Publishing these materials are not protected in any way by the First Amendment.
You may be thinking of something like contract law, where someone can enter in to e.g. a non-disclosure agreement, and federal or state governments can enforce it. Such enforcement has been ruled legal, since the party to the contract had to voluntarily agree in exchange for something. Barring Twitter's EULA, Tech Crunch isn't a party to any contract with Twitter.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
There is nothing in there that says companies (ex. TechCrunch) have a right to print whatever they want, whether by free speech or by free press. It only says the government cannot pass a law that prevents the printing of free speech.
Right, there are narrow restrictions for e.g. libel. In that example those restrictions apply to congress's ability to regulate libel, and it has been in the past been a constitutional question.
How would you hypothesize that Twitter could go after TechCrunch without invoking a law at either the federal or state level?
The 1st Amendment doesn't grant me the right to write what I want on this forum, even if it would fit in the free-speech classification. Paul Graham can take down whatever he wants, whenever he wants. If Paul Graham became governor of California, he couldn't pass a statute that banned talking about Twitter and TC in online forums. That would run afoul of the 1st Amendment.
I am not sure that I understand your question on how Twitter could go after TC. How would anyone go after another entity without Federal or State law? I doubt there is a local ordinance about this wherever those two companies are located, and I doubt International Law would apply.
If Twitter wanted some sort of non-legal recourse, they could 1) talk it out with TC, 2) reach an out of court settlement, or 3) start the first SMS-organized boycott of a web site.
That isn't the case. Courts may, for instance, decide that a trade secret law that punishes leakers who were party to a contract or who obtained information through illegal means (such as via trespass) can be punished, but that such a law can't punish third parties who broke no law nor violated a contractual agreement in obtaining the secrets (such as is the case when they are mailed to you without solicitation).
All of the examples you cited (trade secrets, hate speech, and libelous/slanderous speech) have numerous caveats (trade secrets are limited by to what degree they have become public, hate speech is only exempted narrowly through title VII ( http://www.aclu.org/studentsrights/expression/12808pub199412... ), truth is an absolute defense against libel (that is in no way a tautology; it isn't an absolute defense in say, England)) that have been settled upon over time via drumroll answers to constitutional questions rendered by courts.
All the outrage is misplaced. Be outraged at the cracker or disgruntled employee that stole the documents, assuming that is what happened.
There are no trade secrets here, there are strategy secrets.
I am shocked that such a smart group of people fail to understand the basic underpinnings of our society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_St...
1. Not generally known or ascertainable by legal methods (TechCrunch violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to get the info.)
2. Must provide competitive value (Strategy plans provide competitive value)
3. Must be subject to reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy (the password, while weak, probably does constitute a reasonable effort)
edit: I see that you edited your post to include the New York Times case. The facts of that case are different than the one with TechCrunch. In NYT, the Federal Government tried to abridge the freedom of press. That triggered the 1st Amendment protections. Here, with TechCrunch, neither the Federal Government or any State Government are trying to prevent TC from printing the information. Therefore, the 1st Amendment does not apply.
2. This isn't my standard. It is the standard that courts across the country use. The majority of states (including California) adopted a less stringent version call the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Only 4 states, including my Massachusetts, whose version you see above, haven't adopted the act and instead employee their own versions.
3. Tobacco cancer data might be distinguished. First, it is a stretch to find that it has competitive value. Therefore it would not be classified under trade secret. Second, it probably isn't even covered under copyright because facts are not copyrightable, no matter how much effort was undertook to find them.
But I don't really know the facts of the leaked cancer data. I would have to read them in order to determine whether it was legal for it to be leaked to the press.
If the President of the United States can't block secrets from being published... you think Twitter can? I would submit your knowledge of the practices of Journalism and the law in this area are lacking. Publishing secrets is the business of newspapers. It happens every day. Its their job.
I am very surprised that so many people here fail to understand this. Just because you like Twitter does not mean its not appropriate to publish their extremely newsworthy secrets.
I admit that I have zero knowledge of journalism practices. But my legal knowledge is much greater; I am just over one semester away from graduating from law school.
I am neutral on Twitter. They are a company that I neither like nor dislike and I do not use their product.
For the 1st amendment to be invoked, the federal/state/local government has to be on one side of the "vs." in the case name. Otherwise, it's a normal civil case between two private parties, and the appropriate laws apply.
Similarly, the government can pass a law allowing copyright holders to protect their intellectual property - say, the DMCA. But it's then up to the copyright holders to bring lawsuits against people who publish their work - the government can't force them to do so, and they're completely within their rights to release their work under the GPL or Creative Commons. No free speech issue - it's a property issue.
IANAL, but listen to the law student above. His comments basically square with my understanding from lawyer friends and civics classes and occasional reading of court cases.
From a political philosophy perspective, you could look at it as libertarianism vs. anarchy. The libertarian POV is "You can do anything you want, as long as it hurts no-one." The anarchist POV is "You can do anything you want." The Bill of Rights is intended to protect libertarian ideals, not anarchist ones. It does not give you license to say anything you want, it prevents the government from arbitrarily restricting what you can say. The government can and should still make laws preventing your speech from hurting others.