I've no idea about the whole story and what Hacking Team exactly did during the years, but I started to write serious code around 1998 working for Vincenzetti, so I think I can provide some hint about this to counter-balance all the hate.
* They allowed me to work on hping, releasing it as free software during most of my working hours. They supported my research that lead to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_scan
* Vincenzetti taught me personally many things about POSIX, and he was a very skilled programmer. He wrote, AFAIK before SSH existed, a secure shell that was in use at least in Italy for some time. It used UDP and implemented the reliable connection on top of it in a secure way using state of art encryption. So we are talking about serious programmers.
* Bedeschi, the co-founder of the company, is an incredible hacker, from the way he typed to the keyboard to the incredible Unix knowledged he had.
I worked for a couple of months for their "SecLab", then left the company to return in Sicily since I did not wanted to live in Milan. I don't want to provide an ethical evaluation of the people and don't have enough information, but I can assure you that they were an incredible team of talented hackers.
EDIT: For sure they were very competitive people. I remember than when I left, Vincenzetti told me that it was a shame, I was a very talented programmer in his opinion, and I would finish in my little town in Sicily writing "soccer bet programs". He just wanted to push me to stay in the big city to know more hackers and so forth. I'm glad I don't write soccer bet programs BTW.
They are cut of the same cloth as people like Viktor Bout. As a direct result of their actions, innocent people will be tortured and executed. Their technical skill is irrelevant. Or rather, you could consider it an aggravating circumstance: people of this class have a myriad of ways of earning a living, they deliberately chose this course of action.
They shouldn't be protesting of their innocence on Twitter, they should be wearing prison jumpsuits while awaiting sentencing.
I did not tried to justify any action, just provided what I remember of the times I met with them. I don't have enough info to analyze what they did but for sure I'm not a fan of seeing surveillance tools to governments killing people or freedom. For my political visions I would not sell even to US since I find death penalty not acceptable.
During the time you worked with them, did you contribute to projects you knew were used by LEOs and intelligence agencies? I'm curious about whether they got into "darker" stuff as they progressed.
No, that was a different company. We did plain penetration testings and other Security Firm works like firewalling, hardening. They sold this company, and started the new gig later when I was already gone for years.
Good to know your personal experiences but doesn't change or paint him or the company in any positive light. Sure the boy next door was quiet and friendly, until he goes on a shooting rampage.
And may I suggest to avoid leaving permanent evidence of association with them, some people might misinterpret what you wrote as defending their actions or might think you helped them where they are today, especially when they are about to be hanged, could be bad for your namesake.
I think it's public information that we worked together for some time, however I was never part of the new company "Hacking Team", so any claim of involvement would be far fetched :-) Btw I'm not a fan of eavesdropping on citizens, but I can see how you could use this kind of software to fight organizations like Mafia and other known criminals. So the software they provide is a tool that can be used in a good or bad way. However if they sold to people which are not known by high standards of ethics... and where it is likely there is a freedom-killer use of the software, I think it is not wise to sell to them (not wise or... really bad, actually). Moreover to be truly honest, I'm not a fan for any use of using zero-day security bugs to break into other people systems. I still have this romantic view of security researchers as people that share their findings so that bugs can be fixed.
* They allowed me to work on hping, releasing it as free software during most of my working hours. They supported my research that lead to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_scan
* Vincenzetti taught me personally many things about POSIX, and he was a very skilled programmer. He wrote, AFAIK before SSH existed, a secure shell that was in use at least in Italy for some time. It used UDP and implemented the reliable connection on top of it in a secure way using state of art encryption. So we are talking about serious programmers.
* Bedeschi, the co-founder of the company, is an incredible hacker, from the way he typed to the keyboard to the incredible Unix knowledged he had.
I worked for a couple of months for their "SecLab", then left the company to return in Sicily since I did not wanted to live in Milan. I don't want to provide an ethical evaluation of the people and don't have enough information, but I can assure you that they were an incredible team of talented hackers.
EDIT: For sure they were very competitive people. I remember than when I left, Vincenzetti told me that it was a shame, I was a very talented programmer in his opinion, and I would finish in my little town in Sicily writing "soccer bet programs". He just wanted to push me to stay in the big city to know more hackers and so forth. I'm glad I don't write soccer bet programs BTW.