The Insecurity Industry - by Edward Snowden - Continuing Ed
▻https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/ns-oh-god-how-is-this-legal
In technology as in public health, to protect anyone, we must protect everyone. The first step in this direction—at least the first digital step—must be to ban the commercial trade in intrusion software. We do not permit a market in biological infections-as-a-service, and the same must be true for digital infections. Eliminating the profit motive reduces the risks of proliferation while protecting progress, leaving room for publicly-minded research and inherently governmental work.
(...) Such a moratorium, however, is mere triage: it only buys us time. Following a ban, the next step is liability.
(...) Imagine you’re the Washington Post’s Editorial Board (first you’ll have to get rid of your spine). Imagine having your columnist murdered and responding with a whispered appeal to the architects of that murder that next time they should just fill out a bit more paperwork. Frankly, the Post’s response to the NSO scandal is so embarrassingly weak that it is a scandal in itself: how many of their writers need to die for them to be persuaded that process is not a substitute for prohibition?