In the NYTimes account of the work of Albert Gonzalez and his crew of hackers an instance of what might be called "values-based" action on the part of one of Gonalez's hacker colleagues, Stephen Watt.
Gonzalez urged Watt and Toey to experiment with SQL. Watt wasn’t interested. “I had objections to what he was doing on a moral level — and on top of that, I took an intellectual exception,” Watt says. “If Albert said we were going to go after the Church of Scientology or Blackwater, I would have dove in headfirst.” Toey, however, said he felt he owed Gonzalez. He began poking around on the sites of businesses that seemed vulnerable — or for which he had a philosophical distaste. “I just didn’t like what they did,” he said of the clothing chain Forever 21. The clothes were poorly made, he said, and the employees poorly paid. “It’s just everything I hate about this country in one store.”
Even among thieves there can be honour or actions determined by a set of values.
