More like a failure on TechCrunch. There is an implied agreement and violating it will result in a flat refusal to talk outside of prepared press releases.

This isn't good journalism and should not be celebrated.

Time to get out of there, before they build walls to keep people inside.

I guess it is like the scammers working in call centers and building RAT:s. They surely must have a level of sociopathy greater than the average person.

The money all spends the same. It's not too hard to visualize the type of person who could be coerced into thinking they work for the greater good.

It’s an Israeli company - they probably consider their work a matter of national security and get along just fine with that

They tell themselves stories about "if free market did not want it it would not exist" or better us than them

There are lots of justifications. It's the same as why people can be soldiers or build missiles and still sleep at night: you believe (or at least tell yourself) that you're stopping bad people.

There are good applications of these tools. If you can hack the phones of a terrorist organization, you can find out about attacks before they happen and stop them. If you can extract data off of locked computers, you can help win convictions that wouldn't otherwise be possible against people who do truly awful things.

The question, of course, is whether these good applications outweigh the misuse, but that's where it gets murky in a hurry. Individual researchers at these privately owned "boutique" exploit companies (to my knowledge) tend not to know the nitty gritty details of how their work is used out in the world unless it gets caught and dissected online. The more reputable western companies sell only to "democratic" governments which are political allies, but that only goes so far as misuse and abuse is always a risk (not to mention the shaky nature of...certain... western democracies).

At the end of the day, you really just have to hope your work is being used to target terrorists and not journalists. The money obviously makes it easier, but it's not completely disingenuous of the people who work there to believe they're doing good.

I briefly worked in offensive security at somewhere you may consider to fit the bill of “places like this” - people do it because it’s fun interesting and rewarding work. The pay is good too, but the fact that you just develop the exploits and don’t Push The Button(tm) really provides more mental space than you’d think.

To me it looks very much like a scale...

Anyone that works at FAANG or "big"/mobile game studios, anything to do with advertising, banking, natural resources extraction/processing, non-sustansible farming, etc, etc.

In my opinion there are not many constructive things you can work with that really improve society or peoples lives.

But then again I'm in a quite dark place this year.

I asked this (in a less accusatory tone) of an NSO employee once and he said something about how the big tech companies also spy on people and do unethical things.

The pay for this kind of work usually isn’t very good. People do it for the mission.

You can say this about most of tech. Sure, we agree spying is bad.

But, is it worse than ad tech at large? Is it worse than companies addicting people to their phones via psychological tricks at alarming rates? Or siphoning money from kids via freemium models? Or working on a chatbot that helps kids kill themselves? Or the gazillion payday loan apps? Or the gazillion prediction market/sports betting avenues?

I'm sure some work for more ethical companies, and I like to think I do.. But let's not pretend the vast majority of big money and biggest employers are doing any good in the world...

> look myself in the mirror

Outcasts. You know, some people aren’t gratified by society. Even well-inserted people.

I’ve always wondered why people had ethical questions as soldiers dropping Little Boy. Imagine being a soldier at war, of course you hate your enemies. Now imagine being bullied at school and later. Some criminals even literally do crime for the thrills.

Life isn’t generally rewarding, except for a few lucky with a nice social fabric.