Just for the record, I don't think that what Angelides admitted to in his race against Schwarzenegger counts as hacking. I formed that opinion when similar cases came up before.

Generally speaking, things cannot get on the Internet accidentally. Somebody must put them there. If something is on the Internet, it's a good bet that it's supposed to be accessed unless there is some kind of password protection. In Angelides's case, Schwarzenegger's people did not protect the audio file with a password, so it's hard to say that Angelides did anything wrong.

Put another way, if I write my plans for world domination on my car bumper, it's a safe bet I want people to see them. I can't then get upset when people know what my next move is going to be. If I go through the trouble of putting the plans on my kitchen table, it's a safe bet I only want people who I permit into my kitchen to see the plans. If you enter my house (even if it's unlocked), you know or should know that you aren't supposed to be there, and you've done something wrong.

By the way, it's not that unusual for computers to ask for passwords when they don't really want them (anonymous FTP for instance expects an email address when it asks for a password). So asking for a password by itself isn't enough either.