The other day, Julian Assange decided to publicly release an indexed archive of all of those stolen emails of the employees of SONY. If I understand correctly, his reasoning was roughly as follows: Since these people all work for a large multinational corporation, then they must be evil, and therefore they must be punished.
The fact that these people are simply individuals, not powerful multinational corporations, seems to be a nicety that Mr. Assange finds too insignificant to bother with.
I imagine that some who are reading this might disagree with me. They might find WikiLeaks’ logic unassailable. After all, once someone makes the decision to work for a major corporation, shouldn’t they assume that they have given up any claim to moral legitimacy? Shouldn’t they expect that stolen information about them and the people in their life will be made public and conveniently indexed, that their every personal conversation will be come a matter of public discussion and perhaps public mockery?
The fact that these employees’ children, their spouse, their friends, everyone in their personal circle will be forced to witness their private life made public, isn’t this simply righteous punishment for the unforgivable act of being an employee of a major corporation?
If you do agree with Mr. Assange on this one, then I hope you realize you have a moral obligation to gather up every intimate and personal email you have ever sent or received, and send it immediately to Mr. Assange to do with as he will. After all, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
I have a disturbing image in my head of Mr. Assange gleefully urinating all over these peoples’ lives.
Maybe that’s why they call it WikiLeaks.
Maybe Assange doesn’t *know* or understand social implications.
okay, you raised my Q — I looked up WL – read 6 emails — was bored. came back here to post; the emails I read were typical boring responses among and about business — meetings missed, etc
social implication — work is dull? — sony isn’t paradise? people aren’t reliable?
Richard: No offense, but to me, visiting that page is just a form of viewing pornography, with one difference: When you look at porn, you are watching people who have volunteered to show you their private parts.
The point is that these employees had no idea somebody was going to make their emails public. They were unguarded, and therefore vulnerable.
Sure, most of those emails would be boring, but that’s not the point. After all, much of everyday life is boring. That doesn’t mean it’s ok for somebody to secretly put a camera in your living room, to show the world how often you go to the toilet.
If Sony employees were conducting truly personal business on a corporate email system, they’re the ones who made a mistake. Sony Inc. owned the contents of the emails, not the individuals, and could choose to publish it anyway.
Granted, wholesale publishing of the entire archive is the type of crass act Wikileaks is famous for. Probably the reason Snowden entrusted his archive to respected journalists rather than Wikileaks.
Some of the emails found in the Sony archives, however, are relevant to the public at large: e.g., email showing studio executives stuffing the pockets of politicians in order to get copyright laws changed in their favor.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/04/copyright-for-sale-how-the-sony-documents-illustrate-the-link-between-the-mpaa-and-political-donations/
hmm. the company (sony) can do whatever they wish with their email, or so I suppose in a propertied world.
directing to a site you reference is a form of “porn” … slim but since I am free to leave
I don’t agree that there is an equivalence, since SONY is in a well understood social contract with its employees. As we know, the company would not itself have released those emails. In fact, everyone at SONY was appalled when the emails were stolen and released in the first place.
I have never gone to the WikiLeaks site to read those stolen emails, and I don’t plan to. Just as I have never watched a stolen and leaked “celebrity porn” video, and don’t plan to. We each make our individual choices.