The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable.

People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee".

But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had trouble believing it was a real thing before the breach apparently proved otherwise --- there is nothing ethically acceptable about publicly gawking at and sharing data from the leak.

The people doing this aren't victimizing Avid Life Media; they're re-victimizing the real victims of what is clearly an actual crime. If it's O.K. to hack into someone else's server and mass-out people for having profiles on a dating site because you suspect most of them might be "guilty" of the crime of "marital infidelity" --- and come on, 98% of the people talking about this on Twitter barely recognize that as ethically problematic in the first place --- how do you make a case that it's unethical for dragnet traffic looking for people who want to blow up civilians with homemade bombs?

Pungent hypocrisy isn't even the worst of it. By amplifying the drama and pageantry of the leak, people are altering the incentives attackers have to pull stunts like this. They're helping normalize a crime that most of us think really should be illegal. The people who created this dump are very unlikely to get caught for it. So what's really going to happen is that the next dumb kid who gets captured as the one unlucky DDoS "protester" in a group of 40 on an IRC channel, that kid is going to deal with a prosecutors who is further radicalized by events like this.

It's just a toxic, evil, repulsive scene.

"Avid Life Media" is gross and creepy, and apparently totally incompetent. I'm not saying everyone has to take a vow of silence about their getting completely owned up. I'm just saying you cross a line when you start circulating people's private data.

This is a great comment, Thomas.

I had an argument with my girlfriend about this. No matter what reasoning I used, no matter what I said, she could not agree that it was wrong that Ashley Madison (A.M.) was hacked.

Her position was that marital infidelity is such a pubishable offense that the participants on A.M. deserve to be publicly outed. In her view, it was not even up for debate. She felt so powerfully about infidelity that she didn't care.

My girlfriend is not a luddite, but she's also not an engineer. She isn't a programmer, doesn't work in tech, and is not particularly invested in ethical conversations about privacy. When I told her that hacking and outing people on a website because they do something you disagree with is playing God, she didn't seem to be phased at all. It was worth it. That this line of thinking could be used for things she did not agree with was not something I could convince her of. She simply values, in a somewhat totalitarian way, the justice inflicted on these people beyond her own right to privacy (or theirs).

My point here is that you can't convince someone this is unethical behavior if they are emotionally invested in it. I think it's disgusting that this is making the rounds on Twitter. But I don't think you could ever convince people they are being hypocritical. They simply enjoy having something to dislike, especially if it fits in their ideological conception of the world.

I think this is a strong parallel to the privacy violations with regards to the NSA. You can't convince people that it's wrong if they have elevated their own ethical crusade beyond their right to something such as privacy.

Sorry to hijack this comment with NSA.

We are never the infidels. Only "they" can be infidels.

Was there ever any requirement that one be in a relationship to join the site? I'm sure more than a few would have joined, while pretending to be in one, and subsequently have started a relationship.

Tell her that two wrongs never make a right.