There's the distinction of intent which I can more than accept. Snowden was acting on his own moral drive to do what he felt was right. As far as we know this was a hack that had no moral basis. They didn't know the contents of what they were going for and weren't releasing them to the public because of some moral obligation.

However, when we're talking about a company which I assume on paper has rules against using company time and tools to perpetuate to distribute racially charged material, were these emails to have been found by HR departments they should have been grounds for dismissal. If there has ever been one complaint about discriminatory practices from the higher ups, these would be valued evidence to support such a claim.

We all know how corporate institutions work however and it's likely that even if there was a case such an indepth investigation would likely never happen. And so while there's no moral ground for the action it still warrants proper review and action internally, and its perhaps only from something like this going public that such action could be taken.

Now flip that back on hackers, there's a off chance that whoever did this did in fact have some moral grounds for their actions (we'll probably never know). They may have a political position which is against the insular nature of corporations. And for them a means of exposing what they see as the problem though not knowing the specifics is to hang all of the laundry out to dry publicly. Do they have the same moral grounds to stand on as Snowden? That's debatable, but I think too often we're able to dismiss the motivations of some hackers (in the way Snowden is often grouped under the umbrella despite not being a hacker for the negative connotations associated with the word) while not taking into account that some of them are indeed acting from a position f political espionage in a very complex socio-political terrain.

Now hacking individual personal emails, IMO there's little moral ground for that for me. But anytime I see a corporate hack I have to put it into an ongoing war being waged against corporate America. Even the ones that affect us like banking institutions. Publicly we must begin recognizing this war for what it is and decide where our interests lie.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."