Obviously it's not desirable to have email accounts hacked.
But what has emerged so far is work related correspondence of public employees working on publicly funded projects. And the content of those emails is about trying to hide data that is supposed to be subject to public scrutiny and peer review.
Depending on what kind of organisation you work for, deleting that kind of "private correspondence" may constitute a crime.
It has been suggested that some of the data these people were trying to hide was subject to a FOI request (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_2000). I don't know if that's actually the case, but if it is we may see prosecutions in the future.
I didn't follow this in detail, so far I have mostly seen some words taken out of context that can mean one thing or another. Personally I prefer not to judge words that are taken out of context.
In that sense, I suppose an actual prosecution would be a good thing, to end all the senseless speculation.
But what has emerged so far is work related correspondence of public employees working on publicly funded projects. And the content of those emails is about trying to hide data that is supposed to be subject to public scrutiny and peer review.
Depending on what kind of organisation you work for, deleting that kind of "private correspondence" may constitute a crime.
It has been suggested that some of the data these people were trying to hide was subject to a FOI request (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_2000). I don't know if that's actually the case, but if it is we may see prosecutions in the future.