Why did the espionage act receive substantial criticism?

Espionage act receive substantial criticism because is a deliberate theft of information without moral restrictions, either in the industry or the nation.

Explanation:

Espionage is a strategy to know confidential information, either from other nation or a competition industry, so it could be stopped or sabotaged. Normally, there is a person or a team that work to get data, using one of the two main techniques: infiltration or penetration. Nations (even in times of peace) aiming national security and to know the status of every country they have relation with, work to get information to anticipate any threat and to incite some convenience if any the case. On the other hand, industries in the fight of industrial development, profit and/or efficiency search information to get advantage on the market. Both sometimes use espionage to achieve their aims of information.

But, espionage is not well seen mainly for the following reasons:

Espionage is stealing. All men and women are be free to have and domain all goods (information, properties, etc.) that they acquire in justice. Now, if somebody tries to take that away without the conscious approval of the owner, it would be unfair and therefore inmoral. Also, because with stealing you affect directly the owner. So, in the espionage act there is an attempt to posses something that they don't own and affect the owner, so therefore to make an inmoral act. In espionage there is deliberation to steal, in other words, there is an explicit intention to make something bad, in this case: stealing data. This makes a worst act, because in morals theory consciousness is the basis of the severity of acts, so when you have the purpose of doing something wrong or to affect other it is even more bad than doing it accidentally. So, in the espionage act we find a severer case of stealing because it is an intended search to affect other by stealing. In Espionage there is a deliberate intention to steal no matter what, which means that there is no moral restriction that could make the act stop, and therefore acts like manipulation, bribe or blackmail are normal in these situations, which are also inmoral, leading to a circle of inmoral acts until the goal (stealing information) is reached.

Therefore, espionage act receive substantial criticism because is an act of deliberate theft of information without moral restrictions, either in the industry or the nation.