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I don't know the details of the French case, but there is a valid question here: If I make some widget, that turns out is used widely, and happens to be used b

I don't know the details of the French case, but there is a valid question here: If I make some widget, that turns out is used widely, and happens to be used by an oppressive regime, am I helping commit opression? What about if I make a tool that really only has uses that look like oppression, but some of those cases are not opression and some are (say web filtering - parents can use it to protect their children, and opressive regimes can use it for censorship)? What if I create machine learning software that finds activists and determines the best time to arrest them? What if I work with a regime on custom extensions to a medical program that helps find the optimal torture times and methods to break people the fastest? At some point the use of "your freedom" is just a shield behind which one tries to hide complicity in removing others' freedom.

cinquemb 13y ago
At some point the use of "your freedom" is just a shield behind which one tries to hide complicity in removing others' freedom. Unless one happens to find themselves on the side of the people who get to define what is "oppressive regime" and "others freedom". It's not as clear cut as one may think when you consider the perspectives of other societies and the people in power there (even as individuals who learn how to create their own tools for their own means become more powerful). The whole UN regulation issue makes light of this [http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2012/12/04/un-control-of-the-internet-an-idea-whose-time-will-never-come/ http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2012/12/04/un-control-of-the-in...].