Sadly, there will always be tech workers willing to do this for the right price. As I get older, I'm starting to wonder if not following my "tech morals" would've brought more success.
I'm playing the devil's advocate here but there are also a lot of tech workers who do not regard building such a database as unethical. A common fallacy on HN is to assume people who hold differing views necessarily do so egoistically, which is sometimes true but not always.
Yeah it's entirely possible that there are a small percentage of tech workers who would fully support this type of move. I too have noticed HN users seem to just assume everyone shares their views.
That's not "HN users", that's a trait that has cropped up repeatedly in 2016: surely that's the lesson of the year, a widespread groupthink that "surely most people are like us and are disgusted by $THING" and then meltdowns when it turns out not to be true.
What makes you think it'd be a small percentage? I didn't notice the NSA having trouble attracting very bright staff, apparently it's the opposite: they were able to get their pick of the best despite uncompetitive salaries. And the NSA has spent years taking part in targeted assassination programs of innocent people who weren't in US jurisdiction, had no charges levied against them and never had any sort of trial. They were just drone striked.
I think we generally assume that the people who sign the pledge (and many others) share our views. I don't know how much more we need to litigate than that.
01:17:25 -Chris. -I'm all right.
01:17:32 -They took everything. -Kent's tracking system is gone!
01:17:39 How could you build that mirror?!
01:17:50 He lied to us.
01:17:53 It's easy to lie to you, Mitch.
Of course there will be. So what? If enough people sign, it doesn't matter if you can throw some extra cash at a couple people to do the scut work. When it gets out that it happened --- and it will happen --- an untenable number of people leave the company.