11–20 of 115 posts
I used to work for Blizzard. The Chinese government requested that we modify the WoW client so that they could intercept all chat. As far as I know, no-one said anything, including me - and Blizzard, of course, was more than happy to comply, given the size of the market and the risk of being forbidden to do business there. There were plenty of other MMOGs happy to play ball and eat that cake. I didn't say anything. I…
I used to work for Blizzard. The Chinese government requested that we modify the WoW client so that they could intercept all chat. As far as I know, no-one said anything, including me - and Blizzard, of course, was more than happy to comply, given the size of the market and the risk of being forbidden to do business there. There were plenty of other MMOGs happy to play ball and eat that cake. I didn't say anything. I…
That's what it means to be an ideologue - willingness to die for your values. Don't be ashamed about your decisions, a strong sense of self-preservation is perfectly natural.
What letter was asked to be signed at the end?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/letter?utm_source=twit...
I love the Ultima 4 reference
Also if you live in US you should always put your own safety in the first place. US justice system becomes most significant threat to capable citizens.
I used to work for Blizzard. The Chinese government requested that we modify the WoW client so that they could intercept all chat. As far as I know, no-one said anything, including me - and Blizzard, of course, was more than happy to comply, given the size of the market and the risk of being forbidden to do business there. There were plenty of other MMOGs happy to play ball and eat that cake. I didn't say anything. I…
If you have an ethical choice to make, consider the reaction of your esteemed colleagues (get counsel if you feel you can), not that of the mainstream news. The general support for those such as Snowden and Manning among my peers would prove that indeed they are held in high regard among those to whom it matters. The decision you made was your decision and you should not curse yourself for it but learn from it and support those who did make decisions to release materials and information.
I used to work for Blizzard. The Chinese government requested that we modify the WoW client so that they could intercept all chat. As far as I know, no-one said anything, including me - and Blizzard, of course, was more than happy to comply, given the size of the market and the risk of being forbidden to do business there. There were plenty of other MMOGs happy to play ball and eat that cake. I didn't say anything. I…
>I might have been branded as a coward If you have an ethical choice to make, consider the reaction of your esteemed colleagues (get counsel if you feel you can), not that of the mainstream news. The general support for those such as Snowden and Manning among my peers would prove that indeed they are held in high regard among those to whom it matters. The decision you made was your decision and you should not curse y…
If Google really wants to make a statement about being not-evil, make Snowden a generous offer for employment while he's in Russia.
* I'm not a "white hat" or a "black hat"
* I'm not deliberately involved in any kind of "cyber" conflict
* I don't do what I do because I'm battling the forces of evil, or organized crime, or anything else
Instead: I do engineering. The same way a contract driver developer does, or a Rails dev. I happen to work in a particularly challenging problem domain. My work happens to have some interesting implications. But those implications are not the reason I work in the field; I work here because it allows me to grapple with compilers, number theory, low-level networking, hardware, OS kernels, and every imaginable development platform. It's about the craft.
I find this vantage point, which appears amoral, makes the ethical dilemmas easier to resolve. If a company like Narus asks me to help them make a network monitoring system harder to evade, I don't have to put that request into some ethical framework that considers the good that application might do. I just turn the work down. Same goes for the US Government; no, sorry, not interested.
Total respect for Alex (the "white hat consulting company" he founded is iSec Partners, our sister company and former archrival). I get the sense that Alex engages intentionally with these dilemmas, that he wants to be a part of something larger than himself and, I think, larger than the craft. As a result, sure, he has to live a carefully examined life, and make sure the projects he's working on aren't skewing his compass. I admire him for picking his way through those problems. But I'm every bit as engaged with the field as Alex is, and I'm here to tell you that you don't have to get tangled up in these kinds of ethical problems if you don't want to.