> I am not sure how much of this technique can be used elsewhere for legitimate purposes
...as a Linux systems engineer, you are many times faced with debugging a black box problem wrapped in SSL on both ends which you need to peek into to understand what's going wrong; there is nothing suspect about this technique in this environment, it's what you're paid to do (solve problems). It's basically like having the ability to elevate your NIC port to promiscuous mode to debug an issue (tcpdump, e.g.) - it's a tool with no opinion, the human operating it is the one to be worried about.
...as a Linux systems engineer, you are many times faced with debugging a black box problem wrapped in SSL on both ends which you need to peek into to understand what's going wrong; there is nothing suspect about this technique in this environment, it's what you're paid to do (solve problems). It's basically like having the ability to elevate your NIC port to promiscuous mode to debug an issue (tcpdump, e.g.) - it's a tool with no opinion, the human operating it is the one to be worried about.