In business, "trust" is an incredibly valuable asset. I've seen huge deals made on a handshake (with agreement to draw up contracts) based solely on the mutual trust the parties have earned.
It's also the most slippery of assets. Lose it and it's gone forever.
Regardless of your definition of "ethical", if I think it's unethical, then you've lost my trust and our relationship is over. Was it worth it?
Spot-on analysis of what has gone on: journalistic responsibility doesn't apply to this hack -- they haven't stumbled across details of shady dealings or bad treatment of users.
Instead, it seems TechCrunch want to publish the info because a) they find it mildly interesting, and b) a voyeuristic 'scoop' on Twitter is guaranteed to generate a lot of traffic.
If they consider themselves a "news organization" then they have an obligation to their readers to publish "news". I don't know how much of the documents they're gonna publish (3 of 400?), but hopefully they'll have reasonable judgement; ie. plans for a Twitter tv show is newsworthy (tell me that wouldn't end up on HN), and disclosing private details of an employee is not.
All these docs are gonna be leaked at some point, then everyone will be "reporting" on it.
"Other people will report sensitive info" isn't ethical justification.
IMO TechCrunch should have gone down the honest route of 'It's interesting, and news-worthy, and we won't publish anything damaging' in their response instead of bringing in this 'journalistic responsibility' spiel.
If you know the goods at a certain pawnshop are stolen, but they have the best deals in town, do you buy stuff there?
If you think TechCrunch is wrong in disseminating this information, then you shouldn't click through to their articles. Doing so makes you complicit in their business model.
There is a difference between someone hacking into Twitter, vs. Deep Throat talking to Bob Woodward. I think Deep Throat was doing a public service, and I'm happy to be complicit in his and Bob Woodward's conveyance of "confidential" information to the public.
Was the Twitter hacker doing a public service of any kind? Or was it vendetta, or competition, or just mischief? To the extent that there is no public service, then by reading TechCrunch's posts of that material, you are just buying stolen goods from a pawnshop.
It instructs journalists to "seek truth and report it" but also to "minimize harm." In particular, "Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy." And, "Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity."
Most professional news organizations subscribe to some form of SPJ's Code of Ethics. TechCrunch, clearly, does not.
I've been pondering what about this whole mess it is that keeps mentally poking me. And the problem I have is the blatant hypocrisy of Arrington et al in the handling of this story.
The first post he made about this attempted to make the case that this was standard operating procedure, and really isn't anything out of line with the way things are normally handled. If that's the case, then why write a story talking about the fact that you've been given stolen documents containing large amounts of previously secret information. Then go on to say you won't post the personal information, and you're only posting the parts you find newsworthy.
If it's so normal, wouldn't you just post the stories, and mention that your source was some leaked documents you'd been given? You only do that if you feel you have something to justify, something to explain. In otherwords, you think you might be wrong.
So instead of handling this like they would any other source, for any other article, they've justified the source well in advance of actually using it. It's hypocritical and proves that all of this was just another stunt to drum up traffic.
Personally I'm done with TechCrunch. I won't follow links there, if I end up there by mistake, I'm closing quickly. I won't support this sort of blatant hypocrisy and grandstanding. It's not professional. It's not needed.
I am certainly not in the group of people, who believe revealing the stolen twitter data is good. But articles like this one make it really hard for me, not to argue out of the techcrunch perspective. I've read the comments there, too. And they are saying again and again that no personal data will be shown to public eyes. So I don't know, where's the problem to understand this point and why everybody, every time again, is writing about this point. Maybe there really is nothing morally wrong with everything that techcrunch says, they really want to publish (about strategy and cashflow numbers).
It seems to me that once information that any one might care about hits the internet, -someone- is going to publish it.
If you think some site publishing it is not cool, all you can do is vote with your mouse.
Maybe it's surprising to find what you thought was a cool site pulling a dick-move. But it's unlikely that they'll do anything differently in the future.
Sites select their readers with their content. This is clearly the kind of thing they'd publish day-in and day-out if they had it. So all that's left is deciding whether you still want to be in their audience.
One company's news, is another company's unethical. i.e. here techcrunch doesn't wish to release private info, but for a tabloid, that's all they print
Forget about "journalism" and "ethics" and let the law do its job. If publishing this information is illegal, TechCrunch will be in trouble. If it's not, they won't.
Ethics have little use in a group discussion over something so trivial because no-one can agree on the boundaries. Is Fox News's treatment of stories "journalisically ethical"? A popular view is that it's not, but is what they're doing illegal? It doesn't seem so - so a lot of people just avoid Fox News. Likewise, if TechCrunch's ethics jar with you, don't read their stuff and just trust the law to deal with any transgressions they make.
Michael Arrington seems like a new, tech equivalent of Kelvin MacKenzie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_MacKenzie) to me - a good thing in my book. He might not be loved, but he knows how to be a damn good editor and get people reading - that's what media's all about.
So if TechCrunch paid someone to break into computer systems and steal those documents that would be illegal. Seems like they could choose to help twitter identify who did break in and gained unauthorized access to their computer systems. Clearly TechCrunch is advancing someone's agenda who wants to harm Twitter given the description of the information that was provided to them.
If the documents can reasonably be classified as trade secrets, the aggrieved party may be able to seek damages from the "informant" and an injunction against the continued publishing of them by the "press."
Of course, once the cat is out of the bag there's no putting it back in, so there's really not much benefit beyond punishing the party who stole them in the first place.
It's also the most slippery of assets. Lose it and it's gone forever.
Regardless of your definition of "ethical", if I think it's unethical, then you've lost my trust and our relationship is over. Was it worth it?