The ethics of pimp-slapping ACORN.

Okay, so we've all been hearing a lot about this ACORN case in which the two college students, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, posed as a pimp and a prostitute and trying to get advice on buying a house and using it as a brothel.

ACORN employees then responded by giving them tips on avoiding taxes on it, keeping the fact that it's a brothel out of the public eye, and claiming the underage girls working for them as dependents, among many others.

According to Wikipedia, ACORN is:
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocate for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. ACORN has over 400,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters[1] in over 100 cities across the U.S.,[2] as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru. ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado.[3] Maude Hurd has been National President of ACORN since 1990.

ACORN's priorities have included: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, better public schools, and other social justice issues. ACORN pursues these goals through demonstration, negotiation, lobbying for legislation, and voter participation.[4] ACORN comprises a number of legally distinct non-profit entities including a nationwide umbrella organization established as a 501(c)(4) that performs lobbying; local chapters established as 501(c)(3) nonpartisan charities; and the ACORN Housing Corporation. These entities champion liberal and labor-oriented causes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN)

I honestly have to applaud in the direction of O'Keefe and Giles for showing America that the organization is crooked, regardless of the legalities of recording people without their knowledge, surreptitious methods of gathering information, blah blah blah. Would it be more ethical if they had asked to film it? Yeah. But would the people of ACORN have provided them with honest information if they'd known they were being recorded? Probably not. Yes, the ethical thing to do would be to make it known that they were filming their responses. But it really honestly wouldn't have been very effective if their main goal was to bring down ACORN. Nobody's honest anymore. It's almost like the best way to get the truth out of people is to get them on secret footage. I'm not saying it's the right thing to do, I'm just saying that's how things are these days.

Immanuel Kant would ask both parties: "How would you feel about other people doing this?" To which I think everybody's response would be to look blankly at each other and shrug a shoulder. Because yeah, ACORN giving them tips on breaking the law in several different ways is wrong and so it recording somebody without their knowledge. What I think it boils down to is getting complete and honest information and exposing it, no matter how it's acquired. As Stewie Griffin said in Family Guy, "it's not how you got the pot of gold, all that matters is you beat the Leprechaun." Personally, if a charity or an organization that helps people is corrupt, I want to know about it even if the organization doesn't want that information out.

What I'm saying is that while both parties acted unethically, O'Keefe & Giles were less unethical. What they did, while perhaps not in the best taste, was the lesser of the two evils.