First, thanks for coming clean. You're a human being who's made a really bad decision.
You should feel terrible for this. "They" are not merely your possible friends, or your relative's relatives, or your neighbors' cousins... "They" are other human beings who might someday decide to stand up for their human rights. "They" are millions of people you sold out for easy "dinner" & "rent".
And now the tool you helped build to invade their privacy is likely being turned on all your real friends, and your real relatives, and your real neighbors. And you're not even getting paid anymore.
You should feel terrible for selling out for so little. You weren't as afraid of being unemployed as you were of having to do something. You were mentally lazy and your moral compass was clearly defunct.
Too bad your behavior is not undoable and you'll have to live with it for the rest of your life. Maybe you can do something to recover for it in the future.
Hopefully your ethical failure can serve as an example of what not to do.
What did you hope to accomplish with this post? "Here's someone who did something bad, who can't undo it, and who feels bad enough to come clean - let's rub it in so as to discourage others from doing so"?
And it's a lot of people's 'decision' to bury their heads in the sand about the implications of Snowden's leaks. In that light, why isn't it also directed at everyone who doesn't care, rather than one guy who does?
Edit: What about the employer's choices to go ahead with it? No anger directed that way? This guy should have fallen on his sword but his company gets a pass?
Yeah, every person in the chain needs to wake the f* up.
Please don't mistake my lack of attention to Blizzard's complicity as a 'pass'.
I actively campaign against folks who would bury their heads in the sand. In the past decade I have spent huge effort (preaching?) to convince my peers not to accept work in these Military Industrial jobs and to leave them if they're already there. I've had quite a bit of success in that regard, and I would encourage (as I tried in my response) that others would help educate their peers as well.
I was very very clear about what I hoped to accomplish: a repentance from the actor in this case, and to highlight their stupidity to others.
And I wish more people would stand up and say it to their friends and relatives when those people graduate college and start talking about working for the Military Industrial Complex, "Cyber" anything, or various other companies who build bombs, agents of war, or devices used to subjugate other humans.
I hope this person will work hard to redeem what he's wrought. Nothing else can redeem him, his work won't just disappear for his remorse.
>Too bad your behavior is not undoable and you'll have to live with it for the rest of your life. Maybe you can do something to recover for it in the future.
Hopefully your ethical failure can serve as an example of what not to do.
I hope that others will send the message loudly and clearly to those that would create bomb parts or fragments of code necessary for snooping tools or facilitate those who would like to usurp peaceful human behavior.
No, you were not at all clear about what you wanted to achieve. From my reading, you simply berated someone on the internet for revealing something about themselves. I've never found that to be a productive way of convincing anyone of anything.
You now say that the aim was to get repentance, when he's already stated he regrets it. At no point do you give advice about what he could/should do now to 'make up for his sins', apart from 'feel really bad'.
The point wasn't to convince anyone of anything. The point was just to state, "I read what you wrote and I agree you fucked up seriously".
The Internet is not a confessional and speaking your sins out loud here doesn't automatically absolve you. But that might be an impression one could get if the only responses were in the tone of "thank you for telling us, you're a brave and good man". So we need comments, like mr_spothawk's, that basically say "you're not a bad guy, but you fucked up; here's why and how exactly; let's hope we can all learn from this".
Please re-read the thread as you've completely missed my point. I've not asked the person who 'confessed' to 'atone' for anything (that doesn't mean I agree with what happened).
My problem is with the comment that does nothing more than lambast someone without providing anything constructive. Offering some comment on how to approach such a situation next time, or what he could now, or projects he might think about contributing to, or anything else that might be useful to the person who originally posted or others reading the thread. As it stands, it's not much better than an ad-hominem.
I consider your comment very unproductive. You basically berated someone who already came out and said they were sorry for what they did. He realizes his mistake and repents. The fact that you want to make him feel even more guilty doesn't help at all and I find it very sad.
Don't we all make terrible choices both explicitly as well as implicitly? When faced with a choice between the moral rectitude and the livelihood of your family, it's very difficult to choose the former. At least this guy has courage to come clean and admit his wrongdoing.
I'm calling bullshit. Maybe this gentlemen would have taken some job that paid less(i doubt it), but it's hard to believe that a programmer, of all people, would be blackballed industry wide for refusing to implement some spying mechanism. Give me a break. If anyone is in a position to rebel against this type of system it's those of us in software. We have a strong community of anti-establishment minded people, we have a very strong job market and we make much more than a living wage.
Selling out for "so little"? I bet he sold out for over hundred thousand dollars, or more (depending on how long he wirked tgere.)
The need to know where food and rent are coming from is strong in humans, and the system takes full advantage of it. If you want to go against that, it will take a lot more than some ultimately futile work stoppage and sacrificing your future career.
The system is what it is, the golden rule applies, and to change the system, it would take prolonged civil war. I'd that what you want?
>The system is what it is, the golden rule applies, and to change the system, it would take prolonged civil war. I'd that what you want?
I want people to wake up and realize that this is absolutely farcical. We still live in a democracy, and we still have the power to stop this behavior by 'the system'. It took generations of stupidity to get here and it will take generations to get us out, but, cynical as I am, I don't think all is lost.
It takes waking up and walking out of jobs that do this sort of work. It takes jury nullification [1]. It takes thoughtful decisions by graduating seniors looking for work. It takes political education and civil protest and HARD WORK, but it doesn't require violence between the states.
When former President Jimmy Carter is on the record stating America simply has no functioning democracy at this point, it might be more of an uphill battle than voting. And anyways, there's not much to vote for. I vote green because Republicans are terrible, Democrats at least seem to pretend they care but won't stop any of this, Libertarianism scares me. So even though I don't agree with everything the Green party says, at least it's different. But we don't have socialist factions really, or pirate party candidates yet.
First, thanks for coming clean. You're a human being who's made a really bad decision.
You should feel terrible for this. "They" are not merely your possible friends, or your relative's relatives, or your neighbors' cousins... "They" are other human beings who might someday decide to stand up for their human rights. "They" are millions of people you sold out for easy "dinner" & "rent".
And now the tool you helped build to invade their privacy is likely being turned on all your real friends, and your real relatives, and your real neighbors. And you're not even getting paid anymore.
You should feel terrible for selling out for so little. You weren't as afraid of being unemployed as you were of having to do something. You were mentally lazy and your moral compass was clearly defunct.
Too bad your behavior is not undoable and you'll have to live with it for the rest of your life. Maybe you can do something to recover for it in the future.
Hopefully your ethical failure can serve as an example of what not to do.