[Silhouette]

I'm perfectly comfortable condemning someone who acts against the ethical principles I and many others believe in, however much they were paid to do so. That's why they're called "principles". It doesn't matter whether it's a schoolboy violating them for a chocolate bar or a multi-gazillionaire CEO doing it for his bonus.

[philwelch]

This kind of attitude inevitably leads someone to cynicism and misanthropy: the Milgram experiment suggests that nearly every human being is worthy of moral condemnation under your reasoning, or would be if given nothing more than explicit instructions from an obvious authority figure to do something wrong.

[Silhouette]

Do we all make mistakes? Of course we do.

Should we be critical of mistakes? Sure, that's how we learn, and constructive criticism helps us to improve.

This doesn't mean we can't also understand that nobody's perfect, and that while to err is human, sometimes so is to forgive. I doubt we would want to live in a world without this counter-balance.

However, intent matters. Doing something wrong by accident is still wrong, but I don't see how it is unethical if there was no understanding or ill will. On the other hand, betraying the trust of millions of people by deliberately taking actions that break earlier promises and violate their privacy over an extended period... Well, I'm sorry, but I don't see how that is an accident, and I will condemn it accordingly.