Twitter hack was wrong – where have ethics gone?

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Reports are out that a hacker broke into the personal files of Twitter employees by way of password guessing then sent those files to popular tech site TechCrunch where some of them have been published.

What’s wrong with this picture?

If someone broke into your house, stole your bank statements, sent them to a media outlet and then were published, wouldn’t the police be involved?

Was the information illegally obtained? If you access an email account that isn’t yours (by brute force or otherwise) isn’t that a crime?

Officially speaking Twitter has stated that:

“We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for
Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or
publishes these stolen documents. We’re not sure yet exactly what the
implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but
when we learn more and are able to share more, we will.”