A few months ago, Gawker’s John Cook published a list of all the licensed gun owners in New York City, with this title:
To justify invading the privacy of law-abiding citizens — for the specific reason that they are law-abiding citizens — Cook pointed to the precedent set by the Journal News:
It’s clear that many of the Rockland County and Westchester County gun owners who are outraged at having their addresses plastered on the internet have had those addresses plastered on the internet for years without it causing a problem.
So of course, when Cook’s own publicly available home address was published, he whined about it. That was different, because it was him.
As I said at the time:
I’m not going to post somebody’s personal info just because he stupidly posted other people’s info (and if you try it in the comments, it’ll be deleted). But I’m not going to stifle my laughter at the irony.
Clearly, Cook learned absolutely nothing from the experience. And considering that soon after he did this, he was promoted at Gawker, what’s his incentive?
Gossip blog Gawker published the private email address of former President George W. Bush on Wednesday.
The address was discovered in email conversations between members of the Bush family leaked earlier this year by a hacker calling himself “Guccifer.”
“It has come to our attention on this, the day of the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on the orders of George W. Bush, that one of those screengrabs credibly displays Bush’s private email address,” Gawker editor John Cook wrote. “Please let him know that you’re thinking of him today.”
It’s okay to violate somebody’s privacy as long as you really don’t like him.
George Bush still has Secret Service protection, right? Just wondering.