Post-Suicide Account Cracking?

An anonymous reader writes "A good friend of mine had her younger brother apparently commit suicide last week. He was a young, promising CS major who was close to being accepted into a very prestigious school. He was very into Linux as well as PHP/MySQL coding. He left absolutely nothing behind for the family as far as a death note or explanation, and there is some possibility that this was all somehow a tragic accident. The family is in a situation where proof of accidental death would change how this was viewed in terms of paying for parts of the funeral. More importantly, some members of the family are hoping to find something, anything, that might explain why this all went down. Since I'm the most computer-skilled person the family knows, they have asked me if I could help them try to find some information. My possible approaches are: his Linux laptop, his university, Gmail And Hotmail email accounts, and a second MySpace profile that apparently has been tagged as private. How ethical would it be to, say, try to crack his root password in a situation like this? I wouldn't attempt to crack a man's account for his wife because she thinks he is cheating on her, as his life is his own business. In death, would you have the same respect for a person's private thoughts? Secondly, If I contacted places like Google, MSN, the university, and MySpace, what are the odds that they would give me access to any of his accounts? I have links to obituaries and such to prove that he is indeed gone. Would it be a matter of not giving it to me (maybe only to the family), or is this something that they would not do at all? Any opinions on if I should do this and if so, how I should go about it?"

Re:yes, but with conditions

[eln]

If this guy was any kind of good person at all, I'm sure he would have wanted to share his porn collection with the world after he was gone. Sure, maybe you shouldn't tell anyone where it came from if it's got porn featuring midgets, grannies, horses, or especially all three at once, but you should still post it on Slashdot^W^W^W^Wgive it to his close friends.

Not to be indelicate...

[syntap]

A good friend of mine had her younger brother apparently commit suicide last week.

... but that sounds like a lot of words to describe a hit job. The political correctness is awesome though!

Re:Legally possible

[TheRedSeven]

First off: I am a lawyer... I see no moral problems...

Mod parent -1 Redundant

Re:If you saw your friend again

[Nimey]

If he saw his friend again, he'd be more worried about protecting his braiiiins.

Re:I have said it before

[MightyYar]

Dear internet community:

If I should apparently commit suicide and anyone has any reason to believe that it was not in fact suicide, please feel free to root through my shit. My passwords are all 12345.

Now hold on while I go get me some autoerotic asphyxiation.

Re:I have said it before

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I know for a fact that Mutual of Omaha certainly does pay out on suicide

Presumably not from personal experience?

Tragic tragic waste

[Hognoxious]

I've heard of such arrangements, but they didn't involve burying it.