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I think Google legally had a mechanism to do this, but ethically is messed up big time. The saying was "don't be evil", not "don't be criminal". I don't know if Google leadership was evil but the underlying principle is that "don't be illegal" is a low bar. I expect everyone to strive to do much better than that.

I don't see a lot of calls in these comment threads for an employee bill of rights or something, so I don't know why this keeps coming up.

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Ultimately employment comes down to a voluntary contract between the employer and the employee. Personally I don't feel that it is the responsibility of the government to dictate what those contracts look like.

Generally the thought is that laws correspond to morality. Anyone who has taken one look at some knows this is not the case, but that may be where the link between "don't be evil" and "don't be criminal" come in to play.

Like I said, laws correspond to the lowest bar of morality. As in, we will take your freedom or property if you do bad enough things.

There are plenty of deplorable things that companies can and should legally be able to do that they nevertheless shouldn't do.

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