Being naïve is a luxury a journalist can't afford. Not when the identity of his source and his career are at stake.
Assumptions are forbidden. Trust that a company he just wrote about won't read his e-mails is beyond comprehension.
And that cost someone their job and, probably, he's burned: Any employer will phone Google to get their opinion. I don't know if they agreed to keep it secret, but I'm pretty sure there will be a part where you'll have: "Off the record ? We fired him/her because he/she leaked a story to TechCrunch" in that phone call.
And yes, I'm pissed.
I mean, just ask yourself .. If you were Google and someone broke a major story about you, and he uses Gmail .. Wouldn't you want to sneak a little peek ?
I wouldn't do that if I were a child. That's just like invading a country, and using its postal services to transmit sensitive information: It is just ... I can't picture that.
"I mean, just ask yourself .. If you were Google and someone broke a major story about you, and he uses Gmail .. Wouldn't you want to sneak a little peek ?"
No, I wouldn't but I guess I was taught differently. On a business note, it is a clear signal to everyone that gmail is not a service you can use if you have ANY business dealings with Google. If you are tempted by this then you would be tempted to look behind the scenes of anything involving Google.
Maybe you wouldn't. But you can't risk your source's identity because you assume everyone was brought up in a good house. It's good to be good. It may be okay to be naïve if you're the only one involved, but if there's someone's job at stake, it's your duty to be a parnaoid son of a bitch. If not for yourself, then for the other person you try to protect.
A cop in a dark alley with a shady guy won't think :"I'm a good guy who's been well raised. I don't stab or shoot people.. This fellow citizen must be an upstanding one, let me just turn my back to him". If a cop thinks that way, he chose the wrong profession. I used the word naïve, but at that level of naïveté, it's being a stupid person or someone who doesn't want to live.
