[_orcl]

Yeah, and that's a shame. Hindsight is 20/20.

At the end of the day though, they couldn't have known that would happen, and they made the right choice. The Kaseya hack was terrible - they were trying to stop that happening again.

[vorpalhex]

It's unethical to allow harm to fall upon innocent people to stop a bad person.

[_orcl]

That's just the trolley problem, as other commenters have said. This whole debate is, which is a shame, because it means we're unlikely to convince each other.

[vorpalhex]

This is not a trolley problem. The trolley problem has two assured outcomes - both leading to harm - and requires active intervention to choose the lower harm.

This has definitive harm for a potential gain against future potential harm, versus stopping an active harm at no direct real cost. It's a bird in hand versus two in the bush.

You can't use people in wagers like that.

[djoldman]

This quickly devolves into killing one person to save 5... it's a difficult question.

[beerandt]

More like definitely killing 5 people to maybe catch a murder.

[babypuncher]

It's not that clear cut. This is just a variation of the trolley problem.

[aqme28]

> they made the right choice

You can't say that definitively. It seems unethical and incorrect to me.

[superjan]

They had to make the choice with the info available at that time. And exposing and prosecuting ransomware criminals could help to prevent future cases: The perpetrators are techies who are not street thugs, they could make money with legit work.

[aqme28]

I agree with everything you wrote, but I don't see how any of it proves that they made the "correct decision."