Mass Hacks of Private Email Aren’t Whistleblowing, They Are at Odds with It
Meh. While email hacks are obviously different than &quot;whistleblowing&quot; nobody would be batting an eye if somebody had hacked a trove of Mafia (or other organized crime) emails and released them publicly.<p>The reality is that sometimes hacking is in the public interest and sometimes it&#x27;s not, but figuring out when is not easy or black and white.<p>One aspect to these discussions that I find sort of befuddling is the idea that somehow those involved in &quot;making the news&quot; (so to speak) shouldn&#x27;t have to think about what they&#x27;re saying or how they&#x27;re saying it unless they&#x27;re &quot;on the record,&quot; that we should expect their public face to be a mask hiding any insight into the private face behind it, and that somehow they ought to be magically protected from the potential publicizing of recordings, hacks, or eavesdropping.<p>Clearly the public at large is somewhat jaded and cynical, but there&#x27;s still a very obvious desire to have &quot;honest&quot; and &quot;open&quot; candidates who make their goals, intentions, and ideologies clear. Of course the public theoretically wants to know how the sausage is made.<p>That the candidates can&#x27;t recognize this and can&#x27;t or won&#x27;t operate as though the public might be watching without crying foul seems to me a bigger farce than pretending that one&#x27;s own words are a conspiracy... but what do I know?<p>I guess the idea that one ought to maintain some level restraint and conviviality both publicly and privately is dated and quaint.