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Comment by furyg3 | Hacker News Reader

They are definitely black hats. Intelligence services operating in foreign countries (physically or digitally) are by definition criminals, in that they are breaking the local laws where they are operating / accessing.

That they are doing it for a 'good cause' (often debatable) is somewhat irrelevant, that is a risk/reward calculation that the country/agency/spy needs to make themselves.

If a a friendly country of the Dutch government wants to access records of a Dutch company (Booking.com), there are numerous legal methods to access this data. What's instead happening is that the CIA hacks NL companies and the Dutch RIVM hacks American ones and they share information/metadata with each other so that they can make and end-run around the legal constraints of both nations.

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>the CIA hacks NL companies and the Dutch RIVM hacks American ones and they share information/metadata

The AIVD is the Dutch intelligence service, the RIVM is the public health institute. I don't think even the most out-there of Dutch conspiracy theorists have accused the RIVM of hacking American companies on behalf of the CIA...

Yeah but if you want to fly under the radar...

Haha your are absolutely correct. Of course they are much more prominent in the news at the moment and my mind totally slipped.

> That they are doing it for a 'good cause' (often debatable)

I would not count their fascist agenda a good cause. Inciting wars, performing illegal wars, putsching socialistic leaders neither, ...

> they are definitely black hats

Both intelligence agencies and cyber-criminals can be considered threats, but they are quite different. Intel agencies would present a serious threat to confidentiality, but are very unlikely to threaten the integrity & availability of business systems.

Illegal activities done with good intention (and usually outcome) is what the term greyhat is for. It would be fair to argue that's the correct term here for government agency hackers but personally I don't have strong enough stance on the subject to say either way.

Would Russia hacking a US election for example count as greyhat?

Unless you truly believe that interfering with the results of a free election is for the better of the participants of that election, no that's a black hat activity. There's nuance here since you have to think about perspective, no one is a villain in their own eyes, but personally I find the most useful perspective for the kind of hat to be from the victim.

The examples of the 'good guy' spies carrying out 'bad intention' activities are legion, and so the conclusion that trusting any covert intelligence organization is a good idea is extremely flawed.

I was mostly responding to this.

> They are definitely black hats.

There's a fair argument to be made that they're grey hat. On the whole though I agree with you and you shouldn't give blanket trust to people performing these kinds of activities. I would just assign a bit different value to a black hat activity (illegal and/or harmful and only beneficial by accident if at all) vs grey hat activity (illegal and potentially harmful but attempting to be beneficial)

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