There are two important differences between the Spurr incident and the photos.

First, so far as I know, the women did not seek to share their intimate photos with a group of friends to their mutual amusement. Second, they did not use their employer’s email system to distribute them.

We are all entitled to a firewall between our personal and public spaces. But in these two important respects it was Spurr who breached that wall. However malign and ideologically driven the leaking of his emails may be, he shares the blame.

Now it is my understanding, and supported by the news report from Sydney University http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=14192 that Barry Spurr used his University e-mail account for these conversations. In doing so he would of course be in breach of the University policy on ICT Resources http://sydney.edu.au/policies/showdoc.aspx?recnum=PDOC2011/140&RendNum=0 where it clearly states:

"The University will not tolerate its ICT Resources being used in a manner that is harassing, discriminatory, abusive, rude, insulting, threatening, obscene or otherwise inappropriate."

He should also have been aware that he should not write anything he would not be prepared to say in public, because e-mails are not confidential.

Dear runner,

Here are the top 10 countries best mirroring your mindset.
Ghana, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Uganda, Indonesia, Tunisia, Malaysia, Kenya and Pakistan.

Here are the top 10 countries that are against it.
Spain, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Canada, Britain, Australia, Italy and Argentina.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/B06tYjLCAAAvRNw.png

Why don't you move?

Any and all on-line activity, whether searching or commenting or posing or whatever, is wide open to scrutiny. Accept that such activity can, and often will, be posted in a public forum, if not read out in a court of law.
The Internet is NOT secret. It is an open book. Anyone who doubts this has not been paying attention.

SteeleRedux,

'Why don't you move?'

I suggest you visit your nearest mosque, tell them not to hide behind the Koran and accept same sex 'marriage'. Shorten being typical of those from cowards castle demonise anyone pointing out the hazards of risks involved in perverse sex and objecting to it being promoted to our kids and grandkids. Of course he along with the vast majority of regressives would be tolerant of the Koranic teaching or at best to gutless to confront it.

Slipper's emails were part of his sexual harrassment of an employee and were revealed in the course of complaints by the employee. Spurr's email broke no law. So your comparison fails Redux.

Perhaps Spurr should have been more careful in terms of which account he used, or whether he used email at all, but surely the university's policy doesn't mean that the university, or anyone else, has the right to make the email correspondence public to any greater extent than is required to rectify the breach of their terms and conditions.

And the fact that one should be careful what one puts in an email again does not confer the right on someone to expose your correspondence just because you weren't careful.

Apparently the emails haven't been revealed by one of the recipients, so they've been stolen by someone else.

Which must raise questions for the university, as the most likely hacker would be in their IT department.

What is most concerning in this case is that as far as I can tell Spurr was an exemplary lecturer and there are no complaints by students against him of racist or otherwise inappropriate behaviour. We convict people for what they do, not for what they might think. And this private correspondence has been used to undermine his contribution to a government review.

It will make others think twice before taking on any government work lest something in their background be used to ruin their career. New Matilda brings a new low to the term "gutter press".