You know who else profits from misery? Doctors, and funeral home owners. Pretty much anyone in the media. I certainly hope my doctor isn't making terrible jokes about how much money he's going to make from my disease, but even if he was, it wouldn't be illegal nor would I find it a justifiable reason to leak his personal information (let alone his clients' information!).
You also assume everyone is already split into either the pro-Wikileaks camp or their detractors. As someone who has mixed feelings about Wikileaks, this definitely affected my view of them negatively. (Full disclosure - my card was among those leaked. But even if it hadn't been, if I had just been someone who knew about Stratfor rather than a subscriber, this would have put Wikileaks in a bad light for me).
Also, it would be different if we did a dump of all the emails from oncologists at the Moffitt Center and found out they were putting doctors on the news to say smoking is good for your health and then highfiving each other via email after.
You would be actually shocked how driven by money many oncologists are. Back when I used to consult, I had an oncologist tell me, with no hesitation, that he prefers to prescribe the drugs that give him the best profit margin, even if that means it's not the best choice for the patient.
I'm pretty sure if you checked his email you'd find some pretty shocking stuff as well.
In which case, publishing them would be a public good - doctors who put profit over positive outcomes for their patients should be named and shamed and patients would be better off knowing to avoid them.
This is in fact a solid argument for why transparency of this kind is a Good Thing.
An ethical problem happens when the doctor conditions the alleviating of misery with the alleviating of the money from the miserable in moments of greatest weakness of people.
It negatively affects my view of Stratfor that they are not PCI compliant and have this sort of credit card information just lying around in emails. That is pretty grossly irresponsible.
Agreed. It affected my view negatively enough that I am no longer a subscriber. But somehow dumping all the credit cards on the Internet seems even more grossly irresponsible to me.
The point is that it is a data dump of emails and there is no reasonable reason for anyone to believe there is credit card information in there. I'm not sure why anyone should expect Wikileaks to scour the materials for this sort of thing. They only seem to redact in life-and-death sort of situations.
When doctors start joking about giving out .22LR zip guns to inner city 17 year old drug addicts, and funeral home directors start encouraging people to drink poisoned water , maybe then your parallel will ring true ...
You also assume everyone is already split into either the pro-Wikileaks camp or their detractors. As someone who has mixed feelings about Wikileaks, this definitely affected my view of them negatively. (Full disclosure - my card was among those leaked. But even if it hadn't been, if I had just been someone who knew about Stratfor rather than a subscriber, this would have put Wikileaks in a bad light for me).