What do Hacking and Torture Have in Common?

Conflicts of Interest

The moral vacuity of Unbelief has been on display in recent days.  Firstly, the prurient frenzied delight over the hacking of Sony digital property, the breathless headlines about who said what to whom (to sell more newspapers and subscriptions) and the joy in seeing senior executives at Sony shown up to be nasty little people.  Hollywood and the gossip columnists (virtually the entire media set) are all atwitter.  Yet, in the same breath said media will condemn hacking as theft and an egregious crime.  Recall the moral outrage and self-righteous fulminations of the media and the Chattering Classes at the phone hacking undertaken by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. But that was "them" not "us".  It makes all the moral difference in the world, apparently.

We have seen the same phenomenon in New Zealand.  One self-righteous moral pygmy receives stolen e-mails from notorious "right-wing" blogger, Cameron Slater and the media engage in an orgy of prurient, sensationalist twittering.  Quietly ignored is the fact they were profiting from the proceeds of a crime.  Ah, well, everyone was doing it, so we could not afford to ignore it.  The end (making a dirty profits) justified the means (exploiting stolen property).

Doubtless the media would be sniffy nosed at an individual hacking into, say, hospital patient records in the attempt to profit from their theft.  But in their own case and when it concerns their own book, they grandly ignore their complicity in crime because they tell themselves are operating "in the public interest".  Self-righteous, hypocritical mendacity. 

But crimes being committed "in the public interest" are pretty acceptable these days.