Was it wrong to hack and leak the Panama Papers? by Tyler Cowen
- Analogia. Let’s say a group of criminal defense lawyers kept a database of their confidential conversations with their clients. That would include clients charged with murder, robbery, DUI, drug abuse, and so on. In turn, a hacker would break into that database and post the information from those conversations on Wikileaks. Of course a lot of those conversations would appear to be incriminating because — let’s face it — most of the people who require defense attorneys on criminal charges are in fact guilty. When asked why the hack was committed, the hacker would say “Most of those people are guilty. I want to make sure they do not escape punishment.” How many of us would approve of that behavior?
- Yet somehow many of us approve when the victims are wealthy and higher status, as is the case with the Panama Papers. Furthermore most of those individuals probably did nothing illegal, but rather they were trying to minimize their tax burden through (mostly) legal shell corporations
- Once again, politics isn’t about policy, it is about which groups should rise and fall in relative status. And many people believe the wealthy should fall in status, and so they will entertain the morality of all crimes and threats against them.
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