Oh well that's something different - you'll work on what you find to be personally ethical. That's absolutely fine, ethics after all are ultimately personal. Like I'd not work for Monsanto, since I find them unethical, but certainly most hackers disagree with me on that. I'm not happy about the NSA situation though I see it more as an issue of bounds being overstepped, the engineers working there don't strike me as empirically unethical.
I agree completely. I threw in 'legal' in the original post to head off morons chanting "so you'd work for drug dealers" etc. My only point was, to quote you, "the NSA situation ...I see it more as an issue of bounds being overstepped, the engineers working there don't strike me as empirically unethical" (well stated).
I have a hard time listening to the demonizing of the NSA engineers by people who work at Google/Yahoo/Facebook/Amazon (or would like to) who build similar technology to profile users!
Throwing in "legal" in a discussion that pretty much revolves around that seems like a poor way to communicate.
Also "drug dealers" is probably the epitome of a morally/legal ambiguous job. Purdue has no doubt eased the suffering of millions of people, yet they were still hit with felony convictions.
