You’re putting a lot of faith in whoever packages the ‘distro’.

Obviously you have the same problem with trusting FOSS software distributions, but it’s mitigated by things like Linus’ Law and reproducible builds.

That being said, I personally use tiny11 VMs for certain non-critical things at home and work. I’d never use it for anything security related, or as my main OS, as there is a non-negligible chance that it’s compromised (and there’s basically no way of knowing).

No, it isn’t. You can fully believe in people’s ability to rehabilitate and change, while also being aware that not everyone rehabilitates and changes.

The needs of the perpetrator of a crime need to be balanced against the needs of society at large. This is why you get your license taken away from you when you drink and drive, or why you end up on a sex offenders register.

In this case, there’s a valid argument to be made that this person represents a danger to society, and the need to protect/inform people from him outweighs his desire to not have past crimes revealed.

I work in enterprise IT networking and systems

I’ll bet you’re an MSP monkey or a DC tech