Last night Michael Arrington of TechCrunch glory announced they had been sent 301 confidential documents from Twitter via a contact known as Hacker Croll.
They had Twitter’s security code for the building. They had details of failed interviews. Right from the outset Arrington made it clear he wouldn’t publish any of that stuff. He would, however, publish the rest; financial projections, product plans and even strategy notes.
What do you think? Are you excited? Do you care? Why would Hacker Croll do this? Why would TechCrunch do this? Should they do this?
A few hours later, some trending topics on Twitter and 235 fiery hot comments later and Arrington’s had to post again to revisit the situation.
A lot of comments said that TechCrunch shouldn’t do this. They disagree. Many users have described these documents as stolen and therefore TechCrunch shouldn’t publish. They disagree.
Arrington’s come up with a great quote supposedly from Lord Northcliffe; “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising”.
Another key stroke in Arrington’s argument is “it’s not our fault that…” In short, stuff happens and TechCrunch reports on it and they’re not about hanging around waiting for a press release to republish.
He concludes by saying he feels bad for Twitter and wishes this had never happened. It did happen, however, and the documents will be published. Google should improve their security policies.
What’s your take?
July 15, 2009
Twitter