461–470 of 527 posts
The list of .gov and State govt email accounts is public transparency. Someone should extract those and turn them over to Muckrock.
We all need to pause for a moment, put down the torches and pitchforks, and understand that there are broader more nuanced realities than the simplistic and self-righteous one we'd choose to believe when looking at the net result of this hack.
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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 in…
Try explaining to her about the case of some gay men in the middle east using the website discreetly who run the risk of death after this leak: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10084651 (citing a reddit post). And, if you are comfortable putting her in a precarious position, you should ask her if she honestly knows of any of her girlfriends who have cheated before. Or, more simply, if any of her girlfriends are…
The latter position can be dressed up in all kinds of fancy words "bad people must be brought to justice no matter what". Stripped down to its core, however, and barring the exceptional circumstances, I would say that the desire for street-justice is pretty much evil. So far as I can tell, the rationale for position B is full throttled emotion: "I [want to] hurt the people I don't like and I [want to] kill the people I hate. Doing that makes me feel good, so it is good."
Needless to say, I stay as far away from those who subscribe to position B, as humanly possible.
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Well it would be nicer if being a gay Saudi Arabian wouldn't get you killed. As for why it's worrying: giving this information to a private company like AM means it's probably going to be leaked. It's worrying that they have to give this kind of information and will end up getting physically hurt for it. The hack is irrelevant as they would end up like this anyway. Is it not worrying for you? Will each hack or privat…
The hack itself is worrying. The fact that people will give information out to third parties, in a manner that is potentially life threatening, in order to satisfy their sex drive isn't worrying to me, because it's an inherent part of human nature.
That people will give information that will cause them harm does worry me though. So we're worried by the opposite things here! Also a good lesson in how the values we have change everything.
Your approach would be to try and prevent hacks to private companies in the future (futile?). My approach would be to try stop people from giving over this kind of data (futile?). I think both of our approaches are probably futile.. even more worrying!
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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 in…
The elevation of monogamy and closed relationships as the God-given natural status of a couple is the source of too many problems. Same for not living our own sexuality in the open. By acting like this (that is: like you are supposed to) you are constantly prone to blackmail. If you happen to have a wife that is entitled in her social-induced belief that even thinking about other women is good ground for the terminat…
This seems to be a common view of the left on HN. The biggest example being the most common defense of privacy I see: "Gays need privacy because many live in countries where they will be killed if found out". So in other words, once the entire world is accepting of gays, there will no longer be a justification for the existence of privacy.
This is the wrong way to be looking at this issue. Regardless of what the users of this site did, it does not excuse the behavior of other parties. It doesn't excuse Ashley Madison's failure to protect user data. It doesn't excuse the hackers theft of that data. It doesn't excuse the disclosure of that data by the hackers or people on Twitter.
Lamenting people's hangups about infidelity is the wrong response to this situation.
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This isn't a valid example. "Expat" is a very specifically defined term in the vernacular of people that live outside of their home countries: it means a person that moved to another country for a specific job (usually because they were recruited into that job). Expat is a sub-class of immigrant; not all immigrants are expats, but all expats are immigrants. Also, despite what people that make this argument try to cla…
Wikipedia somewhat agrees with you, saying: > In common usage, [expatriate] is often used in the context of professionals or skilled workers sent abroad by their companies. A Guardian writer disagrees, saying "expat" means "white immigrant": http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-... Personally, I think "expat" is used more in the sense of an (usually white) immigrant from a richer country to a p…
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I think that knowingly lying about STDs is morally wrong (and in some cases, for some STDs, it -is- a crime to do so). "Disclosing use of birth control" All the cases you know of involve "men lying"? I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that. I just don't see 'putting or pretending to put on a condom and then sneaking it off unknowingly before intercourse' as being a common concern in sex/pregnancy. If I unders…
Either taking it off or lying about having a vasectomy. From my understanding, the legal problem is that in these cases the man exposed the woman to a vastly increased risk of pregnancy that she did not consent to. And such cases do appear to be rare and only in some countries. Far more common (though perhaps still rare) is meeting people who think that consent must be fully informed. I'm not saying I agree with such…
However, in which country is this considered rape? It's consensual sex between people of legal age, only that one of them is a lying, amoral bastard, and the act can lead to serious long-term consequences like an unwanted pregnancy. But rape? Seriously?
Also, while lying about safe sex is certainly a despicable and immoral act, it's still a private matter between two people. I don't see that it's morally right for a group of strangers to arbitrarily decide to publicly expose and shame unfaithful people, particularly since, in the context of this discussion, they cannot even know if anyone is lying about any vasectomies -- it's entirely possible the cheaters practice perfectly safe sex -- or has actually committed any act of infidelity!
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True, this OPM hack might have a huge national security impact.
Does anybody need to restate the obvious: Go through the OPM leak and cross-check everybody with TS-SCI clearance with the AM database. Bingo-presto, big list of folks you can blackmail to do government favors. Take about 2 minutes.
"why yes officer Dibble the perp made a suspicious cross body movement :-) "
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Is there a word for things that only other people can be? Kinda along similar lines: expats vs. immigrants. "Oh no, Paul and Iza are expats . Not at all like those job-stealing immigrants who moved in next door..." (aside: does wrong fit your original question?)
This isn't a valid example. "Expat" is a very specifically defined term in the vernacular of people that live outside of their home countries: it means a person that moved to another country for a specific job (usually because they were recruited into that job). Expat is a sub-class of immigrant; not all immigrants are expats, but all expats are immigrants. Also, despite what people that make this argument try to cla…
People who "emigrate" from the UK primarily seem to go to Australia, by that I mean that's how the word is used. A high-school friend went to "work in the States" rather than "emigrating to America", for example.
Migrant (emigrant/immigrant) seems to be used primarily for those under some duress of compulsion, eg threat of violence or need of work that is otherwise unavailable.
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True, but giving the gov your blackmail file and giving your kid's nosy 3rd grade school teacher your blackmail file are different things. It is not difficult to imagine a person with a TS using AM, telling their boss about 'that one time' or not even worrying to tell them, having their OPM data flung to outer Bongolia, and then having this AM data bounced about. Though people should be better about updating their bl…
> True, but giving the gov your blackmail file ... You misunderstand me. If you're blackmailable , you shouldn't be holding a TS clearance. If you're granted a TS, and later become blackmailable, you really should have your clearance revoked.