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You mean “without any prior evidence”. The phrase “a priori” means “by reason or deduction alone, without empirical evidence”. The phrase “a priori evidence” is an oxymoron.
It's the internet, if you don't start adding random i's to words, people will think you're new to the place. Don't forget the Viri, or even Virii.
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> It would be unethical if a company properly secured their servers. My guess is that this is the root. It's unethical for you to walk into my house and read my mail regardless of whether I locked the door that morning or not. I'm not losing any sleep over this particular leak, just saying, what I quoted is probably their beef.
I mean, that's an interesting question, right? I've copied the information in your mail to myself without harming the original. If I burned your letter, I've absolutely committed a wrong, but I didn't do that. If you fail to lock your door, you are in effect allowing this possibility. If you communicate over a "clear" channel, without taking steps to encrypt that data, you are again allowing this. That's why I don't…
Regardless of your argument, that's not what happened here.
They broke into the (secured) Stratfor servers, then decrypted the email using a key they stole.
At best the real analogy is picking the lock on your house, taking your spare car key and then stealing your car.
The whole "but nothing was destroyed" argument is a whole other argument, but equally as weak. The fact that exclusive access information has value has been long established, and there are numerous precedents in the physical world showing it. The best example is someone breaking into a commercial office, gaining access to private commercial documents which they can use in negotiations. Clearly harm has been done, as it has in this case.
What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail mail"?
My point being: wouldn't it actually be better in terms of fostering awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore no presumed privacy whatsoever?
Then, say, a couple standards might get updated, and companies might need to update their internal processes in order to comply.
EDIT: Rearranged some paragraphs. Taking the opportunity to acknowledge the alternative to my "simply stop legally blessing people's treating email as if it were snail mail": to regulate the internet further and try to impose "Intel takedowns" and/or stricter protocols than the ones that outline email today.
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I yield to your well-founded argument. P.S: I consider publication of information about war cruelty and international political pressure as benefiting for mankind, ethically good and thus conforming to the "hacker ethics".
How about this... Bradley Manning posted two types of information. War Footage and Diplomatic Cables. The War Footage was unpleasant to watch but didn't document anything that wasn't already well known (at least to anyone who paid attention to Iraqi Civilian Casualty Numbers). As such no change has been made by the government. The second group, diplomatic cables, actually caused harm. The whole point of diplomacy is…
> The War Footage was unpleasant to watch but didn't document anything that wasn't already well known (at least to anyone who paid attention [...])
It generated mass media attention and thus had an impact on previously uninformed people.
> The second group, diplomatic cables, actually caused harm.
It also made transparent how governments followed US pressure secretly, lying to the people, and they are said to have had an influence on the Arab spring.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean “without any prior evidence”. The phrase “a priori” means “by reason or deduction alone, without empirical evidence”. The phrase “a priori evidence” is an oxymoron.
It's the internet, if you don't start adding random i's to words, people will think you're new to the place. Don't forget the Viri, or even Virii.
900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action. To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether…
I have to back you on this. This doesn't sit in any moral grey area. This is nothing but corruption. If people genuinely have no problem with the outing of millions of private correspondences, then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection. If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for mo…
We already are, the government has made it fairly clear that they have the "right" to read anyone's emails they please due to their bullshit "war on terror", its about time we get the same chance to do it to them
I've been in the financial consulting business for a while and I'm still sometimes stunned by the kinds of things clients will send me as unencrypted email. What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail mail"? My point being: wouldn't it actually be better in terms of fostering awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore no presumed privacy whatsoever? Then, say, a couple s…
If only. That would be an improvement. As matters stand, they're much more poorly protected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_privacy
> After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.[6] This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed for a government agency to force email providers such as Google's Gmail to produce a copy.[6] Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.
900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action. To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether…
Hmm. You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense. At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it." And this, for me, is one of them. Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship. If that's the case, if t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm. You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense. At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it." And this, for me, is one of them. Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship. If that's the case, if t…
Agreed. Over the last 10 years, arguably much longer, if you take into account the "war" on drugs, the US government has begun to, in some aspects, wage war on its own citizens. The power grabs by politicians and law enforcement nowadays is reaching insane levels to the point where I am not confident that we live in a fully "free" country anymore and to where I think that people doing things like this could be one of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, that's an interesting question, right? I've copied the information in your mail to myself without harming the original. If I burned your letter, I've absolutely committed a wrong, but I didn't do that. If you fail to lock your door, you are in effect allowing this possibility. If you communicate over a "clear" channel, without taking steps to encrypt that data, you are again allowing this. That's why I don't…
> I've copied the information in your mail to myself without harming the original. If you opened mail from my physical mailbox, you'd have committed the federal crime of mail tampering, which faces a fine and/or jail time. If you opened 3.3 million letters from my mail box, you'd probably be the first person to live the remainder of their life in jail for mail tampering... regardless of your age. My mail is stored in…
Right, yes, it's illegal, but that's more an accident of legislature than anything else. Don't pretend that that gives it moral explanatory power one way or the other.
If I fail to lock my door, it's still immoral to enter my property and steal everything. Just as it's immoral to enter my unlockable mailbox and steal my mail.
I agree that theft resulting in exclusion of your access to your resources is very much unethical--copying mail does not result in this exclusion of access.
If you don't find it immoral for someone else to read your mail then honestly you should have no qualms with posting the entire contents of all your email addresses online for us to scrutinize as well.
I don't have to find it immoral; giving away that information freely is an act of charity I do not believe myself morally obligated to perform. Were you to come across it otherwise, I'd be a bit annoyed (as I would have to update various authentication mechanisms), but I wouldn't believe I ought to jail you or fine you or the like.
I make a bet, everyday, that the relative security of my systems is adequate for my needs. Some days I'm right, some days I'm wrong, and I bear no ill will for somebody that authenticates as me to that system--clearly, the error was in the system's scope and construction.
My problem with this world is people like you, who will be the first to scream fucking murder when some trivial wrong happens to you but you claim everyone else has no moral claim for not doing everything you deem appropriate. Get off your fucking high horse and learn the god damn definition of morals because at least knowing the definition might help you find a set.
I'm giving myself a 99% chance of being down voted, but put your money where your mouth is. I want to see your goddamn emails.
You know, if I could do so without giving away authentication credentials for other things, I would. That said, the cost-benefit isn't there. As I pointed out above, I don't have any moral obligation to provide you with information--if you gather on your own, hell, that's your business. As long as only copying has occurred, what does it matter?