Comment by kevin_nisbet

Trying to bring an open mind, I could see a number of plausible scenarios where an engineer could do this, with various degrees of legitimacy.

It's certainly a complicated subject, but I think in general companies are really good, especially big ones, at getting people to work on things they might not be comfortable with otherwise. This thread has been talking the extremes like immigration status, but there are all kinds of subtle pressures as well. Some people might not believe they have the political capital to outright refuse a project (especially a pet project of the CEO) vs choose to accept and try to nudge the project onto more solid footing. And I suspect many engineers are terrified of being labelled as not a team player, which aids in the creation of group think, but makes it very difficult to foster a healthy culture of discussion that would bring forward the serious concerns of this work. And there is almost always some room of uncertainty as the last convincer... is it unethical to work on the project if the consumer is fully informed and offers consent to the invasion of privacy?

If there is an extreme where it's justifiable, for any reasonable engineer to accept the project, then it get's really muddy on where exactly the line is, and when it should be drawn.

I also suspect many of us envision ourselves having much more fortitude than we really do as well, imagining the heroic efforts we'd put in to changing a companies mind from a bad idea... where the more likely outcome for most of us is to fall silently into the background.