Of course the NSA does that for the "greater good" and our persoanl safety and security so the hob goblins won't hide under our beds and come out and get us at night while we are sleeping because the government is 24/7 covering our backs for us so we don't have to worry. Unh Hunh.
Ron Getty
Hostis Res Publica
Morte Ai Tiranni
Dum Spiro, Pugno
These hackers are thieves, not "whistleblowers". The stole 65 megabytes of private data and just published all of it.
Has anyone claimed to have found evidence of anything criminal or even unethical in the stolen files?
(The files do show that they spent a lot of time on politics instead of science. Is that surprising?)
There's no such thing as "private data" if you can't secure it. Privacy is not a positive right unless there are others on this list that can show otherwise.
Copying an electronic file is "stealing" only in the sense of the RIAA and MPAA claiming that copyrighted works are "stolen" when individuals share such files over the internet among their millions of close friends in cyberspace. Publishing work that was not copyrighted (and nothing in these files was copyrighted, as the owner certainly never intended for the data to be made public) cannot really be called "stealing" so much as "exposing" to the cold light of day something that was intended to be kept hidden away in the dark.
This is embarrassing stuff that could have major ramifications by being revealed, much more so than the publishing of Sarah Palin's Yahoo emails which proved she broke not only government policy, but also standard ethics and sunshine laws by conducting government business over a private channel that she thought would never be discovered and would not be subject to subpoena .
The fact that this sensitive information was never encrypted raises some serious questions as to the competency of the "scientists" involved (or at the very least, their IT staff). Everyone who uses a computer should know about encryption and how to use it to protect themselves.
No, copyright is a completely different issue than privacy. Copyright owners claim they can publish something and force the purchasers not to share it.
In this case, the owners never intended to publish the material stolen. But if they did decide to do so, they could still copyright it at that time. Copyright starts at the time you publish, not when you start writing in private.
In the case of government documents, such as the Pentagon papers and Sarah Palin's email, the government officials do not own the information. The work they do as government officials belongs to the government and the government SHOULD belong to the citizens.
If someone broke into an office and made copies of documents, I think all Libertarians would condemn the burglary. How can this be any different? Please explain.
Well first of all, we don't know who did it. It could have been the work of a disgruntled employee who felt the dishonestly needed to be known.
In the event that it was an outsider, I'd characterize more as someone leaving the door open to the office with the papers sitting in plain view on a desk.