I gave a talk this past summer at DEFCON on the ethical quandary that continues to play a role in the academic discussion of network censorship measurement. Over the course of my phd studies, there was a significant arc of time where the community yielded to caution as the issues around ethics were better understood.
These issues have not gone away, and in the intervening six months since this talk, we’ve seen new groups re-develop techniques deemed problematic by the prevailing winds of the academic community.