Hacker News Reader

Comment by openasocket | Hacker News Reader

I didn't say not keeping logs is unethical, I said " explicitly not keeping logs to protect users from law enforcement" is unethical. The difference is subtle. If you just happen to not keep logs that's fine, or if you don't keep logs because you don't want to have to pay for storing them or something that's also fine. But explicitly saying, "I could have logging here, but I don't want to because I don't want to provide evidence to law enforcement serving a valid warrant" is, in my view, unethical. Not tremendously unethical, mind you, but unethical. The morality is about the intent rather than the result.

View on HN

I could have cameras, but I legitimately don’t want to provide footage to law enforcement. Am I now acting unethically? And what the difference if I simply don’t have them because I don’t want to spend money on them (or any other reason)?

This is not entirely a rhetorical device. I really don’t want to provide the government with a video feed of my neighborhood.

I'll start by saying that intent can matter a lot in ethics. Intent is the difference between a tragic accident and cold-blooded murder. I'll also add that I think your scenario is ethical, you don't have any obligation to put cameras around your house.

What's the difference between your scenario of a house with cameras vs. a VPN service not logging things? I'll be honest here, I could list out a bunch of differences between those two scenarios (houses tend to have a reasonable expectation of privacy while internet services may not, the likelihood of catching criminals and the severity of their crimes, the potential for abuse, in the case of your house you could always serve as a witness to a crime so cameras might be overkill, etc.) but I honestly don't know which one of those differences is the reason why I find one scenario to be ethical and the other unethical, or if it's some difference I haven't thought of (or I might be wrong!).

I'll admit my opinion here isn't fully fleshed out. Another thing is that I consider Tor to be ethical, even though that's essentially a VPN that doesn't log anything (from the perspective of not being able to respond to law enforcement requests, I know there are significant technical differences). In that case, I think the distinction is that Tor is meant to help fight censorship in authoritarian countries, and the fact that it can be used for nefarious purposes is an unfortunate side effect that doesn't outweigh the benefits.

Anyway, I do think there is a line between valuing the privacy of users and shielding them from legitimate law enforcement requests, but I'm open to discussion on where exactly that line falls.

You say that houses tend to have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but not internet services, why is that? Possibly because they keep their logs? I don't understand why we should not have reasonable expectation of privacy for our internet activity. Seems like we could have a reasonable expectation of privacy if internet services don't keep their logs. So intent might be there, but one could view their lack of logs as upholding our privacy, not hiding criminal activities.

I think your reading of my comment is confused: I would not be installing cameras in my house (where I have a reasonable expectation of privacy), but outside my house (where anyone can get a clear view of the entire block and what's happening there.

> I could have cameras, but I legitimately don’t want to provide footage to law enforcement.

You could have or you would have?

The logs are there, we usually have them, they don't cost much and they are pretty useful. Like his previous comment said, if you had never intended to have logs there or have reasons not to have logs (replace logs by camera in your situation), then there's nothing unethical about it.

As he said it's not the result but the intent that make it unethical. In the same situation, it could actually be ethical to not have logs, let say to allow people to communicate behind a corrupt government that want to silence them.

Do you market your house / front yard as a good place to do illegal things (even implicitly) and then take payment from the people doing them while turning a blind eye to whatever conduct is happening?

This presumes that law enforcement always represent the enforcement of ethically correct directives. This is demonstrably not the case, and categorically deferring to them is likely ethically irresponsible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com