[deGravity]

I think that's a bit harsh. The documents at that URL were understood to be freely available to the public.

As I physical analogy, I'd think about it more as one of those restaurant straw dispensers. He got tired of pressing the button each time for a new straw, and instead opened the lid and grabbed a bunch out.

[spacemanmatt]

I have been arrested for taking too many straws.

[harryh]

Going to a restaurant and taking every single straw out of the top of the straw dispenser is clearly anti-social and is probably theft.

[bwbw223]

But there’s a near infinite supply of straws and it didn’t damage the dispenser.

[harryh]

It did, however, damage the privacy of various Canadian citizens.

[pdonis]

> It did, however, damage the privacy of various Canadian citizens.

Did it? I understand that the stupid contractor who put this data on the website did (potentially--but note that nobody is saying that anyone has actually suffered harm because of that data being accessible). But did the teenager who got this bomb dropped on him damage anyone's privacy? As I understand it, he downloaded the data, put it on his hard drive, and left it there; it never went anywhere else.

[harryh]

Can you please send me a copy of your last 3 tax returns? My email address is in my HN profile.

I don't know you have don't particularly care about your financial situation, so I'm not gonna read them or share them with anyone else. I'll just keep them on my hard drive.

[phaemon]

> Can you please send me a copy of your last 3 tax returns?

Options:

A) Sure, here you go. Oh wait! I didn't mean to send you those. You tricked me and stole my information. I'm going to send 15 police officers round to arrest you and then you're going to prison for years.

B) No, that's confidential.

^^ Which option do you think is more reasonable?

[aceofspades19]

That's not a correct counter argument, the information he got was understood to be public and there was no reason to expect or think there was any private information on there. If the site had said "This site provides tax returns" then there would be reason to expect the files would contain private information. The site in question gave no indication there would be private information in those files. Also, technical nitpick, there are some countries where tax information is public so probably not the best thing to go with.

[pdonis]

So you think this teen was sending the data he downloaded to all his Facebook friends, or what? Do you have any evidence at all to support this?

[TheCoelacanth]

That may be so, but did he intend to damage their privacy? Probably not.

He can't be faulted for accidentally downloading some private information that was improperly mixed in with a bunch of public information that he was trying to download. He had no indication that the information he was retrieving was not supposed to be public.