A story that has had the tech world abuzz involves a story on TechCrunch. In that story, TechCrunch head honcho Mike Arrington wrote that a hacker had forwarded him a zip file containing over 300 confidential corporate and personal documents stolen from Twitter and Twitter employees. Evidently, the hacker did this by hacking email accounts. Arrington wrote that the zip file “contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.”
Photo by justinbaeder.
Arrington then admitted that TechCrunch was reviewing the documents, and that while they wouldn’t publish certain documents, such as those showing the passcodes to the Twitter offices, they were “going to release some of the documents showing financial projections, product plans and notes from executive strategy meetings.” They were also “going to post the original pitch document for the Twitter TV show that hit the news in May, mostly because it’s awesome.”
Does this cross ethical lines? At least in the initial post, Arrington’s criteria for whether or not an item should be posted seems to be whether or not it is newsworthy (“But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.”) In the comments, and in a later post and its comments, Arrington defends his decision, making comparisons to how traditional news organizations run stories that are leaked to them. He argues that if you only run stories based on information that you rightfully should possess, then you would have nothing to publish aside from company press releases.
My take? TechCrunch has crossed the line here. There is a difference between using information that an insider leaked to you, and running a story based on information that is illegally stolen by someone. The difference is that the insider had the right to obtain the information, while the thief did not.
That’s not to say this is a bright line, and the only standard to apply. One must also weigh whether releasing information is in the public interest, or whether it is merely interesting to the public. As commenter Eric noted on TechCrunch, the “Pentagon Papers were in the public interest because it showed the government lied to us about Vietnam. The public interest overrode the Pentagon’s and Nixon Administration’s wishes to keep it under wraps.”
I would be shocked if there is any information in the Twitter papers that is in the public interest. The information may interest the public, but that doesn’t make it in the public interest. As some commenters at Tech Crunch have noted, the only good that will come from the release of this stolen information is to satiate people’s curiosity over Twitter’s plans, and to drive more hits to TechCrunch’s site. TechCrunch typically does go for the sensational headline (seemingly without much fact checking at times), and in the past has been accussed of trolling and linkbaiting. This latest move seems to follow that modus operandi. To those who say that publishing the information will help startups like Twitter get their act together – hogwash. If this scare alone doesn’t do it, then following through with the actual publishing won’t either.
What do you think? Is this acceptable journalism, or has TechCrunch crossed the line?
Kosmo @ The Casual Observer says:
Is this not considered to be possession of stolen property? Yes, I think this crosses a line.
I recently purchased a Trivial Pursuit game from a secondhand store to add to my collection (I own 7 different versions). The box bulged at the top … it turns out that the reason for the bulge was 17 sealed envelopes from the Department of Education and various student loan lenders. Not only were these document not stolen, but the actual owner had SOLD them to me (by consigning them). Nonetheless, I didn't open them up to see if there was any valuable information inside (considering the age of the documents, I can guarantee that the guy's SSN is splashed all over the documents)
July 16, 2009 — 9:34 am
Evan says:
Some people have made that observation about stolen property. I don't know if there is a distinction between digital information and tangible property or not. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, as the Twitter folks have already mentioned that they've talked to their lawyers about what can be done not just regarding the hacker, but against those who use the info.
It sounds like you and I look at this the same way. My eyes bugged out early in the TechCrunch article, before I even got to the part about publishing the info, when I read the line “We’ve spent most of the evening reading these documents.” At that point I think I would have said, “thanks, but no thanks.”
Even if you want to look at it not from an ethical point of view, but a cold business point of view, you could argue that nothing good ultimately comes from climbing in the mud with dirtbags like this hacker. You're only going to get dirty yourself, and eventually wall yourself off so that nobody deals with you. It might take time, but if this becomes a pattern for TechCrunch, they'll have too many people who cut them out, that they'll have a hard time doing their job.
July 16, 2009 — 9:42 am
Bobby Travis says:
Playing devil's advocate here, TechCrunch's arguments about how stories get posted are actually valid, to a degree. The fact of the matter is, journalist's themselves steal and write about information everyday. Journalists of all calibers in pretty much all lines of journalism that have any sort of investigative aspect will either seek out sources or obtain the information themselves. Insider information is every bit as stolen as hacked, especially when reporting on things like publicly traded companies and the like, or leaking information beyond a confidentiality contract. The fact that the information may be in the public interest does not negate the fact that it is stolen. Now, that doesn't mean the information should or should not be posted, only that the method of obtaining and reporting information seems to be sound — except for the following:
What most news organizations do is they collect their information, log their sources and weigh the trust they can have in the information provided by their source — and then they protect the that source and report on the information. I am pretty sure (but not positive as I am not American) that in most cases, they are not legally required to disclose their source — but they may be able to be subpoenaed for the information in specific circumstances, you guys tell me… In any case, the fact remains that the information would be reported without sensationalism, and only as a part of the overall article. Generally, there would be no hype about how the publisher obtained the information, at least not until -after- the story is broken. It would simply have been “information from a reliable source” or “information received by TechCrunch”, there would be no articles disclaiming what the publisher is “about to do”. The only reason to do that is to attempt to let the world know that you were not the one to steal the information and you have no part of it, and to cause a sensationalist and worldwide dialogue that will increase your popularity by notoriety — which is what they did.
All this aside, I do agree that, should you come into possession of stolen property, you should report it to the authorities and the party that it was stolen from, if possible. I also am pretty sure that in today's world digital information is protected by law, especially in the case of intellectual property and privacy. Your FBI apparently reeeally frowns on hacking. But the question is an ambiguous one to answer from a legal perspective due to the fact that there are many loopholes that will allow this sort of thing to take place. That being said, there are also potential loopholes in those loopholes that will allow a good lawyer to sway a court and/or jury in the other direction. Fallout from that could provide precedent at a later date, however, for companies or the government to -legally- squash, or at least delay, stories that may or may not be deemed in the public interest, depending on potential court proceedings as to how the information was obtained.
Fun, huh?
July 16, 2009 — 3:27 pm
Evan says:
I don't know enough about how journalists get their info, but isn't there a distinction between insider info and hacked info? The distinction being that the insider at least had rightful access to the info in the first place (again, playing devil's advocate, as I don't know if that is always how journalists get insider info).
I talked to one of my coworkers who, prior to becoming a lawyer, was a sportswriter for one of the bigger U.S. newspapers, and had the communications degree and all that stuff. He really harped on the public interest side of things, saying we really needed to look at that. The example he gave was what if the info was stolen, but it revealed that the government had hidden secret torture camps in Kansas where we tortured citizens. On the flip side would be something like someone stealing private info of Britney Spears. There'd be nothing in the public interest with that, so only something like the U.S. tabloids (National Enquirer, etc.) would run with that.
I think there is probably some sort of matrix or graph that can be drawn here, with source of info down the side, and public interest along the bottom, with info getting plotted on there somewhere.
July 16, 2009 — 6:31 pm
Bobby Travis says:
Keeping with the tune/tone and riddim, one then must ask… who decides what is in the public interest and what is not? Especially for something that is used worldwide…
I do think that in public interest and of public interest are all too often blurred, though.
As for reporters, it depends on the reporter and the subject matter. Many of them get their story by any means necessary — if that means they have to… bend… the law (or outright break it) a bit to do it, then they might if they feel the story is important enough or going to bring them enough recognition. They might even pay someone else to do the dirty work, but they are still complicit. They don't call 'em newshounds for nothing.
July 16, 2009 — 8:31 pm
Kosmo @ The Casual Observer says:
There may also be a distinction between what is allowed by journalistic standards and what is allowed by the law. There are things that may be allowed by journalistic standards by not allowed by the law, and vice versa. Just because it's ethical doesn't mean it's legal, and just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical.
I guess, as a journalist, if you think you are within the bounds of journalistic standards but outside the letter of the law, perhaps you do bend/break the law for the story, but with the understanding that you might face prosecution (and hope for a sympathetic jury)
In this case, where an organization is making no qualms about the fact that laws were broken to obtain the information, it seems that they're asking for trouble be retaining and using the information. In additional to criminal charges, there is the very real possibility of a civil lawsuit. Civil lawsuits have a lower burden on the plaintiff (preponderance of the evidence vs. beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial)
July 17, 2009 — 8:52 am
Evan says:
The public interest line is definitely not a clear one (as we've both noted). The funny things is that I read somewhere (but haven't checked it out) that the law in the U.K. regarding publishing private materials actually is based upon the public interest standard. So it is almost like the U.K. codified the ethics, wrapping ethics and the law into one, at least on that issue. As far as how to decide what is in the public interest, It is probably like many things in the law, such as the “reasonable man” standard in negligence cases. It really comes down to a case by case basis, unfortunately, and what the fact-finder (judge/jury, as the case may be) decides it is.
July 17, 2009 — 9:04 am
Oscar says:
Techcrunch says that they were working with twitter to decide which documents to release, but this tweet from the CEO of twitter states the opposite ( http://twitter.com/ev/status/2676203744 ). I stopped to read techcruch a long time ago because I think they are making money in an unethical way and I don't accept it. That's my opinion.
July 18, 2009 — 5:46 pm
Evan says:
Yea, TechCrunch has always had a bit of a slimy feel to me, even before this. That could be clouding my judgment on this issue, I admit.
July 18, 2009 — 10:05 pm
nelson says:
this is funny . I recently had to write an article about this very thing .. and my BIG problem was that I had nothing to write about .
now i'm not sure about the law and what it states … but from an ethics point of view , in my opinion at least , no way . there is absolutely no reason to publish such material . nor to publish information contained in that material .
as long as those documents are NOT evidence to some sort of illegality … no . you have no right to publish them .
July 19, 2009 — 12:30 am
Evan says:
Yea, that last point gets back to the public interest issue in a way. If it shows some type of illegal conduct, then it would be in the public interest. But where it is just stuff that some tech geeks are interested in, then it wouldn't, and crosses the line.
July 20, 2009 — 8:59 am
Stefan says:
It depends on different reasons if I should publish them or not. In this case I may have had published a few of them, but kept the most important documents secret.
Personally I don't read TC and will probably never do.
July 21, 2009 — 9:53 am
Evan says:
Its interesting that you mention that, because I just listened to the TWiT podcast, where they discussed what was released. Evidently, not only did TC release some Twitter business plans, but according to TWiT, they also released some notes from some Twitter execs, revealing what they thought (in a negative way) of some of the people they were dealing with, such as at Google. That just makes TC look like a gossip rag, in my opinion.
July 21, 2009 — 3:03 pm