Twittergate Schmittergate!

When reading about the recent leak of documents and TechCrunch's plan to make them public, you can see that there's many sides to the debate. Some think it's perfectly normal and ethical to show the plans of a company. Others think it's highly unethical, and a breach of privacy.

This "Twittergate", as some people are calling it, pretty much likens this leak to the whistleblowing of Nixon in the scandal of Watergate in the 1970s by William Felt, then known as "DeepThroat". Felt was an associate director of the FBI at the time, however he felt the need that this information must be shared for the sake of keeping democracy in the country. He gave information to writers at the Washington Post under this pseudonym and prevented a serious abuse of power to continue under the presidency of Nixon, who until his resignation tried to point Judical committees, as well as the country, away from his crimes.

Why is this important however to this present day issue? Because unlike Watergate, Twitter is doing nothing wrong or undemocratic. They're doing legal business, and they're biggest concern is keeping that business through privacy. The person who leaked the accounts was not seeking justice - he was seeking fame and to pique his own curiosity about this increasingly popular company. What's more, this cracker(or "hacker", as the media incorrectly calls it) is being encouraged to continue his illegal and unethical acts through TechCrunch's obvious proposal of releasing of the leaked files. Did the founder of TechCrunch ever think of the implications this might hold on any future internet sites/applications? If they don't condone these acts just for the sake of more traffic from visitors on their site , what's to say that they won't get hit with such a leak themselves?

Interesting though it might be to look into the lives of the Elite Company of the Day, I think people need to understand how this is still a serious breach of security, not the whistleblowing of a company doing something illegal. This should not be welcomed by other places of the internet with open arms, but condoned. If not, TechCrunch would be as bad as Nixon by following the abuse of power shown through this hacker, and should even be implicated to be an accomplice.