> If NSO/HackingTeam were in the business of selling physical weapons to foreign governments, would they have been responsible for a government killing journalists with said weapons?
Yes.
Yes.
Should Colt be blamed if a foreign government uses an M-16 to shoot a journalist?
My position is that I don't think we should be making tools designed for killing people.
Can we push the number of violent criminals to 0? Maybe not, but we could greatly reduce the numbers with more intelligent social policies (in the US or Canada, say). The wild-west mentally and the fact that it has been co-opted by certain political groups actually leads to more crime and more fear (which sells guns and regressive politics).
What if no one lived in a state or neighbourhood so shitty that they felt the need to arm up? What if they had not been indoctrinated since birth with a wild-west mentality that linked gun-ownership to freedom?
The "only criminals will have weapons" argument is a really low-quality surface-level distraction from getting to grips with problems we could actually solve.
As a particularly interesting example: Japan has almost no gun crime at all: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729
> In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US.
Sales, whether direct or through indirectly supported wink-wink business and other organizational structures, to entities who have well documented cases of abuse -- that's a different matter. If Colt is found doing that, I would definitely find them culpable and guilty.
For NSO, Candiru and their ilk, my belief is that they are in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge relationship with the user's of the tools (usually oppressive governments) as well as Israel's intelligence complex (they are the ones clearing the sales).
Can I prove this in a court, no. Does not stop me from forming informed opinions though.
One is a multinational corporation with untold influence which hoards exploits for black box software and hardware.
The other is a producer of physical weapons, which are subject to laws to protect civilians - although of course where these laws apply is hypocritical, since the West's weapons have been used to kill many civilians during all the 'peacekeeping' missions by the US (read: interventionism).
To me, it's hard to justify why they are not responsible.
You could say the same about a knife though, or a brick.
I think you're underestimating the power of the spyware that is being used today to blackmail and control those in power.
(However, if you do sell a "Throat-cutting knife" for cutting people's throats, and someone buys it and cuts somebody's throat, then hell yes you are responsible for that.)
Interesting thought. I can't find an example in law. I'm not so sure the seller is responsible on any level once sold, even with that murdering tagline. Guns are sold as lethal force and users are fully responsible post sale.
colt? or nso? not clear from the comment…
So not only is this a reasonable position, it is the law in several countries, e.g. Heckler&Koch is a German gun manufacturer and has to obey such laws.