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Comment by rosser | Hacker News Reader

In 2011 the BBC found documents in the state security building in Egypt, looted during the uprising, which suggested that the Hampshire-based firm had offered to supply Finfisher to the Egyptian government to monitor activists.

How does someone do this — sell surveillance software to totalitarian states so they can "monitor" dissidents and activists — and then sleep at night, or face their children in the morning?

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Easy, they tell themselves that the software is used to monitor potential terrorists and criminals.

I doubt if even that fig leaf is necessary. They just sell.

Maybe a similar to psychology to arms dealers.

"If I don't do it, someone else will fill the shoes. I might as well make the money myself then" might be one such psychology.

Of the folks I've had the chance to ask the question to (I know anecdotal) this has been their excuse. Basically they can choose to sell or not sell, and if they choose not to sell someone else will and they will get the money instead, oh and they spend their ill-earned money on very charitable things so its like the evil regime is funding charity, so how cool is that?'

It would make for an interesting psychology paper.

Most 'totalitarian states' aren't as Bond-villain-esque as their image in the popular imagination and most 'dissidents' aren't as heroic.

You just have to convince yourself that the situation is grey (which is mostly true) and that everyone who is 'as good as you' is somewhere else (which isn't). Then it's easy to sleep at night. This has the benefit of being true some of the time, which makes it harder to convincingly criticize.

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