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> Developers helping these people circumvent the technology that holds them down is good.

That isn't what they were doing. They were creating a tool to manipulate public opinion among its users without their consent.

> I guess it just depends on who's OX is being gored.

No, it has to do with manipulating people through deception.

You don't seem to understand the difference between:

I offer you money/aid/etc and manipulate you into doing what I want.

vs.

You are doing what I want and therefore I provide aid to you.

USAID does both of these things. The first one is bad. The second one is fine.

> America government helping people start revolutions, spread information about how bad their government is and fight back is a bad thing. People creating technology to avoid the NSA and CIA snooping is good thing.

No. The US creates the revolutionaries through manipulation. That is the programs the OP and I are opposed to. "Hey kid, use this service. Oh, we won't mention we plan to study the activities of you and everyone else to see what kind of news we can release to increase revolutionary activity as part of the process."

You have to wonder why the America intelligence agencies are working towards this uprising though, interference of American authorities into another countries have proven hurtful[0].

So I guess is all in the intent, while a developer may give their software for free because he believes in free speech. Why would a country want the uprising of another country, which lives under a economic system the former has been arguing against for so long? Why is information about the NSA (and other operations) being hidden but suddenly they're heroes because they release information of other countries?

[0] http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/02/pino-f11.html

The problem I have with those practices is that they all happen in secret - so that the US can deny their involvement if, for example, an uprising goes out of hand and people die by the dozens. I'm all in favor of getting rid of oppressive regimes and such, and I approve of the people living in said regimes standing up for themselves, but I don't like how the US's involvement is all under cover and in secret, or why it's only the US doing those things (apparently).

I'm not passing moral judgement or making normative claims about goodness or the badness, etc. What I am doing is explaining the incentives that these countries are responding to - showing you not just where the actors are but how the stage is set up. Policy does not exist in a vacuum.