Should TechCrunch Have Posted Material from 'Twittergate' Hack?
A computer hacker accessed internal documents at Twitter and made them public, igniting debate about the legal and ethical obligations of those who published confidential material about the microblogging website’s business plans.
Co-founder Biz Stone said Twitter is consulting with legal counsel about possible consequences for those who accept or publish stolen documents, among other issues, reports the BBC.
TechCrunch has elicited criticism for publishing some of the material. However, the Silicon Valley blog routinely publishes confidential material that has news value, says Michael Arrington, an editor and founder, in a post on TechCrunch.
“There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us,” he writes. “But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.”
Among those the blog is not publishing, he says, are documents that show floorplans and security passcodes for Twitter’s offices.
The so-called “Twittergate” theft apparently occurred after a French hacker figured out an administrative staffer’s easy-to-guess e-mail password and recovery word, the BBC reports. The e-mail account then provided an entree to the staffer’s Google Apps files.
Hat tip: Above the Law.
