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)