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I think the developer community need to start ostracising people working for these companies. Don't hire former employees, don't hang hang out with people who w

I think the developer community need to start ostracising people working for these companies. Don't hire former employees, don't hang hang out with people who work for these companies and conferences. Don't supply services to these companies (build their website, network...). I believe by letting people of the hook for participating in this (similar things can be said for e.g. the NSA) we are essentially endorsing the behaviour. If you work on at e.g. NSO group, you are personally responsible for governments surpressing and even killing (just look at SA) critics

ezoe 6y ago
I think the developer community need to start refusing to use the cellphone. It cannot be trusted. It's tainted by non-free software on top of non-free OS on top of non-free firmware with the separate processor whose behaviour we cannot observe from the main processor. It also relies on central wireless network from only a handful of providers. Easy single point of vulnerable target. I do refuse to own a cellphone. What about you. Since you're suggesting the boycott, can you?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- msh 6y ago
  Mobile phones are way safer for normal users compared general purpose computers.
- bad_user 6y ago
  What does Free/OSS software have to do with the article? If the phone wasn't proprietary, would it have made any difference? The answer is obvious.
  - Reelin 6y ago
    > The answer is obvious. Is it? I'm not overly familiar with any security exploits, but my understanding is that (at least for Android) the phone OS is often woefully out of date simply because the vendor stopped supplying updates. The end user generally can't supply updates themselves because everything is locked down in a decidedly user hostile manner. For the vendor's part, they often stop supplying updates (as I understand it) because the proprietary hardware doesn't have it's drivers upstreamed into the kernel (they're proprietary after all) which leads to a completely unjustifiable maintenance burden. They can't simply open source things because the hardware manufacturers generally require NDAs. As far as the hardware goes, my (probably woefully incomplete) understanding is that it remains proprietary due to a combination of attempting to maintain a competitive edge through secrecy, licensing complexities due to containing third party IP, and DRM issues (which are again a licensing concern).
    - bad_user 6y ago
      No, that's not what happens on iOS. I'm writing this on a 5 year old device still getting updated. The iOS exploits that have historically allowed the device to be jailbroken have been zero-day vulnerabilities. And I'm assuming the TFA is about a zero-day too. Also Android is open source (AOSP). How does that help?
      - Reelin 6y ago
        I'm well aware that this isn't nearly as much of an issue for Apple devices - that's why I very clearly specified Android in my previous comment. Yes AOSP is open source but that doesn't help as much as one might hope for the reasons I outlined in my previous comment. Basically most end user devices aren't actually running AOSP at the end of the day, and can't without investing a nontrivial amount of effort. (And that still wouldn't prevent vulnerabilities related to out of date firmware.) The comment of yours that I originally responded to seemed to me to insinuate that having access to fully open sourced phones wouldn't be able to do anything to improve device security as a foregone conclusion. I was objecting to that, pointing out that there are a number of real world examples where access to a fully open source mobile stack would immediately and drastically improve the current situation. In a hypothetical world full of such stacks perhaps this article would never have been written.
- fouc 6y ago
  PinePhone seems promising
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Also the Librem 5.
- niyikiza 6y ago
  I think the problem can be solved by separating the "phone" experience from the "mobile" experience. Phones are these devices powered by a philosophy (and to an extent, a technology) from 3-4 decades ago and day after day we see them ruining the experience of having the internet access from your hands. We need to move from a mobile-phone era to a mobile-internet era.
  - simonh 6y ago
    In what way do you think the phone legacy is holding us back? What concrete steps would you suggest? It seems to me this has already happened. We only call these things phones for legacy reasons, but the iPhone broke the design link with actual phones and turned the phone aspect into just another communications app.
    - kavalg 6y ago
      I guess he meant the baseband processor
      - simonh 6y ago
        OK, but how does that hold any other aspects of these devices back? Remove the baseband processor and you've got an iPod Touch, or a small iPad. It doesn't fundamentally change the device or really open up any new avenues not possible with a baseband processor.
aeternum 6y ago
This won't work, as long as there is a market for hacking phones, there will be those willing to sell their expertise. We should focus on making things more secure. While security is a tough problem, it's also somewhat surprising that properly sandboxing a browser is so difficult.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  > This won't work, as long as there is a market for hacking phones, there will be those willing to sell their expertise. Maybe, but it'll make them way way more expensive.
  - mhuffman 6y ago
    > Maybe, but it'll make them way way more expensive. Higher prices are how you attract MORE talent!
    - smabie 6y ago
      Usually, high salaries are used to attract star performers. But there's other factors at play too. Sometimes, high salaries are used as compensation for dangerous or unpleasant work. So, for example, if the NSO had to pay higher salaries because all developers whotake the job get immediately divorced by their wives and no longer invited for beer by their friends, then that wouldn't attract better talent. Regular talent is merely being compensated for the negative externalities of working for NSO. In order for a company to attract superior talent, they need the entire package to be better than the competition (lifestyle, salary, free pizza, prestige, etc).
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  The mobile OS strategy failed everywhere. Now we have bad security (seriously, this is as an OS and browser error) and bad lock-in. I doubt it would have been easy to do with a decently updated, conventional desktop PC, even if you could redirect its network access like it was done here with his phone. Even with a mitm attack on your browser, this shouldn't have happened.
malux85 6y ago
It won’t work, because it only takes a small number of bad actors to ruin the compliance of a vast majority. Couple that with compliance being driven by ethics and non-compliance being driven by money - it will never work. We should focus on increasing security
inglor 6y ago
I really don't like NSO, to the point I never go to their parties and meetups even when invited and they have good parties. However it's worth mentioning they really don't see it that way. A lot of people working for NSO (or the NSA) see themselves as making a personal sacrifice for public safety. Also, NSO doesn't operate said technology it just sells it - so it's a bit more like going after people making anti DRM software or p2p sharing software. The only big difference is that NSO is making money.
- nieve 6y ago
  It's more like going after people who make waterboarding kits and run logistics for kidnappings. Anti-DRM and p2p software aren't usually associated with aiding & abetting torture and murder of dissidents and journalists. Framing the two as equivalent elides what NSO group's employees are actually complicit in.
- furyg3 6y ago
  That ‘only’ difference is a very big one, and they are completely aware that their software will be misused and are happy to make a profit with it. To say, ‘we will only sell our software to countries who promise not to use it to violate human rights, and if we catch them doing it, we will suspend it’ is just hand waving. The software is designed to be undetected. That’s the whole point. A actual policy would be that ‘we do not sell our software to countries who have a bad human rights track record, as defined by <independent group>’ ... but that would cut into sales.
  - ishi 6y ago
    Is there any country that doesn't have a bad human rights track record? Sure, some are worse than others. But where do you draw the line, and how far back into history are you willing to look?
    - jtsuken 6y ago
      This is a decent source: https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new There are 16 countries with personal freedom ranking above 9 (out of 10). US is ranked 26 with a score of 8.72, which intuitively makes sense. Morocco is 135th with a score of 5.68, which pretty obviously indicates, that there is more than one thing wrong about offering hacking tools to the government
ishi 6y ago
I was recently offered a job by NSO, didn't take it due to their terrible reputation. I won't be surprised if some countries start denying entry to NSO employees. Even Facebook suspended accounts of NSO employees after NSO hacked Whatsapp - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7x5nnz/nso-employees-take-legal-action-against-facebook-for-banning-their-accounts https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7x5nnz/nso-employees-take... . On the other hand, their product is just a tool which can be used for good (stopping terrorists) or evil (spying on human rights activists). Just like a kitchen knife can be used for good (cooking a meal) or evil (stabbing people). So I find it hard to find the moral justification for the actions you suggest. The problem is not the tool or the tool's manufacturer, it's how it gets used.
- wallacoloo 6y ago
  I’ll play the opposite side of this argument, for the sake of discussion. You point to knifes having a good use: cooking. It’s by far the dominant use of knifes, and no doubt it makes cooking sunstantially easier. But hacking tools: to what extent are they actually being used for good? Stuxnet is the clearest example I know of these tools almost certainly decreasing a threat to US citizens (at least for the time before it was found out). But beyond that, there’s very little publicly accessible information demonstrating that these tools are actually effective at stopping or decreasing terrorism. Moreover, even if they turn out to be effective at that, their use in this manner comes with other questionable effects on law and personal rights. I don’t think the knife is a good analogy because while everyone agrees that a knife can be put to either good or bad effect, there’s not consensus on whether hacking tools can even be used for any good.
  - dafoex 6y ago
    Not to mention, when hacking tools are used for good, they are often used from the perspective of people wanting to do bad: penetration testing
  - inglor 6y ago
    When I was in the Israeli army, I personally saw a phone being hacked, info being pulled and the info being used to stop a terrorist attack targeting civilians. I was not involved in the hack (I served in the navy). In that particular case (but not the majority of cases) the target of the hack was an Israeli citizen who was practicing terrorism (against the Arab minority). After their info was intercepted they were arrested and the situation was de-escalated. Tech like this saved lives that day. I don't think it justifies the freedom cost, but let's not forget real lives are saved by tools like Pegasus.
peroporque 6y ago
This kind of mob "justice" against people will destroy society. Stop promoting it.
- rbrtl 6y ago
  I don't think the inclusion of the word "mob" is very helpful. The connotations are both sinister, and organised. What we have is the logical extension of the social justice, or SJW, movement. Which even 2 years ago, in my recollections, would have been met with utter disdain. Somehow we've arrived at a time when social justice has a new-found legitimacy and few detractors still speaking out about it. To me this is scarier than a mob, who usually have a figurehead around whom they rally. The SJWs have been building their seat of power on the shoulders of social media celebrities. This is Huxleyan populism. People 'follow' others from their sofa, they 'like' things without critical assessment, bolstering support for an ill-defined cause based on memetic catchphrases and sound-bite signals.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    They learned from their detractors. Before they started witch hunts on Twitter, there were other groups that did the same in the age of the early net. Difference is that many people now have a public persona on social media.
- catalogia 6y ago
  Twitter mobs help get people fired. NSO helps people get murdered. I can't claim to be a big fan of either, but as long as both exist I know which I'd like to see prevail.
  - peroporque 6y ago
    Because middle grounds don't exist?
aronpye 6y ago
Ostracising someone from society solely on where they work without looking at their actual actions is implying guilt by association. A tactic often used by authoritarians. Everyone in a civilised society has the right to a fair trial without the presumption of guilt.
- XMPPwocky 6y ago
  Finally, somebody's brave enough to say the truth! I've been helping with some work for a small local gang- we do the usual (murder-for-hire, "debt collection", extortion, etc). Although I only do administrative work - keeping records and such. Pays great. But you know what? My wife- my wife of five years- left me when she found out. Can you believe that? What a fucking fascist. I didn't do anything wrong. I never killed anybody. And, sure, I did also help machine firearms for folks, and I did help with some supply chain issues to make sure we have a reliable supply of bullets, but I never shot anyone. Not one person. How dare anybody discriminate against me?
  - nec4b 6y ago
    Right, why do we need due process and laws, when we have people like you who know everything by reading a simple article on the web?
    - TomMarius 6y ago
      I really don't want due process and laws to decide who my friends are for me.
      - nec4b 6y ago
        I don't want a mob deciding who should be harassed because of an article.
        TomMarius 6y ago
        Ostracizing someone is not harrasment. It's the opposite.
raxxorrax 6y ago
I agree that people supporting this are guilty, but I don't agree with blacklists of developers for political reasons. These are established in the industry and speaks of incompetence in leadership as it is. That doesn't mean their behavior should be endorsed, but that is a case for legislation.
jlg23 6y ago
I am not sure that convincing someone by not talking to them has a high success rate...
searchableguy 6y ago
The world isn't so black and white. I do agree that individuals should be held accountable for their work but it's the degree of the work that is problematic. Is it direct contribution or is it indirect contribution? If I am working on an open source project used by NSA to hack you, am I responsible? No. That type of moral policing would be bad. If someone is writing software directly for hacking you, then yes they are responsible but then you must consider all the actions of the org where they used that tool. People might work on these tools because of terrorism or believe in security of the state. That's by no means bad but how the org go about that can be bad and infringe rights. They don't have control over it. Now if they don't quit over the bad reuse of their tool and are not constraint by something (a person working for NSA is likely to get another job without problem), then I think there's something to be said about the personal responsibility. Verifying the degree of contribution from outside is very hard to do as most details of what happens inside the orgs remains a secret. What their employees are told is wildly different than what they end up doing. That said, I don't believe targeting individuals will have much effect. It's actively bad because there's an easy road here. Hold the org accountable. If we go down the path of wasting energy on ex-communicating individuals, orgs may get a free pass. It's not hard to replace people in a big org especially a monopoly. Go for the low hanging fruits. Boycott the org.
driverdan 6y ago
I have a list of companies I won't hire anyone from unless one of their reasons for leaving is due to objections over their immoral behavior. If you work for a company like NSO you are willingly complicit in violations of human rights. That's not the kind of person I want to work with.
closeparen 6y ago
Would you say the same about military veterans?
mam2 6y ago
Like it's gonna have any impact

ezoe 6y ago

I think the developer community need to start refusing to use the cellphone. It cannot be trusted. It's tainted by non-free software on top of non-free OS on top of non-free firmware with the separate processor whose behaviour we cannot observe from the main processor. It also relies on central wireless network from only a handful of providers. Easy single point of vulnerable target. I do refuse to own a cellphone. What about you. Since you're suggesting the boycott, can you?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
msh 6y ago
Mobile phones are way safer for normal users compared general purpose computers.
bad_user 6y ago
What does Free/OSS software have to do with the article? If the phone wasn't proprietary, would it have made any difference? The answer is obvious.
- Reelin 6y ago
  > The answer is obvious. Is it? I'm not overly familiar with any security exploits, but my understanding is that (at least for Android) the phone OS is often woefully out of date simply because the vendor stopped supplying updates. The end user generally can't supply updates themselves because everything is locked down in a decidedly user hostile manner. For the vendor's part, they often stop supplying updates (as I understand it) because the proprietary hardware doesn't have it's drivers upstreamed into the kernel (they're proprietary after all) which leads to a completely unjustifiable maintenance burden. They can't simply open source things because the hardware manufacturers generally require NDAs. As far as the hardware goes, my (probably woefully incomplete) understanding is that it remains proprietary due to a combination of attempting to maintain a competitive edge through secrecy, licensing complexities due to containing third party IP, and DRM issues (which are again a licensing concern).
  - bad_user 6y ago
    No, that's not what happens on iOS. I'm writing this on a 5 year old device still getting updated. The iOS exploits that have historically allowed the device to be jailbroken have been zero-day vulnerabilities. And I'm assuming the TFA is about a zero-day too. Also Android is open source (AOSP). How does that help?
    - Reelin 6y ago
      I'm well aware that this isn't nearly as much of an issue for Apple devices - that's why I very clearly specified Android in my previous comment. Yes AOSP is open source but that doesn't help as much as one might hope for the reasons I outlined in my previous comment. Basically most end user devices aren't actually running AOSP at the end of the day, and can't without investing a nontrivial amount of effort. (And that still wouldn't prevent vulnerabilities related to out of date firmware.) The comment of yours that I originally responded to seemed to me to insinuate that having access to fully open sourced phones wouldn't be able to do anything to improve device security as a foregone conclusion. I was objecting to that, pointing out that there are a number of real world examples where access to a fully open source mobile stack would immediately and drastically improve the current situation. In a hypothetical world full of such stacks perhaps this article would never have been written.
fouc 6y ago
PinePhone seems promising
- teddyh 6y ago
  Also the Librem 5.
niyikiza 6y ago
I think the problem can be solved by separating the "phone" experience from the "mobile" experience. Phones are these devices powered by a philosophy (and to an extent, a technology) from 3-4 decades ago and day after day we see them ruining the experience of having the internet access from your hands. We need to move from a mobile-phone era to a mobile-internet era.
- simonh 6y ago
  In what way do you think the phone legacy is holding us back? What concrete steps would you suggest? It seems to me this has already happened. We only call these things phones for legacy reasons, but the iPhone broke the design link with actual phones and turned the phone aspect into just another communications app.
  - kavalg 6y ago
    I guess he meant the baseband processor
    - simonh 6y ago
      OK, but how does that hold any other aspects of these devices back? Remove the baseband processor and you've got an iPod Touch, or a small iPad. It doesn't fundamentally change the device or really open up any new avenues not possible with a baseband processor.

aeternum 6y ago

This won't work, as long as there is a market for hacking phones, there will be those willing to sell their expertise. We should focus on making things more secure. While security is a tough problem, it's also somewhat surprising that properly sandboxing a browser is so difficult.

StavrosK 6y ago
> This won't work, as long as there is a market for hacking phones, there will be those willing to sell their expertise. Maybe, but it'll make them way way more expensive.
- mhuffman 6y ago
  > Maybe, but it'll make them way way more expensive. Higher prices are how you attract MORE talent!
  - smabie 6y ago
    Usually, high salaries are used to attract star performers. But there's other factors at play too. Sometimes, high salaries are used as compensation for dangerous or unpleasant work. So, for example, if the NSO had to pay higher salaries because all developers whotake the job get immediately divorced by their wives and no longer invited for beer by their friends, then that wouldn't attract better talent. Regular talent is merely being compensated for the negative externalities of working for NSO. In order for a company to attract superior talent, they need the entire package to be better than the competition (lifestyle, salary, free pizza, prestige, etc).
raxxorrax 6y ago
The mobile OS strategy failed everywhere. Now we have bad security (seriously, this is as an OS and browser error) and bad lock-in. I doubt it would have been easy to do with a decently updated, conventional desktop PC, even if you could redirect its network access like it was done here with his phone. Even with a mitm attack on your browser, this shouldn't have happened.

malux85 6y ago

It won’t work, because it only takes a small number of bad actors to ruin the compliance of a vast majority. Couple that with compliance being driven by ethics and non-compliance being driven by money - it will never work. We should focus on increasing security

inglor 6y ago

I really don't like NSO, to the point I never go to their parties and meetups even when invited and they have good parties. However it's worth mentioning they really don't see it that way. A lot of people working for NSO (or the NSA) see themselves as making a personal sacrifice for public safety. Also, NSO doesn't operate said technology it just sells it - so it's a bit more like going after people making anti DRM software or p2p sharing software. The only big difference is that NSO is making money.

nieve 6y ago
It's more like going after people who make waterboarding kits and run logistics for kidnappings. Anti-DRM and p2p software aren't usually associated with aiding & abetting torture and murder of dissidents and journalists. Framing the two as equivalent elides what NSO group's employees are actually complicit in.
furyg3 6y ago
That ‘only’ difference is a very big one, and they are completely aware that their software will be misused and are happy to make a profit with it. To say, ‘we will only sell our software to countries who promise not to use it to violate human rights, and if we catch them doing it, we will suspend it’ is just hand waving. The software is designed to be undetected. That’s the whole point. A actual policy would be that ‘we do not sell our software to countries who have a bad human rights track record, as defined by <independent group>’ ... but that would cut into sales.
- ishi 6y ago
  Is there any country that doesn't have a bad human rights track record? Sure, some are worse than others. But where do you draw the line, and how far back into history are you willing to look?
  - jtsuken 6y ago
    This is a decent source: https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new There are 16 countries with personal freedom ranking above 9 (out of 10). US is ranked 26 with a score of 8.72, which intuitively makes sense. Morocco is 135th with a score of 5.68, which pretty obviously indicates, that there is more than one thing wrong about offering hacking tools to the government

ishi 6y ago

I was recently offered a job by NSO, didn't take it due to their terrible reputation. I won't be surprised if some countries start denying entry to NSO employees. Even Facebook suspended accounts of NSO employees after NSO hacked Whatsapp - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7x5nnz/nso-employees-take-legal-action-against-facebook-for-banning-their-accounts https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7x5nnz/nso-employees-take... . On the other hand, their product is just a tool which can be used for good (stopping terrorists) or evil (spying on human rights activists). Just like a kitchen knife can be used for good (cooking a meal) or evil (stabbing people). So I find it hard to find the moral justification for the actions you suggest. The problem is not the tool or the tool's manufacturer, it's how it gets used.

wallacoloo 6y ago
I’ll play the opposite side of this argument, for the sake of discussion. You point to knifes having a good use: cooking. It’s by far the dominant use of knifes, and no doubt it makes cooking sunstantially easier. But hacking tools: to what extent are they actually being used for good? Stuxnet is the clearest example I know of these tools almost certainly decreasing a threat to US citizens (at least for the time before it was found out). But beyond that, there’s very little publicly accessible information demonstrating that these tools are actually effective at stopping or decreasing terrorism. Moreover, even if they turn out to be effective at that, their use in this manner comes with other questionable effects on law and personal rights. I don’t think the knife is a good analogy because while everyone agrees that a knife can be put to either good or bad effect, there’s not consensus on whether hacking tools can even be used for any good.
- dafoex 6y ago
  Not to mention, when hacking tools are used for good, they are often used from the perspective of people wanting to do bad: penetration testing
- inglor 6y ago
  When I was in the Israeli army, I personally saw a phone being hacked, info being pulled and the info being used to stop a terrorist attack targeting civilians. I was not involved in the hack (I served in the navy). In that particular case (but not the majority of cases) the target of the hack was an Israeli citizen who was practicing terrorism (against the Arab minority). After their info was intercepted they were arrested and the situation was de-escalated. Tech like this saved lives that day. I don't think it justifies the freedom cost, but let's not forget real lives are saved by tools like Pegasus.

peroporque 6y ago

This kind of mob "justice" against people will destroy society. Stop promoting it.

rbrtl 6y ago
I don't think the inclusion of the word "mob" is very helpful. The connotations are both sinister, and organised. What we have is the logical extension of the social justice, or SJW, movement. Which even 2 years ago, in my recollections, would have been met with utter disdain. Somehow we've arrived at a time when social justice has a new-found legitimacy and few detractors still speaking out about it. To me this is scarier than a mob, who usually have a figurehead around whom they rally. The SJWs have been building their seat of power on the shoulders of social media celebrities. This is Huxleyan populism. People 'follow' others from their sofa, they 'like' things without critical assessment, bolstering support for an ill-defined cause based on memetic catchphrases and sound-bite signals.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  They learned from their detractors. Before they started witch hunts on Twitter, there were other groups that did the same in the age of the early net. Difference is that many people now have a public persona on social media.
catalogia 6y ago
Twitter mobs help get people fired. NSO helps people get murdered. I can't claim to be a big fan of either, but as long as both exist I know which I'd like to see prevail.
- peroporque 6y ago
  Because middle grounds don't exist?

aronpye 6y ago

Ostracising someone from society solely on where they work without looking at their actual actions is implying guilt by association. A tactic often used by authoritarians. Everyone in a civilised society has the right to a fair trial without the presumption of guilt.

XMPPwocky 6y ago
Finally, somebody's brave enough to say the truth! I've been helping with some work for a small local gang- we do the usual (murder-for-hire, "debt collection", extortion, etc). Although I only do administrative work - keeping records and such. Pays great. But you know what? My wife- my wife of five years- left me when she found out. Can you believe that? What a fucking fascist. I didn't do anything wrong. I never killed anybody. And, sure, I did also help machine firearms for folks, and I did help with some supply chain issues to make sure we have a reliable supply of bullets, but I never shot anyone. Not one person. How dare anybody discriminate against me?
- nec4b 6y ago
  Right, why do we need due process and laws, when we have people like you who know everything by reading a simple article on the web?
  - TomMarius 6y ago
    I really don't want due process and laws to decide who my friends are for me.
    - nec4b 6y ago
      I don't want a mob deciding who should be harassed because of an article.
      - TomMarius 6y ago
        Ostracizing someone is not harrasment. It's the opposite.

raxxorrax 6y ago

I agree that people supporting this are guilty, but I don't agree with blacklists of developers for political reasons. These are established in the industry and speaks of incompetence in leadership as it is. That doesn't mean their behavior should be endorsed, but that is a case for legislation.

jlg23 6y ago

I am not sure that convincing someone by not talking to them has a high success rate...

searchableguy 6y ago

The world isn't so black and white. I do agree that individuals should be held accountable for their work but it's the degree of the work that is problematic. Is it direct contribution or is it indirect contribution? If I am working on an open source project used by NSA to hack you, am I responsible? No. That type of moral policing would be bad. If someone is writing software directly for hacking you, then yes they are responsible but then you must consider all the actions of the org where they used that tool. People might work on these tools because of terrorism or believe in security of the state. That's by no means bad but how the org go about that can be bad and infringe rights. They don't have control over it. Now if they don't quit over the bad reuse of their tool and are not constraint by something (a person working for NSA is likely to get another job without problem), then I think there's something to be said about the personal responsibility. Verifying the degree of contribution from outside is very hard to do as most details of what happens inside the orgs remains a secret. What their employees are told is wildly different than what they end up doing. That said, I don't believe targeting individuals will have much effect. It's actively bad because there's an easy road here. Hold the org accountable. If we go down the path of wasting energy on ex-communicating individuals, orgs may get a free pass. It's not hard to replace people in a big org especially a monopoly. Go for the low hanging fruits. Boycott the org.

driverdan 6y ago

I have a list of companies I won't hire anyone from unless one of their reasons for leaving is due to objections over their immoral behavior. If you work for a company like NSO you are willingly complicit in violations of human rights. That's not the kind of person I want to work with.

closeparen 6y ago

Would you say the same about military veterans?

mam2 6y ago

Like it's gonna have any impact