No matter how well reasoned, allegedly fit for purpose or how much something pretends to be it, we shouldn’t be trusting those promises, especially not from people we don’t know. That does not end well neither for the free candy van nor for cybersecurity. Trust like that has been responsible for a lot of attacks over varying vectors and for projects going wrong.

On the other hand, detrimental reliance is a tort and if someone is relying on an app for a specific safety function, the app could be civilly liable if it fails it’s function in some way.

Yes, if the app would be any kind of official tool.

Imagine if you had this attitude about an insulin use tracker/calculator, that sometimes gave wildly wrong insulin dose numbers.

Yes, and that’s why regulations for those kinds of things exist, that prevent those things. There is no regulation for the ice tracker.

Maybe down the road, it’s decided that aiding and abetting ICE is a crime, and providing misinformation intentionally or unintentionally is a criminal act. App developer dude could be criminally liable if he knew or ought to have known he had vulnerabilities. You know, in your New Nuremberg trials that you are going to get sometime in the next decade or so.

If down the road a regulation would happen for, app developer dude would be forced to either comply or to stop operations.

So fucking what? He is not being paid in any kind, and anything he does on that project is volunteer work. If he was not able to do anything on that project due to regular work, vacation, personal issues, or the simple fact that he didn’t want to?

If you don’t pay for a service, you don’t get to decide what people do, deal with it

Honestly, apart from the report being potentially wrong, the researcher seems pretty entitled as well. Like good intentions and all that, but he’s given him a week to fix the issue, usual practice in responsible disclosure are 90 days. We’re not talking about a company here, it’s some single random dude providing the app.

This really sounds like some personal issue written down for public drama, while making himself ridiculous for not knowing his own shit properly.