Most people on HN? Definite no. Most people on HN who work in roles where they're exposed to such mass surveillance or other evil at scale (like Meta)? Absolutely not.
What a different world we'd be living in, if the (back then, at least supposedly) greatest democracy would have shown the way to a universal safety net.
How fucking sad that we ended in a world where the finders of flaws or zerodays are being suppressed and prosecuted, instead of allowing them to make the world a better place.
A handful of narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths now hold almost all power with these structures.
At least now the pretense of democracy is dropped.
Quitting a job you think is harmful (or even maybe meaningless) can be good for yourself, in addition to the morality question.
Of course, seeing what happened with Snowden or even other whistleblowers more recently, like Suchir Balaji or John Barnett, makes it clear that more than financial security is at stake & acts as a chilling effect.
It truly is. I can’t emphasize this enough.
Yeah the solution is to not put yourself into a position where you need to make these choices. The fuel for the fire that are organizations like the CIA are people who don't have moral qualms or who have flexible ones.
The less people who work for these organizations the better.
If all the people of conscience quit, they are left with a workforce without a conscience, which I guess is pretty much what they have now, at least in certain areas.
That’s a good thing.
It isn’t really a radical or counterintuitive thing to say ‘don’t do evil work for evil people.’
People who give mealy mouth excuses like ‘I was just following orders’ or ‘I was just a contractor’ are part of the problem.
