Re: <nettime> Hacked Team

[Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org>]

[For some, the previous version of the email. was unreadeable. Here it
is again, with appologies. Mods.]

dear Morlock,

On Fri, 10 Jul 2015, morlockelloi@yahoo.com wrote:

> Exonerating makers of malicious tools because they did it only for
> the irresistible appeal of money (as opposed to being inherently
> evil and wanted to screw activists) is ridiculous.

this is not exactly what I intend to say with my message. In fact
I do believe that scientists and researchers in general should be
responsible and ethical in what they do. Let this argument just rest
for a moment as I don't really want to dig into this discussion, which
is somehow too complex for this medium. Just consider the history
of science and freedom issues connected to it, for instance with
regards to anatomical dissection, atomic bomb research and such...
rest assured I have a fairly conservative approach to that myself, yet
not a religious one.

My point is about keeping balance and the intended audience of my
message is mostly the activists reading, whose vast majority I
perceive to be infuriated against some mercenary hackers, without
really perceiving the big picture. And yes I have acquaintance to one
of the HT developers, which basically makes me sad about the whole
story, but I'm not a judge nor a lawyer and I'm really not seeking
exemption for any of them here.

> They knew exactly what they were doing. Just following orders is not
> a valid defense, for some time now.

Right. I'm just asking about those venture capitals, some of which
seem to be even using public funds, to boost espionage activities
of the military-industrial complex I tried to describe and in
clearly illegal directions (as in supporting western allies adverse
regimes). Actually, following Brett's last mail, one can quickly
notice that 360capitalpartners has even received funding from the EU
commission, now I'm wondering what is their ethical charter on the
many other projects they support, covering fields that may also be
very sensitive.

I'm very interested in how does that sounds in the ears of activists
and how do we plan to react to the bigger picture, in case we like to
organize a response after having burned the witches that need to be
burned, pardon me if I still find that as smelling disgusting, yet I'm
not willing to exonerate them from being spooky and evil at times.
Not sure about you in fact, but I'm so perverse I do find interesting
to get to know people that present themselves as spooky and evil at
times, while the rethoric of white-hats today is rather boring to
my ears especially when it does not takes into account the bigger
picture.

Perhaps this narrow mindedness of white-hats is a signal that even
the hacker movement of today is mostly driven by personalizing
individualist positions and a sort of turf war on the shores of what
we consider ethical. Meanwhile we all seem to agree that bugging an
activist laptop is oh-my-god very bad, without contemplating the fact
there are more neo-fascist activists in Europe than anything else.

> Eventually, it will come to those just following orders, programmers
> and engineers, enabling efficient population control, and doing it
> just for $100K+ salaries and stock options. It always does.

You are right and yes, it already does. Actually the Silicon Valley
salaries are now up to $350K/y in the best cases. I'm just wondering
about how we will distribute the responsibility for... "illegal usage
of algorithms": will it trickle up to the funds helping to scale their
deployement in mass-production and even disregarding exportation laws,
or will it hit the freedom of research, eventually leading to some
sort of "authorization" or "license" to access, develop and publish
certain algorithms?

I ask this because when I read the reaction of most activists being
driven mostly again the researchers, the latter is the scenario I
predict to take place.

Hoping this clarifies my concerns,

ciao


-- 
Denis "Jaromil" Roio, Dyne.org Think (& Do) Tank
We are free to share code and we code to share freedom
Web: https://j.dyne.org Contact: https://j.dyne.org/c.vcf
GPG: 6113 D89C A825 C5CE DD02  C872 73B3 5DA5 4ACB 7D10
Confidential communications: https://keybase.io/jaromil


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