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Comment by sprayk | Hacker News Reader

Any time I see arguments to effect of "lawyer X lawyered for Y, and Y is bad, so lawyer X is bad," I remember an episode from Star Trek: TNG called "The Measure of a Man," in which Picard is chosen to defend Data's right to self-determination as a sentient being, and Riker is chosen to make the opposite case for the character that wants to treat Data as a machine, a weapon that can be reallocated freely like a Jeep or a rifle. Riker struggles with this, but ends up giving the best case he can so the matter can be settled without any doubts. Doing a bad job on purpose leaves room for doubt and summary judgement, which is far from ideal.

I think the PATRIOT Act is complete bullshit, but I'm not going to hold a grudge against anyone that worked on it, only those who passed it and continue to vote to renew/strengthen it, who also refuse to listen to arguments against it.

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This doesn't convince me, because 1) in the real world there are often major monetary asymmetries in law, meaning one team has access to much more lawyers' time 2) your example is mostly irrelevant since it's not like the lawyer was a defense attorney, she voluntarily wrote an oppressive law and then spent much of her time afterwards defending/upholding it.

If you read the article you see that not only did she write the law, the Bush administration gave her major credit for leading the patriot act project. How is that at all similar to playing devil's advocate?

There is also the argument that the PATRIOT Act was flawed not for its stated intent, but for the nuance (or lack thereof) of its implementation. And the designer of the bill is the one responsible for said nuance, especially considering that she designed it at a time when it would have been political suicide for many lawmakers to oppose it for its nuance. She could have taken the opportunity to create something in keeping with civil liberties, and instead she did quite the opposite.

Absent additional context, it is very reasonable to expect her to disregard civil liberties in the remainder of her career.

That is a beautiful argument, but Star Trek is wishful fantasy. The reality is probably, most of the time, Riker was the only guy left after all the others, who could afford to, declined the case.

But this is not even this kind of case, not in terms of need, nor in terms of service to a greater principle. And we do actually need to hold people to account for their actions. There can be mitigating factors, but just doing your job has not been a defense for quite some time.

I think there were a lot of interesting first ammendment cases fought to defend less high-minded situtions.

Aside from that, I think that a lot of developers are in a terrible position to blame that lawyer.

How often have you added morally dubious scripts or features to your company products/websites?

didn't realize that wasn't a rhetoric..

have you actually added gray-area features ? any anecdotes without giving away your trench position ?

Damn that was a good episode. Thanks for the nostalgia.

Anecdotally, my father was a criminal defense attorney. There clients he didn't want to represent for personal reasons but did due to financial obligations, part of the profession. Lucky for him later in his career he was able to pick and choose more freely.

But I agree, the "lawyer X lawyered for Y" argument is a farce in most cases.

Unrelated, "The Inner Light" episode still hits me in my soul, even after all this time. For those that have not seen it, you owe yourself to watch it.

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