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Comment by randomtask | Hacker News Reader

In other words, because in the case of Techcrunch the end doesn't justify the means it's immoral?

It's a public policy exemption. A greater good call by a grateful society would not punish TC for its crime/immorality if it deemed the leak to be of sufficient value to public interest. That's a risk the publisher/whistleblower takes but it's only a risk if there's an enforcement/judgment process in place, or else TC faces no such risk and can publish anything it damn well likes without having to estimate the value to the public interest of its actions. Which, quite frankly, is what they frequently failed to do in the past.Their judgement is suspect, to me at least, even if they've never been punished.

"TC faces no such risk and can publish anything it damn well likes without having to estimate the value to the public interest of its actions"

Isn't that a consequence of free speech?

I wouldn’t say “ends justify the means” is accurate here. Morality’s a tricky bag no matter how you slice it but one thing most ethical systems have in common is a belief that harming others to benefit yourself is wrong. So, for example, if you’re my boss and someone offers to pay you a million dollars to fire me even though I’m a good worker that would be wrong. Even though you would gain far more than I would lose. Because you’re causing harm to me in order to benefit yourself.

What I was saying is that it’s justified if the benefit is to society. This is based on two principles that are pretty much accepted across the board as far as ethical systems go. One, you are part of society and there’s nothing immoral about defending yourself against harm. Two, societal benefits are in the macro so even if a company is only causing a little harm per person the amount of harm prevented adds up.

So in my eyes and in the eyes of most ethical systems publishing these documents wouldn't be justified even if Techcrunch gains more than Twitter loses. Unless there's information in those documents that would benefit society as a whole (or if Twitter was causing great harm to someone else and it would be stopped by revealing the documents)

It would seem to me that you are effectively treating society as this single entity and saying that so long as an action benefits that entity then it is moral even if the action itself would be considered immoral in another scenario.

However society is not a single entity, but rather a collection of individuals that can be affected by an event in different and often opposing ways. To some it may be beneficial, but to others not so. Sure the group that benefits may be in the majority, but to ignore the minority group and declare that to "society" the outcome was good is to ignore the different views and interests that make up a society.

"Public good" is not so naively defined, and the grandparent made this explicit by reference to the multiplier effect of public harms.

When making moral judgments you have to treat society as a single entity. Either that or choose to simply not make the judgments at all. Because there are just too many people in society to calculate the exact amount of good or bad a decision will be to them.

Accordingly, you can only really use "it's good for society" if there's a clear benefit. Exposing a chemical company that dumps waste into a town's water supply is a clear benefit. As is making false financial statements in order to inflate your stock to the point where millions will eventually lose their savings. These are clear cases where a whistle blowers in justified.

But yes, as far as what's a clear case there is some judgment involved. As my old ethics teacher used to say Morality isn't a math equation it's an essay question.

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