You're right, I shouldn't have said "of this kind" because in this case I don't think any sane person would think this was nefarious. But my point was just that

You're right, I shouldn't have said "of this kind" because in this case I don't think any sane person would think this was nefarious. But my point was just that, to use you example, the only way you would know that said database had confidential information in it would be to "decrypt" it. Then it is a question of why you did that. Was it malicious? No, but a sufficiently bad faith actor my try to argue that it was so you should be careful. Take another example. Say you fire up Wireshark in on a public network like a coffee shop and see some unencrypted network traffic with confidential information in it. The packets were delivered to your computer and there for anyone to see. But why are you capturing traffic that wasn't intended for you (in the broader sense)? What if the traffic IS encrypted but with weak encryption that is easily cracked? As soon as you step off the path of "I am viewing information which was clearly meant for me" you're in a gray area. Of course as a society we should recognize that people who do these things and then responsibly disclose them are doing a valuable public service, but not everyone understands these things. Or in this particular case, some people are heavily incentivized to make bad faith arguments in order to deflect blame from their own screw ups. So it's worth being careful.