At the end of the day, the dragnet surveillance decisions came from the highest levels of the Bush and Obama administrations, not the boots on the ground.
"Historically, the plea of superior orders has been used both before and after the Nuremberg Trials, with a notable lack of consistency in various rulings."
For example, if someone got a job on a shark finning boat maintaining the knives, they're still complicit in shark finning even if they're never touched or seen a shark in their life.
And even if their actual role was spying on and helping detain Americans for arbitrary reasons, nobody's going to slap that on their resume. They'd say they were a data aggregating administrative officer.
Why should we respect those that spy on us? Would you expect Germans respect the Stasi?
I think that has a lot to do about which social circles you move in. If I saw NSA on a CV I would throw it in the trash.
True, but the "boots on the ground" are OK with it enough to go along with it. Their hands may not be quite as dirty, but they certainly aren't clean.
"NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...
Optic Nerve ("GCHQ" in title is misleading because the NSA played a very enthusiastic helping role in it):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_Nerve_(GCHQ)
ECHELON:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
There's so much they're responsible for that it seems like it'd be excessive to post all of them, and HN has a character limit, anyway. Even the most well-known ones would fill a couple of comments.
However, adtech companies damage everyone, and fairly significantly. eg concentration problems, addictive behaviours, etc.
That's literally "human race" level damage.
Doesn't seem like a lesser thing to me. :/
They, for years until it was leaked, "targeted" every phone call in the United States:
https://gizmodo.com/this-government-phone-tapping-thing-just...
And 125,000,000,000 globally, along with almost a hundred billion internet requests per month in a time when the Internet was much smaller, years ago, under a program that hasn't stopped:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundless_Informant
This definitely damages everyone, and I think more fundamentally than adtech companies. You can escape adtech companies: use different websites, install an adblocker, block trackers, whatever. There's no obvious way outside of strong encryption and hermitry to avoid NSA getting its paws on every single public or private communication you ever make, given their record. When privacy doesn't and cannot exist, human behavior changes deeply. I think it's the greater of two evils.
Adtech companies definitely aren't good, by any stretch, but I think it's the difference between Ghengis Khan and a common killer: sure, they both want to kill you, but the scale and the level of cruelty is much different.
If I ever am, NSA in the history is a solid red flag. Be nice or go home. Willingness to participate in all that makes me wonder about your character.
Facebook almost as much, depending on when and for how long. The more recent, or longer sustained stay, again. Be nice or go home.
Google a little bit more reasonable, especially if only ever on the app/project side vs main service.
Adtech experience, I'd have to ask if they'd washed their minds out and won't even consider any of those tactics ever again... on second thought, almost as bad a flag as NSA crap.
Even if it's only a small drop of resistance in an ocean of "yeah, ok, whatever", I feel like we should signal that certain behaviors _against_ your fellow humans are poorly regarded.
Edit: figured this would get downvotes, ah well.
Participate in what? The NSA does many different things and has many different positions. Would you hold NSA's janitors responsible as well?
Obviously, the higher up the ladder a person, the stronger this effect is. However, that someone is willing to work in any capacity at an organization that behaves badly (in my view) says something about that person.