Accidental disclosure is a gray area, and once you are aware of it being an accidental disclosure you will want to make sure that you do not make things worse through your actions.
There are a number of moving parts here:
- The disclosure was clearly not the intended result
- The recipient could - and in fact did - realize this
- The recipient was in contact with the sender
- The recipient had some easy means to redress the situation
Given all of the above, if you then dig in and start looking at the data I think you are crossing a line. At a minimum a legal professional should have been consulted before further examination of the data, once it became obvious something was wrong.
In the end it would have been down to a judge to decide whether that crosses the line in a criminal sense but I would be loathe to find out the hard way. Pick your battles and all that.
There are a number of moving parts here:
- The disclosure was clearly not the intended result
- The recipient could - and in fact did - realize this
- The recipient was in contact with the sender
- The recipient had some easy means to redress the situation
Given all of the above, if you then dig in and start looking at the data I think you are crossing a line. At a minimum a legal professional should have been consulted before further examination of the data, once it became obvious something was wrong.
In the end it would have been down to a judge to decide whether that crosses the line in a criminal sense but I would be loathe to find out the hard way. Pick your battles and all that.