Many websites have hidden actions that aren’t visible until some blank area is clicked.

Yeees. "Looks like a normal webpage to me, except …"

(sorry, hackers misattributed my reply)

Graeme, there’s “access” and then there’s “access”.

Reading advertising in a shop window and someone’s PIN number over their shoulder are not the same thing, and reading blog posts is not the same as downloading archived backups.

Would you feel confident in your lack of legal culpability doing the latter? I think *most* of us would know they were doing the wrong thing.

Analogy I know, but there are various ways of "accessing" computers - and whether they are legitimate or not may not be a question of technical implementation as much as knowingly doing wrong. (It's legal for me to pick my own locks, but not yours.)

E-mail has become the thread that seems to hold our society together these days and when it unravels things can go very, very wrong

You're so right! I too will be holding email responsible when the next war begins.