Errr, define &quot;ethically&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m not trying to trap you. I&#x27;m willing to work with whatever definition you specify, and I won&#x27;t try to play semantic games with the definition if it&#x27;s at least close enough to something specific to work with. I&#x27;m not asking for a universality claim. But without some specification of what you mean the question is vague to the point of unanswerability.<p>The North Korean programmers may well have truly believed in what they were doing. A utilitarian may well truly believe that even if Facebook Free Basics isn&#x27;t a perfect program, it&#x27;s a net good for the participants. The &quot;surveillance software&quot; can be seen as just a tool and whether the tool makers are responsible for its misuse is ethically debatable. (And let me be clear I mean that literally, not as an attempt to rhetorically state a position. I could write a coherent argument both ways.) After all, many people even in free countries end up calling for strict regulation of corporations and that same &quot;surveillance software&quot; is pretty much the way you instantiate such regulation, so, is it <i>really</i> clear that it&#x27;s intrinsically evil?<p>And again let me emphasize the point I&#x27;m making here is just the width of possible arguments about ethics that can be made. My previous paragraph is itself ethically incoherent, inasmuch I&#x27;m not even trying to take a consistent stand overall, but merely trying to highlight the most obvious problem per issue where ill-defined &quot;ethics&quot; makes it hard to even debate the matter.