that person", I'm saying that if you're good at taking apart washing machines, and someone's personal washing machine happens to have names and addresses of people who are considered government dissenters on it, the question of should you sell that knowledge to the government is up to you. It varies by case, but if you try to delineate where it's OK and where it's not, it will be endlessly subjective -- in the face of that, I lean in the "do what you want" direction. I don't think there is a single discipline that's unscathed in this discussion, it's just the level to which the morals are shared in each. In the medical community, "do whatever you can to save a life" is a pretty strong propellant, but also the medical system in the US (for one) is really fucked, and if the medical community is as ethically pure as you propose them to be, I get the feeling that wouldn't have happened. [EDIT] - Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but when I think of "ethics" I just think of agreed-upon shared moral values. That is inherently up to someone or some group to decide, at some point, is it not?
- yzmtf2008 9y ago
  >... the question of should you sell that knowledge to the government is up to you. True. But that doesn't really free you from moral judgement. > It varies by case, but if you try to delineate where it's OK and where it's not, it will be endlessly subjective -- in the face of that, I lean in the "do what you want" direction. This really depends on your value system. Of course, you can do what you want (perhaps as long as it's legal), but again, moral judgement is a separate issue. It's totally okay to be immoral, and ethics itself doesn't really have any limitations on what you would do. From a utilitarian perspective, yes, perhaps everything is endlessly subjective, but I think for most people their ethics system lies somewhere in between deontological and utilitarian, that is, there are certain moral guidelines that are more applicable even in subjective situations. Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't do anything immoral. There are many other factors for one to consider: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc. Most of this have nothing to do with ethics at all, but none of it gives anyone a free pass for moral judgement. > the medical system in the US (for one) is really fucked That may be true, but we're not really talking about the system here. We're talking about the individual physicians. > "ethics" I just think of agreed-upon shared moral values Ethics is a system, sort of the "theory of morals". Ethics training is more about the logical study of these theories, and how one would apply a certain ethics system to evaluate a certain situation, rather than the "agreed-upon shared moral values". Endless engineering fields before us have faced these problem before, and the principles apply just fine in Computer Science.