[m3rc]

If there's any justice in the world every person who participates in this sort of work will be shamed and ostracized in the future.

[mulmen]

Leaving them no option but to continue building surveillance software?

Rather than hope for a chance to make someone else miserable I’d rather people just weren’t building this stuff to begin with.

[AWildC182]

It doesn't matter if they can't hire good talent. The guys running these businesses believe they're "just making tools for the good guys" (actual interview quote from a psychotic surveillance company I turned down a while back). We want to make sure they can only recruit the dumbest codemonkeys and spaghetti chefs that money can buy so their products go nowhere.

[ngngngng]

There's exceptionally few things I wouldn't do for enough money to retire and take care of my family comfortably for the rest of our lives.

I assume a lot of people think like that.

[saagarjha]

Ideally, there’d be a number of other things you could do that would work as well.

[daenz]

Shame and ostracization only works when the person cares about being accepted by you.

[ossworkerrights]

I am wondering why aren’t protests staged in front of these companies’ offices. If they have any in the US or the EU, doing it in saudi arabia, china, etc. means certain death.

[reidjs]

I live in the Bay and even here physical protests aren’t taken very seriously, just kids trying to skip school and lonely elderly folks who are bored. The money’s too good, the tools will still be built and used protest or no.

[briandear]

Is there any possibility that some of this “snooping” actually keeps us safer? Ostracizing these people is not unlike ostracizing police. Even though police have abused power from time to time, I bet there isn’t a single one of us that wouldn’t call the police if our child has been kidnapped.

[saagarjha]

> Is there any possibility that some of this “snooping” actually keeps us safer?

Even if it does, is it worth violating rights in the process?

[xkcd-sucks]

Honestly, if my child was kidnapped and the ransom was affordable... it makes sense to just pay it and avoid the police. Less chance of collateral damage in the pursuit of justice and all that

[BickNowstrom]

Government surveillance is a good thing. Change my mind. Its stated goal is to catch baddies and protect a country. Business surveillance is a bad thing. Its stated goal is to monetize user data and surveil everyone on the internet.

So basically everyone on hackernews that worked for a modern data-driven consumer-target company participates in adversarial data gathering. Even if you just gave your data to a FANG company, in exchange for comfortable features, you helped them more effectively spy on people like you. So shame on you!

[some_random]

Government surveillance from first world, liberal governments is not necessarily a bad thing. Surveillance by authoritarians focused on suppressing their population and political enemies is a bad thing.

But yeah, I absolutely agree that the NSA et al are less damaging than Google and friends.

[devit]

The actual effect might not correspond to the stated goal.

For instance, it may be applied to "protect the people currently in power in the country" instead of "protect the [people living in the] country".

Business surveillance might be less problematic because laws and government are supposed to make businesses acting for their own interest not be a problem (or be less of a problem), while the same mechanism for governments (constitution and supreme courts) is less restrictive.

[saagarjha]

> Its stated goal is to catch baddies and protect a country.

I don’t think it actually does this as well as the government would like you to believe.