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Comment by Sir_Substance | Hacker News Reader

I'm inclined to agree. I'd like to see more active ostracisation against software developers that have worked for organisations like the NSA and GCHQ. If we can make it a career ending job, it will dramatically reduce their ability to recruit.

However, I'd also like to see general software development think more closely about the role it has in normalising these things. Next time you start to create an account system for your project, ask yourself whether you really need it. Could you engineer around it, perhaps by letting the user store their data, or using a stored key to identify them? Let's go beyond don't store what you can't protect, and aim for don't store what you don't strictly need.

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How is Google or Facebook any better? They are spy agencies for advertising purposes instead of national security.

Or companies that deploy ad sense or otherwise depend on companies like Google or Facebook.

Exactly. Between themselves, Google & Facebook have access to a disturbingly large amount of the private information and the thoughts of billions of persons. Pictures, emails, messages, social graphs, you name it.

And now Microsoft decided they also want a piece of the pie.

The kicker? I see people still defend Google all the time, nowadays with bullshit arguments like "I am tired of this you are the product meme" and still excuse Facebook because they need it to keep in touch with others. And they found startups based on advertising and tracking, they work for them and generally support analytics as an inalienable right of software development.

Because one problem at a time. Instead of throwing up ones hands because some other thing is bad, too.

>Because one problem at a time.

Pretty much. I don't use Facebook at all, and give in to Google only on technical searches (Which DDG still isn't good at), mapping and when forced to by work (GCE etc.), so you're preaching to the choir, but lets not try for an overnight coup here.

People have a choice (at least to some extent) about the data they share with Google and Facebook. There is no such choice about the information that governments scoop up.

But...

NSA, GCHQ, BSI/BND, etc. aren't the "bad guy" in theory.

It's within a nation's interest to, within the extent of law and respect for human rights, try as thoroughly has it can to know what's going on in the world. Electronic intelligence is part of that, and a growing part.

In practice, the permissive reactions many/most/all governments have to allegations (or proof) that a comms intel agency has broken the law, that's what the trouble is. That these groups have been allowed to break the law or ghostwrite laws that allow them to violate what would generally not be approved by a citizenry, that needs to be addressed.

I'm not sure how ruining the careers of software developers and computer scientists who've worked for these organizations does anything other than remove from circulation some brilliant members of our community.

Ostracize the middle managers, bureaucrats, politicians that allow the trampling of our rights.

But don't arrest the guy designing the home theater system for El Chapo's vacation house and tell me you've taken down the Mexican drug cartel.

In reality, the software engineers that work for the above are the goons of the bad guys, and we cannot allow them to continue their work as it is detrimental to our interests. Any amount of perspective informs them that what they are doing is not supportive of a democratic state, yet they continue anyway.

Why must we accommodate their subservience? Following orders is no excuse.

>NSA, GCHQ, BSI/BND, etc. aren't the "bad guy" in theory.

Theory is not really relevant when the practical reality is monstrous. The five eyes are not redeemable.

Theory is of course relevant when the implementation of it, and the environment that it's implemented in, is what is poisoned.

It's easy for us to sit at our desks and churn out our work and be mad. And there's things to be mad about for sure. The wanton disregard for civil liberty and protection is simply irredeemable. And to be sure, I've been a fan of your country's very public responses over the last few years to personal privacy. I hope the US legislature can learn a thing or two.

But It's not the "five eyes". It's the entire world. Any country with an interest in protecting their sovereignty also has some form of information gathering operation.

When that operation gets big and exposes itself, folks get upset because, yeah, being spied on isn't a comfortable thing. Do some countries go about gathering this information more morally than others? Something tells me we'd have to be in the secret inner sanctums of the biggest opponents to really know, and I think the answer would be "a spade is a spade."

Does it help our countries protect themselves? I honestly don't know.

But I do know that "grey hatting" in the general development community doesn't garner this sort of bile and venom. I don't know why being a grey hat for a government should be treated differently.

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