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by kistaro 1552 days ago
Oh no, indeed, how could someone possibly object to killing civilians in cold blood with the full military force of an arguably-developed nation, while themselves committing such horrible crimes as - gasp! - deleting files? patterns of bits have human rights too!

Get over yourself.
1 comments
jlkuester7 1552 days ago
> patterns of bits have human rights too!

I think the main concern of the OP was with _human_ collateral damage that can result from the deleted bits. Having worked for years in EMRs, I can definitely say that sustained IT outages in modern hospital systems can and often do lead to increased deaths.

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kistaro 1552 days ago
Other things that lead to increased deaths: the Russian military intentionally bombing civilians.

I usually oppose “whataboutism” but I can’t bring myself to do it here. This is a war where the nation of Russia has decided to murder Ukrainians. Means to interfere with Russia’s blood-soaked campaign must be viewed not in isolation, but in the context of what they are attempting to stop.

To be clear, I am not making a general purpose “the end justifies the means” argument. I am making a narrow and specific “the circumstances justify extreme behavior with severe externalities” argument.

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slavik81 1552 days ago
What ends were achieved? Has sabotaging node-ipc made any measurable progress towards stopping the war? The danger when you let the ends justify the means is that when you don't achieve your ends, then you haven't justified your means.
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yyyk 1552 days ago
This fails the 'proportionality' test. Contrary to popular knowledge, it does not refer to number of civilians killed*, but to whether any legal goal could reasonably be achieved proportionate to the hurt.

Now, there's nothing this action could achieve aside from making people angry, becoming Russian propaganda-fodder, reducing trust in NPM, etc, in any remotely likely scenario. So any damage is a crime, and arguably even the possibility of damage is a crime.

* A strike on head of ISIS while being surrounded with a class of children might pass this test. Similarly even if one side (say ISIS supporters) has more civilians killed that does not imply a crime by itself.

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hutzlibu 1552 days ago
"Other things that lead to increased deaths: the Russian military intentionally bombing civilians."

Yes, this is a warcrime. But the proposed solution is to react with a warcrime?

I do not agree.

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