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Meet the Hackers Who Get Rich Selling Spies Zero-Day Exploits
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Forbes profiles Vupen, a French security firm that openly sells secret software exploits to spies and government agencies. Its customers pay a $100,000 annual fee simply for the privilege of paying extra fees for the exploits that Vupen's hackers develop, which the company says can penetrate every major browser, as well as other targets like iOS, Android, Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word. Those individual fees often cost much more than that six-figure subscription, and Vupen sells them non-exclusively to play its customers off each other in an espionage arms race. The company's CEO, Chaouki Bekrar, says Vupen only sells to NATO governments and 'NATO partners' but he admits 'if you sell weapons to someone, there's no way to ensure that they won't sell to another agency.'"
The military has very strict rules, and you are only required to follow lawful orders. In fact, if you are given an unlawful order, you are, by military law, required to refuse to follow it and report it to the appropriate military authority. Nobody is protected by "I was just following orders" for performing an unlawful action.
At least with regards to the US Military. I don't know about other countries.
Summary executions by officers for anything are of extremely doubtful legality today, at least in the US. If an officer simply executed you for some cause and expected that to hold, he would face a guaranteed court-martial. If he tried to pretend that he merely apprehended you and you "escaped", there would still be an investigation at the very least. Unless the whole unit was on the side of the officer, it is unlikely that an officer would get away with it.
As far as "friendly fire" incidents... those are always possible, but the shooter could still get found out.
In short, if you turned the officer in for an offense that they might get execution, or life, or 20 years for, you may want to watch your back. Otherwise, no one is going to shoot you unless they are also unbalanced. In which case, you're pretty fucked anyway.
That said, while it is actually required to refuse an unlawful order, you will still likely have to prove that at court-martial. So, you might well simply obey the officer ordering you to do something technically illegal, but petty. But, if he wants you to start shooting people, I'd suggest taking the court-martial.