Let's say you happen to gain access to confidential information, either on a Web site or another individual's system. Do you report it? Do you read the confidential information yet not act on any of it? Or do you read the information and immediately use it to your own personal advantage?

It's question of ethics, really, one that speaks to the integrity of the individual involved and the security policy in place in a given environment.

If you are a certain Republican staff member for the politically divisive U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, apparently you choose that last option. According to the Boston Globe and other news sources, GOP committee members gained access to computers used by their Democratic colleagues and, from the spring of 2002 well into 2003, both monitored communications and leaked info to the press.

By Robert Vamosi at ZDNet.

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