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That doesn't answer JoshMnem's question. Justifies the means to whom? If the answer is google, I'm not sure what the point of your comment was, as that's pretty obvious...
Yes, my answer was google, I found the question to be as obvious as you found my answer to be.
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If you leak your company's plans to rob a bank to the press, you're still a whistleblower, even if the bank hasn't been robbed yet. Whistleblowers are under no moral or professional obligation to let people become victims before coming forward. If supplying search history to a government known to imprison or torture dissidents is an immoral activity, then bringing it to light is whistleblowing. You can make a cogent…
That would be a better argument if they were planning to do something illegal.
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You do realize that anything you do for your employer belongs to your employer? And that protecting trade secrets is part of practically every employer agreement? There are whistleblower exceptions, but generally, if you can't be trusted to keep secrets, you're not a professional.
This is whistleblowing.
Disclaimer: I work for Google. I also think that there is an anti-Google bias on hacker news, holding Google to a standard not applied to others and taking any excuse to roll out the same old tired rants in response to almost any Google post (DAE Google Reader etc). If what I read is true then this is the first thing that has truly rocked my confidence that the company generally tries to do the right thing (while mak…
So, here's an honest question: How do they find people to work on these products if the general consensus is that this is a bad thing to do? How do they keep word of these projects from spreading within the company? It seems if enough people feel strongly about this, then at least one would quit after being assigned to this project, and even if there's an NDA and they can't relate the details of why they quit, it wou…
When you're focused on technical details, cost evaluations, etc, you're not exactly thinking about what the thing is used for, or why. At least, I wasn't and I assume it works the same way for others.
It's really easy to just get assigned to a project, and start working on it.
Disclaimer: I work for Google. I also think that there is an anti-Google bias on hacker news, holding Google to a standard not applied to others and taking any excuse to roll out the same old tired rants in response to almost any Google post (DAE Google Reader etc). If what I read is true then this is the first thing that has truly rocked my confidence that the company generally tries to do the right thing (while mak…
Edit: I wrote this because I was sad that people were arguing with the disclaimer, not the author's more substantive point. I don't mean to be patronizing or condescending in any way.
> “Leadership misled engineers working on [Dragonfly] about the nature of their work, depriving them of moral agency,” said a Google employee who read the memo. Lying to our own colleagues now are we? The end justifies the means I guess. Wait, what was the end again?
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So, here's an honest question: How do they find people to work on these products if the general consensus is that this is a bad thing to do? How do they keep word of these projects from spreading within the company? It seems if enough people feel strongly about this, then at least one would quit after being assigned to this project, and even if there's an NDA and they can't relate the details of why they quit, it wou…
The suggestion from the link is that some people involved didn't fully understand what they were working on. And obviously they weren't able to keep word spreading in this case. But obviously a number of people must have known. I don't know how they approach and recruit these people, it's above my paygrade.
I mean, I really appreciate all of you who seem to dig in and dive into the what and why of every system you work on, but I often just do work. I get tunnel vision and do the things I have to do. I don't really care about much outside of that spectrum unless it impacts what I have to accomplish.
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This is whistleblowing.
Whistleblowing only applies to things that are illegal. Just because you have a personal objection to something doesn't mean you can leak whatever you want.
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That was back in February. Since then there's been some shuffling of the companies who own the servers with the keys so that China now has access. From July 2018: >Fast forward to today: China Telecom, a government owned telco, is taking over the iCloud data from Guizhou-Cloud Big Data. This essentially means that a state-owned firm now has access to all the iCloud data China-based users store, such as photos, notes,…
That report doesn't say that Apple no longer retains control of the keys.