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Ask: Would you write software Spy on users or censors users for a govt?

8 points by lukejduncan ↗ HN
It's a pretty standard request for successful Internet companies these days. The US government wants to compel you to spy on your users/customers for them (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/nsl-gag-order-lifted/ or http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/07/technology/security/nsa-data-prism/index.html) or the Chinese government wants you to censor your site or users to do business there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google).<p>As hacker or engineer, if you were asked to implement these tools on behalf of your company, what would you do?<p>[This was originally intended as a poll but I don't appear to have enough karma to post]

5 comments

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venomsnake
Yes. Why? Because depriving of technological capacity to do something solves no problem. We developers are rarely so unique snowflakes that what we do is unable to be reproduced by another person. And the government will be able to procure the technological know how.

So either you design your service from the start with irreversible untraceability, privacy protection etc (and not storing your users data in plain text) or you implement it when asked legally.

The government overreach is something that should be solved by law and not by technological means.

I would try to leak about the whole story though.

Also a government have legitimate interests in gathering and analyzing data - there are real crimes being plotted, committed and investigated.

What get everyone so worked up these two days was not the fact that the government agencies have ways to obtain data, but that there is little transparency and the data requests are way too broad. A single defiant developer won't change that.

lukejduncan
No doubt it will happen anyways. But morally, I couldn't. And I'd hope that my protest, no matter how small, would be my way in participating in a conversation on change and help inspire outrage in others.
venomsnake
This tool can also help relatives of deceased one to take over accounts (that are rightfully theirs).

Nobody goes and says - give us power to do evil. A tool by itself is devoid of morality.

waterphone
No, I wouldn't. And I would publicize the fact that I was asked to. It's easy to pretend that you should just go along with something because someone else will take over anyway, but nothing will ever happen if no one stands up and refuses.
luisivan
Yes, but I would do it in a way that screws some data so the info becomes less valuable and more difficult to analyze. For example, if I were Dropbox I would mix some files for each user, so the user has not only some of their files but other random files, or the files of a completely different user.