There is no such thing as <i>duly constituted authority</i> when you are forcing people to do things against their will.  There is only the ability to enforce your edict, and possibly also the ability to offer reasonable compensation to your victims.<p>The concept of <i>authority</i> is simply a synonym for <i>overwhelming force</i> in my ethical reasoning, wherein any reasonable person would flee it or surrender to it rather than openly resist it.  So when you say <i>duly constituted authority</i> that just tells me that the teams of doctors have enough men with guns behind them that they don&#x27;t have to bother with explaining their actions or chasing down stragglers.<p>In the situation under discussion, the cost of compensation would certainly be little more than pocket change, especially given that the victims may not have even noticed the intrusion, or even the more invasive prior compromises.  And we don&#x27;t know the actual cost of damages to the victims.<p>The grey-hats&#x27; failing was in not allocating resources for those things, however small they may be, <i>before</i> launching the program.  Did they sit down and ask themselves, &quot;What will we do for the people who don&#x27;t think we&#x27;re doing the right thing?&quot; and &quot;How will we fix anything we might screw up with this?&quot;  If not, they probably should have, but now that the deed is done, I won&#x27;t get worked up over it.