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This Lessig piece defending Ito is a good lesson in "ethics". The lesson here isn't that pedophiles are bad. The lesson here is that if you are embarrassed and try to keep it a secret, it's probably unethical.
Should you take anonymous donations from a convicted child sex trafficker? Lessig pretends the question is whether you are reputation-washing, helping restore the convict's reputation, and that's why it's "anonymous".
But it's clear that the reason for "anonymity" is to prevent Epstein from tainting Media Lab's reputation. That's where the ethical problems are.
I mean this as commentary on "ethics in infosec". Most of these arguments are about politics and not ethics. If it's actually about ethics, this rule applies: if you are afraid of something being public, then it's probably unethical.
When handing in your data-breach/pentest/app-assessment report, the customer asks you to change some important detail that they find embarrassing. If you do it, you are effectively lying. Is this ethical?
The easiest way is to punt the ethics question onto them: ask them to put the change request in writing. If they refuse (because they don't want it to come out), it's probably unethical. If they accept, then it's probably a legitimate change.
Is mass port scanning the Internet ethical? I dunno. I answer this by being very public about what I do: making damn sure that everyone knows it's me when I do it, being very public.
Lessig also confuses ethics with politics by claiming taking donations from the Koch brothers is unethical because he disagrees with their politics. It's a clear example how people can't separate their politics from -- well, anything.
