Thiel is though actively supporting someone for POTUS who has made jingoistic, racist and misogynist comments and stands by them. It's a discussion worth having. Saying that is "evil" is a bit over the top - Thiel is a rich and powerful person by any definition; he can more than handle some criticism.
> You can't judge people with "what if they did X".
What I'm saying is that at some point, someone's behavior will become toxic to "your group" (not the whole US - here, the "tech community" however you want to define that) and then they get asked to leave.
This is actually the mature thing to do, to part ways, as opposed to escalating conflict where the same thing happens in the end but the participants are left bloodied and hurting after the in-fighting.
What if Thiel started openly calling for the deportation of Muslims? Or if he started calling non-white people rapists? Or made grossly misogynist comments? Would it be alright to tell him to take a hike then?
At some point, if a person is supporting values that are antithetical to your culture, then you're going to ask them to leave. This may or may not be that time for Thiel.
>Would it make a difference knowing the product behind the sniffing?
My main concern is a Superfish-like situation where a user takes their laptop outside the corp LAN and gets owned because the root cert is vulnerable. Knowing the vendor of the whole system might be enlightening; I'm not sure.