I’ve been going over this in my mind and this is what I’ve come up with.
On one hand you can look at it as a straight theft. If a person steals a bunch of computers and then sells them to a computer shop for 25% of the retail price the shop owner is guilty of a crime (selling stolen goods) even if he had no part in the initial theft. In that case I’d say it’s immoral on Techcrunch’s part. Because while the digital copies of files don’t have monetary value like physical computers they have intellectual property value that could do significant damage to Twitter and in doing so cause the company to lose large sums of money.
ON THE OTHER HAND, most of the great scandals both in Government and in Corporate America have been revealed by whistle blowers who essentially stole documents and passed them on to reporters. So there’s a precedent where stealing documents can actually be a very moral thing.
In the end I think it boils down to what the documents reveal. In the case of whistle blowers they're still stealing something but we forgive the theft because it’s done to protect society from a greater harm. The good out weighs the bad. So if these documents reveal some kind of malfeasants on Twitter’s part I could see publishing them as being justified. If not I think you’re probably right and this is an immoral act on Techcrunch’s part.
I think I could agree with airing a companies' dirty laundry if it was dirty enough.
Techcrunch would have mentioned it if they found anything that was more than vaguely interesting, so I feel confident saying that they don't have anything big enough to justify this violation of privacy. Techcrunch is dirtying it's name for private information that is not even newsworthy.
It's a public policy exemption. A greater good call by a grateful society would not punish TC for its crime/immorality if it deemed the leak to be of sufficient value to public interest. That's a risk the publisher/whistleblower takes but it's only a risk if there's an enforcement/judgment process in place, or else TC faces no such risk and can publish anything it damn well likes without having to estimate the value to the public interest of its actions.
Which, quite frankly, is what they frequently failed to do in the past.Their judgement is suspect, to me at least, even if they've never been punished.
I wouldn’t say “ends justify the means” is accurate here. Morality’s a tricky bag no matter how you slice it but one thing most ethical systems have in common is a belief that harming others to benefit yourself is wrong. So, for example, if you’re my boss and someone offers to pay you a million dollars to fire me even though I’m a good worker that would be wrong. Even though you would gain far more than I would lose. Because you’re causing harm to me in order to benefit yourself.
What I was saying is that it’s justified if the benefit is to society. This is based on two principles that are pretty much accepted across the board as far as ethical systems go. One, you are part of society and there’s nothing immoral about defending yourself against harm. Two, societal benefits are in the macro so even if a company is only causing a little harm per person the amount of harm prevented adds up.
So in my eyes and in the eyes of most ethical systems publishing these documents wouldn't be justified even if Techcrunch gains more than Twitter loses. Unless there's information in those documents that would benefit society as a whole (or if Twitter was causing great harm to someone else and it would be stopped by revealing the documents)
It would seem to me that you are effectively treating society as this single entity and saying that so long as an action benefits that entity then it is moral even if the action itself would be considered immoral in another scenario.
However society is not a single entity, but rather a collection of individuals that can be affected by an event in different and often opposing ways. To some it may be beneficial, but to others not so. Sure the group that benefits may be in the majority, but to ignore the minority group and declare that to "society" the outcome was good is to ignore the different views and interests that make up a society.
When making moral judgments you have to treat society as a single entity. Either that or choose to simply not make the judgments at all. Because there are just too many people in society to calculate the exact amount of good or bad a decision will be to them.
Accordingly, you can only really use "it's good for society" if there's a clear benefit. Exposing a chemical company that dumps waste into a town's water supply is a clear benefit. As is making false financial statements in order to inflate your stock to the point where millions will eventually lose their savings. These are clear cases where a whistle blowers in justified.
But yes, as far as what's a clear case there is some judgment involved. As my old ethics teacher used to say Morality isn't a math equation it's an essay question.
On one hand you can look at it as a straight theft. If a person steals a bunch of computers and then sells them to a computer shop for 25% of the retail price the shop owner is guilty of a crime (selling stolen goods) even if he had no part in the initial theft. In that case I’d say it’s immoral on Techcrunch’s part. Because while the digital copies of files don’t have monetary value like physical computers they have intellectual property value that could do significant damage to Twitter and in doing so cause the company to lose large sums of money.
ON THE OTHER HAND, most of the great scandals both in Government and in Corporate America have been revealed by whistle blowers who essentially stole documents and passed them on to reporters. So there’s a precedent where stealing documents can actually be a very moral thing.
In the end I think it boils down to what the documents reveal. In the case of whistle blowers they're still stealing something but we forgive the theft because it’s done to protect society from a greater harm. The good out weighs the bad. So if these documents reveal some kind of malfeasants on Twitter’s part I could see publishing them as being justified. If not I think you’re probably right and this is an immoral act on Techcrunch’s part.