[tptacek]

It would not be malicious. I don't think there's a serious argument here (bearing in mind that in the airless vacuum of a message we can, of course, argue anything).

I don't know that's what happened here, though; there are malicious possible explanations!

[foota]

I largely agree, although I think there's some part of a slippery slope specifically when it comes to government, since you could argue that a government monitoring its citizens is also not malicious since (in a democratic society) the government derives its mandate from the people.

This isn't too different from the argument that (I believe reasonably) applies for how a company has the right to monitor employees, but I think many people are opposed to even democratic governments monitoring people and would consider such use malicious.

So a government monitoring its employees is one step closer even than a company, since it's the same organization in this case (though again, I think it's largely reasonable for a government to monitor their employees).