The Web has been buzzing over confidential Twitter documents that a hacker stole and sent to some blogs after breaking into Twitter’s corporate network.

The incident has raised age-old questions about the ethics of publishing confidential material, questions that have taken new twists in the age of blogs.
TechCrunch, one of the blogs that received the confidential material, is working closely with Twitter as it determines which pieces of information to publish, said Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s founder.

“It is within our ethical obligation to help Twitter” in this situation, Mr. Arrington said in interview. He is protecting the identity of his source, the hacker, but is assisting Twitter in other ways “to help them mitigate the damages” that could come as a result of sharing personal documents, he said.

He has sent Twitter all the documents he received and is trying to put Twitter in direct contact with the hacker, he said.

The hacker, who calls himself “Hacker Croll,” sent TechCrunch a zip file Tuesday with 310 private files from inside Twitter. They include business-related documents like financial projections and discussions of competitive threats and potential acquisitions. They also include personal information, like meal preferences and phone call logs of Twitter employees.

In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Arrington said he has been involved in two separate debates. The first is legal. He said that he has lawyers analyzing laws that cover trade secrets and the receipt of stolen goods, but that he did not want to discuss the legal issues any further.

The other debate, he said, is ethical. He decided not to publish embarrassing personal information, including call logs and a record of people who interviewed for jobs at Twitter. Read more…

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