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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: The Ethics of Work...
Message-ID: <524@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Aug-86 20:37:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.524
Posted: Mon Aug  4 20:37:09 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Aug-86 05:41:02 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!taylor
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 50
Approved: taylor@hplabs

---

I might be opening the proverbial can of worms, but I'd like to start a
discussion on the ethical and moral basis for working or not working for 
an organization that does what you consider to be "offensive technologies".

The example I'm thinking of is from my own past - I used to work at 
Logicon Training and Tactical Software Division in San Diego on a joint 
test force (Army, Air Force, Marines and Navy) project that involved some 
rather unsavory things.

As time went on, I found it harder and harder to justify my participation
in what I considered a 'bad' project.  At one point, in fact, I refused an
assignment based on my own sense of right and wrong - the assignment was to
implement some "Probability of Kill" algorithms on the floating point
processor.

Details aside, there are a number of people that I know that work on
some pretty terrifying stuff, yet they don't seem to have the first
qualm about it.  Examples are some of the projects at Lawrence Livermore
Labs (or, as the employees call it, "Death Labs").

What I'd like to see people discuss is their person perspective of the
impact of their job/project on society and how they either accept or
reject either the premises or tasks given to them based on their own
sense of right and wrong.

*warning: crass generalization ahead*

 From my limited experience in this area, it seems like there are pretty
much three reasons why people work in, say, Department of Defence companies;

   1. It's a job.
   2. I'm all for military buildup!
   3. It's the only place I can work on such great <x>!

I'd like to avoid a major diatribe about 'people shouldn't work for the
government' or whatever.  We should be able to have a very interesting
discussion (especially if we can get some of the Defense contractors
involved!) *hint hint*

Also those people who work on any other sort of project that they consider
to be really `good' should pipe up too!

Finally, this discussion is pretty much based on the concept of "right
livelihood", if anyone is familiar with that...

				Take care, all

					-- Dave