“Making the internet a more secure place” sounds like an impressive and altruistic mission. However, the reality is far more complex than it may initially appear. Imagine that someone in your neighborhood decides, on their own initiative, to make the neighborhood safer. They install a gate at the entrance and put up additional barriers. Some residents welcome the initiative, believing that the person has good intentions. But what happens when the police need to enter the neighborhood in an emergency? Suddenly, their ability to respond depends on whether that individual decides to open the gate. This illustrates a fundamental problem: Good intentions alone cannot justify actions that have significant consequences for public safety and national security, particularly without proper oversight, accountability, and regulation. Beyond that, I believe there are some important ethical questions that organizations like yours need to address. What ethical framework governs your decisions about whom to assist and how? How can you be certain that your mobile forensics work isn’t inadvertently undermining a legitimate law enforcement investigation into child exploitation? What mechanisms do you have in place to determine whether an Iranian “opposition” organization is genuinely what it claims to be, rather than an entity linked to terrorism or hostile intelligence activities? These are not hypothetical concerns. They reflect the very real complexity of operating in an environment where the distinction between legitimate activism, criminal activity, and national security threats is not always clear. I would argue that we should place significantly more trust in Western democratic government agencies, which operate within established legal and institutional frameworks, than in private companies, particularly when some of the largest technology companies have repeatedly demonstrated that they cannot always be trusted to protect their users’ privacy. To be clear, I am referring to Big Tech in general, not your company specifically. Ultimately, we are discussing some of the most sophisticated and sensitive technological capabilities in existence. These are capabilities traditionally developed and deployed by advanced nation-states, mostly Western democracies. The question is not simply whether we all want a safer internet. Of course we do. The real question is who should have the authority to make these decisions, under what rules, and with what level of accountability. And perhaps most importantly, who gets to decide what “safer” actually means—and for whom?