Articles like this try to put an ethical burden on analysts while ignoring the real actors and influences behind an ethical issue. Analysts are just doing their job and one certainly can't blame them.
Yes, you can blame them and you can blame them very easily. This is a ridiculous argument.
Following orders is not a 'get out of jail free' level excuse, though it might be used for mitigation.
So no, that ruling was not 'pure evil', it established a basic level of responsibility that applies even when acting under orders.
So, with all respect mr. Anonymous Coward you haven't a clue what you're talking about.
Principles come at a price, that's for sure.
I can see why you have a problem with this worldview.
Quite a few German soldiers did refuse orders and indeed some of them got executed or jailed. Those are the real heros.
And as I said before yes, that is exactly the situation I've been in. So I don't give a rats ass what your excuse is but I know where I stand on this.
You don't get to escape from your responsibilities.
This is also why I think Snowden did the right thing: he may have "betrayed his country" by helping inform the public about what is going on, but it was his moral responsibility to do so. If he had kept his mouth shut, he would have become an accomplice to the crime.
In addition to Hans Fritzsche, Franz von Papen, and Hjalmar Schacht in Nuremberg, over 1,000 Japanese defendants were acquitted of war crimes in postwar trials.
Sure, Göring was sentenced to death by hanging, but he conspired to steal Jewish property after Kristallnacht and there was clear evidence he was complicit in the attempted extermination of the Hungarian Jews. So, yeah, didn't go well for him.
Contrast that though with the higher ranking Dönitz, effectively head of state. His defense actually worked fairly well, and he received a lighter sentence.
On charges that he sunk neutral vessels, his defense countered that the US had done the same, so he received no additional jail time.
On charges that he waged unrestricted warfare against British merchants, he received a "not guilty" as his defense argued that the merchants had all supported the war effort.
He claimed that he didn't know anything about the policy in the camps, since he was only involved with naval matters. He was the final head of a genocidal state, and received just a 10 year sentence, lighter than some murderers get.
EDIT: I think you're right that there are mitigating factors when people are acting under orders (especially given the behavior in question falls well short of genocide), but I don't think the Nuremberg trials were a sham trial.
That said, I don't believe in the US justice system. As I don't live in the US, I don't have to worry about it much, either.
You've conveniently created a nice sliding scale from those that marry their same-sex partners all the way to those employed by the NSA and if the present (international) trends are any indication you may very well be right in the way you ordered those, maybe the last two should be swapped, time will tell.
I'm sure people of the future will find all kinds of ethical flaws in the way we live today. After all, 500 years ago, slavery was normal and accepted. Personally, I'd bet that our mistreatment of computer programs and robots will be considered so obscene that nothing else we do will even register.
Obviously I'll have to come to terms with the fact that "people in the world" have different priorities to mine regarding ethics; that doesn't change the fact that I believe certain things to be wrong and that (independently) I believe people should be held accountable for actions, even if just following orders (which was the original argument I was responding to).
Working for the NSA isn't a human rights issue, another reason that the gay marriage thing is a straw man. I'm not claiming someone shouldn't have the right to work for them, I'm just saying if they're instructed to do "wrong things" that those things are still "wrong" even if you're only doing them for your boss. (for whatever values of "wrong" -- hence your point about ethics being individual)
Because developers are so unemployable right now.