Public Secrets

If the door is ajar, do I have the right to enter? In the 13 years that I have been using the Internet, and especially in the earlier years, there have been many opportunities to take advantage of back doors that were left wide open. It has been my personal ethic to always pass up the back door and enter through the front, but did I in fact have the right to enter through the back if I chose to do so?

One school of thought says that any data that has not been secured is automatically free to everyone. This thinking is flawed. If I leave my laptop alone in the library while I search for a book, is it free to the first person who comes along? They might take it, but they can expect penalties. A peeping Tom also takes information that is publicly available, but they can expect punishment as well.

There is an ethical right to take information that was intended to be given. If the intention was for the information to remain private, then ethically the public has no right to it. In most cases the intent will be obvious, but where it is not, the tie should go to privacy.