[liberationtech] Ethical Vetting of Companies? (Specifically Darktrace?)

[Aaron Wolf]

On 09/09/2015 01:53 PM, Zak Whittington wrote:
> Hi Libtech,
> 
> Does anyone know of a way to ethically vet tech companies? It'd be
> really cool if there was some kind of database that showed ethical
> history of an organization (do they encrypt data? which government
> agencies do they work with? which countries do they operate in? how and
> where is their product manufactured? how invasive is their privacy
> policy?) If there isn't, that sounds like a potentially useful project.
> 
> Also, specifically, does anyone know anything about Darktrace? A couple
> of my coworkers have been talking about them, and they seem to check
> out, but I'm suspicious by default when it comes to security companies. 
> 
> Thanks,
> Zak
> 
> 
> -- 
> Zak Whittington
> Political Science BA, Stanford '15
> Computer Security MS, Stanford '17
> 
> 

Hi Zak,

Sounds like a great idea to me.

Incidentally, I never got around to introducing myself to this list. I'm
co-founder of an idealistic, public-interest-focused not-yet-working
fundraising platform. Our aim is to create a better mechanism for the
global community to fund unrestricted, ethical projects (i.e.
free/libre/open software, education, science, art, and more…)

I think a key aspect of being an ethical company is not using
proprietary restrictions to have power over others and make access
exclusive. But beyond that, there are lots of other details.

For reference, we have a draft of at least *some* portion of items to
consider that we want to push projects toward, as always, available for
consideration and use by others under our CC-BY-SA license:
https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/honor-projects

Snowdrift.coop will require basic free/libre/open terms for all projects
we support, but we also want projects to fill out a report about how
they are doing according to these various qualities. Our list isn't
absolutely complete or perfect, but it has some starting points. We're
happy to coordinate with others in developing this further and
developing other aligned / compatible initiatives. We have a lot of
other information and research collected on the site.

I do hope folks on this list will take interest in what we're doing and
potentially help us get this thing launched. We hope Snowdrift.coop will
make a real difference in the world. We're grateful, of course, for all
the work everyone does for aligned projects too.

Cheers,
Aaron Wolf
Snowdrift.coop

-- 
Aaron Wolf
co-founder, Snowdrift.coop
music teacher, wolftune.com