I'm surprised by the level of discussion around whether or not this is "justified." The purpose of a corporation is to maximize the utility function of its stak

I'm surprised by the level of discussion around whether or not this is "justified." The purpose of a corporation is to maximize the utility function of its stakeholders. That doesn't have to be profit, and political/social justification isn't a necessary component of utility, but it is a valid one. If you found a company and are willing to make less money to have a more leisurely lifestyle with less day to day work, your utility function is not maximized if you take on more contracts to try and make more money. In Hootsuite, employees felt that working with ICE was not what they wanted, and they had the necessary market power and influence as stakeholders in the organization to change the organization's behavior. Why would a company be obligated to serve a foreign country's government agency? You shouldn't need to 'justify" your utility function by applying somebody else's normative standard. They don't want to serve ICE, so they don't. Companies should have the right to refuse service to customers they don't want to serve, and the barrier to entry to found competing companies to serve those customers should be low. The company created a product that ICE wants, they built the power to serve the government agency, and they should have the right to exercise it as they see fit. It would be different if they were a utility granted a monopoly by the state, in which case there should be significant regulations and oversight because it's not a new service they created. Basically, what I'm saying is, if you think that ICE should be able to get the services Hootsuite provides, then go ahead and start (or invest in) a competitor that will service ICE. We have a (reasonably) free market - use it.