"Snooping"
http://lifestyle.msn.com/relationships/articleglamourmatch.aspx?cp-documentid=18826145
So I'm checking out MSN's browser, and I come upon this article.
I'm generally a pretty private person - When I want to share things with someone, I do, but I consider privacy to be tremendously important.
I therefore consider the invasion of privacy to be disgusting. Frankly, I can't think of many things that would be more likely to cause me to cut someone out of my life, or relegate them to a role of unimportant, untrusted acquaintance. I actually clenched my teeth when I read about this casual discussion of such gross behavior.
For those who are reading who don't have the patience to read the full article, here's a sample, along with a few comments of mine.:
Snooping: What's fair and what's Cuckoo
Totally Fair
Going through his photos. If something's in an album, it's public, like an issue of People that's all about him!
Going through which photos? I presume we're talking about an album sitting on a coffee table, or something posted on his Myspace, otherwise I could see this getting seriously creepy, and we're only on the first level of "snooping".
Sometimes Fair
Opening a closed drawer. Again, not a big deal. You were just looking for ... this hair elastic. Wait, whose hair is that?
I like how this bullet point completely avoids the issue of ethics - 'I can justify my behavior after the fact as though the information I found was found accidentally'. Let me point out that this is NOT A BIG DEAL according to this article. 'If you had nothing to hide, you wouldn't mind me searching, right? And if I find something suspicious, my invasion of privacy is somehow magically nullified.'
Not so fair
Reading his e-mail. Not so innocent, but it's illegal only if you hack into someone's account, says Philadelphia attorney Paul Rosen. "Or if you publish it, or use the information to harm or damage the person."
Well, at least this one gets into the legal realm of things, if not the ethical. I love the chain of reasoning. 'So if you're partner was stupid enough to not change their password after they called you from the road and asked you to print out the directions, then you're allowed to snoop.' Of course, people suck at recognizing that the law is the MINIMUM standard, and that they should behave better if they want to be a decent human being. If I leave you a spare key so that you can sit and watch TV while you're waiting for me, It's not OK for you to search through my mail, use my toothbrush, try on my clothes and read anything that happens to be lying around between my mattresses.
Are people really not clear on this?
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Following him out one night, watching him get gas, noting that he buys a Tabasco Slim Jim, and then donning a wig and sitting in the corner at the bar where he's drinking beer with his friends. Now that's nuts.
I like that for behavior to be considered out of bounds, it has to be somewhere between the legal definition of stalking and something that Buffalo Bill would have done in Silence Of The Lambs. Great stuff.