Joanna Schroeder says that just because these people did something unethical doesn’t mean you should abandon your ethics, too.
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Nobody likes a cheater. Not even cheaters like cheaters, when it comes down to it (unless they’re sleeping with the cheater). And very few people want to be cheating. It’s a character flaw, a weakness, sometimes even an addiction.
That’s probably why so many chuckled last month when a hacker group threatened to leak the names, payment history, and even profiles (including sexual proclivities) of people who had accounts on notorious cheating website Ashley Madison.
Well, apparently it’s happened.
Wired.com explains:
A data dump, 9.7 gigabytes in size, was posted on Tuesday to the dark web using an Onion address accessible only through the Tor browser. The files appear to include account details and log-ins for some 32 million users of the social networking site, touted as the premier site for married individuals seeking partners for affairs. Seven years worth of credit card and other payment transaction details are also part of the dump, going back to 2007.
It’s easy to be mad at people who cheat, particularly at men (who make up the vast majority of their users), and for many people, “they got what they deserved” is a hard to resist saying.
But before we go peering into the data (when it hits mainstream outlets), it’s important we consider a few things first.
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1. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and violating people’s privacy is wrong.
This was an illegal hack of people’s personal information. It wasn’t meant for your eyes or mine, and that means we shouldn’t look. Personally, I believe in the fundamental principles of consent: Only yes means yes, even when it comes to private info and photos.
The fact that these people were probably doing something wrong doesn’t impact my ethical decision-making. My ethics about privacy and consent stand, regardless of how guilty the Ashley Madison users might be.
2. Not all of the people on this list cheated.
Some may have gone to see what the deal was, how the program worked. Maybe they considered cheating, maybe they were just curious. Maybe they wanted to check to see if their own spouse was cheating, so they made an account. Regardless, there is no guarantee that all of these people actually cheated or intended to.
Does a person who considered cheating deserve to be piled in with people who actually did cheat? Do they deserve to be publicly shamed, even if they chose to do what was right in the end?
How do you know which are which? Is it worth the risk?
3. Do you want to be a part of a blackmail scheme?
This was blackmail. The hackers asked for Ashley Madison to be removed from the web, or the private info would be released.
Regardless of whether you think Ashley Madison should exist, are you the type that endorses blackmail?
If not, you simply cannot endorse this hacking.
4. Consider the spouses and children of the people on the list.
Yes, it’s the (possible) cheater’s fault that he or she signed up for this service, so the sadness and hurt is ultimately on the cheater’s shoulders. But how much are you willing to participate in this public shaming, knowing that the person’s kids and partner will most likely be harmed, too?
Imagine your sister, father, or best friend is the one being cheated on. Would you be willing to tell the whole world that they were cheated on?
I wouldn’t.
5. We don’t know which people on the list have consensual open relationships.
There are all sorts of marriages, and some of them involve allowing partners to hook up with or have relationships with those outside of the marriage. Yes, this is rare, and cheating is much more common, but the fact that some of these users might have been doing something their partner was fully aware of is something you have to consider.
Do the people who weren’t lying to or keeping secrets from their partners deserve to have their names lumped in with liars and cheats? Do their partners deserve to have this info about their marriage made public?
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Ultimately, when is doing something ethically problematic worth it?
This is something each person has to answer for his or herself. Personally, if it turns out that people preaching family values and condemning others (i.e. preachers who says gay people are sinners who should be cast out from the church until they promise not to be gay) are on this list, I think the benefit to others in exposing the hypocrisy is worth violating their individual privacy.*
But other than that, I don’t see much value in exposing people’s partners and families to the humiliation of this information going public. And certainly everyone else doesn’t need to be lumped in with those hypocrites.
And it’s not like exposing cheaters has an effect on making people not cheat… All this hack is going to do is make people more cautious about privacy on the Internet.
This isn’t your business, and it isn’t mine. And just because these people did something you consider unethical doesn’t mean you should abandon your ethics, too.
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8/19/15 7:50pm PST: I’d like to update this post now that I’ve read compelling evidence that Josh Duggar was probably using Ashley Madison’s services (two credit cards with billing addresses traced to his home and a family, as well as birthdates similar to Duggar’s), so I can make clear that despite the fact that 99.99% of the time, these hacks do more harm than good, in Duggar’s case, I think his hypocrisy needed to be exposed. I’m glad I had earlier noted that cases like these might make exposing a public figure worth it, and Duggar is an example.
Duggar has been furthering oppression and bigotry with his anti-gay hatred and his former employment by the Family Research Council, which is supposed to keep a focus on traditional family values. He claimed he was a reformed man after being exposed as a child sexual abusers, and for some reason people believed him But he needed to be stopped from the harm he was causing.
While Duggar and the FRC were actively harming LBGTQ+ folks, it turns out that Duggar was probably living a life that was the opposite of the one he preached. If this is a way to get him to stop harming others, I am for it.
FYI
According to Canadian authorities 2 people have already committed suicide over the hack.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506
FYI
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-blackmail-of-ashley-madison-users-has-already-begun/ar-BBlXLTH
That’s a damn shame.
So I wonder if all the people who are for this and saying it was a good idea have a problem with this blackmail. I think we can safely say that anyone performing this blackmail is not looking out for the spouses being cheated on or trying to stop adultery. They are trying to fill their pockets.
If the hackers that leaked the info didn’t think about this the they were being reckless. If they did think about it and either didn’t care or hoped it would happen then that’s just malicious.
It bothers me that so few people are covering this news accurately. Especially in this case, when you bring up the idea of “blackmail” here…. when the hack happened in the first place becauser Ashley Madison was and continues to blackmail their own clients. The company has made more than 1.5 million dollars from people who paid for their “full delete” option on the hopes they would never get caught using the site, and it turns out that the company was taking people’s money and not actually deleting their data at all. The fact that we need to rely on… Read more »
“All this hack is going to do is make people more cautious about privacy on the Internet.”
This was literally the point of the hack.
It’s interesting to witness mob justice at work. If I was Queen of the Desert, I would allow the publishing of all captured Ashley Madison information, but only if it was accompanied by equal revelation of all members of the mob requesting vengeance – all their transgressions, their failings, their thefts, their lies. Do we have a deal dear mob? More seriously mob, you’re not thinking clearly. It could be why you are a mob in the first place. You have no insights into the circumstances, the possible repercussions, nor do you grasp how ethics should work. Just be quiet… Read more »
Joanna – I agree with your piece very much. For me, none of the answers matter as much as “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
The internet has turned into the modern version of a public lynching at times. While I would like to see a cheater get their just deserts, just deserts do not include giving up our own personal ethics in the process.
I’m troubled as much by the self-righteousness in these comments as I am by the Ashley Madison hack. “Take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” No, I’m not a Christian but a Zen Buddhist. We are all fallible, lustful or gluttons in some way; it just happens that we Americans come down harder on sexual infidelity than we do anything else (with the exception of pedophilia). Haven’t we enough work to do pulling the weeds from our own gardens?
Christoffer I admit to be bad when I am not upset about this hacking. Yes it triggers a feeling a revenge ! If you have experienced that you wasted several years of your life, and your youth being loyal to another person that abused that trust then a normal human reaction is to feel anger and revenge. Even the Bible tell you that you do not have to accept this, you can leave and end the marriage. The problem is that more often than not you are unaware of what is happening and you go on being loyal year after… Read more »
@ Silke I felt something similar when the Erin Andrews pictures went out. Many people thought she got what she deserved because she invades men’s privacy when she conducted interviews in their locker rooms. I agree that the court ruling allowing her into the locker room was flawed. I thought it was poetic justice on some level that a guy decided that earning income trumped her right to privacy (an argument similar to that made by female journalists to gain access to the men’s locker room). I have issues with this myself because the victims are unsympathetic, but I try… Read more »
So how many people applauding the hack, would leak the data themselves? If you knew your friend was cheating, would you tell his or her spouse? How dirty does someone have to be before we decide that their rights don’t count and how much punishment do they deserve?
Here’s a news article on a cheater. Did he simply get what was coming to him? Should the killer be cut a deal because she killed a cheater who was meeting her (him) for sex?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/prosecutors-seek-25-year-sentence-for-woman-convicted-of-killing-dc-lawyer/2015/08/18/630336dc-45eb-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html
Read the article you posted, Mr. Anderson. In the comment section, one person pointed out how a person gets 55 years for weed while a killer only gets 25 years.
Rebuttal To This Article: 1. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and violating people’s privacy is wrong. – – This is an illegal hack against an IMMORAL website. When the laws do not benefit the moral code of a society it no longer serves and may be safely disregarded. 2. Not all of the people on this list cheated. – – In this day and age, everyone wants to make excuses for their moral shortcomings. It is time to stand up and say “I am accountable and fully responsible for the choices I make”. Ashley Madison is a cesspool that… Read more »
Joanna
No 2
To see how the site works they did not have to pay.
It is the credit cards that give some names
E-mail address means nothing here.
Why should anyone pay, just to see how things work when it cost nothing to ”
see”
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/18/technology/ashley-madison-data-dump/
Exactly! So if the info is actually in there, then spread the word!
“It’s easy to be mad at people who cheat, particularly at men”
Although this is probably a societal truth, I don’t know why this should be. It stems from the sexist belief that women are by nature more moral than men (although it may simply be that they are more risk averse) and if a woman is cheating then she must have “valid” reasons to do so. As Danny pointed out, it wasn’t cheaters they had a problem with, but men who cheat.
I heard that a lot when my ex-wife cheated on me, I “must have done something to deserve it.”
Oh you know what’s odd? I though I’d edited it out because it didn’t come out how I meant. I’m going to take that out. It’s really not what I meant – what I meant was that society finds it really easy to be mad at men who cheat, less so at women.
Joanna
Frankly, I Think it is great.
Yes am bad I know ,but I disagree with your arguments .
The truth will set you free..
You nailed it. I want to know two things without doing the research myself. 1) People who are celebrating the release of this information are they against NSA/govt spying? If their answers don’t match then their opinions are worthless. Invasion of privacy is equally as wrong as cheating. I may have a hard time selling my beloved spouse on this but still…. 2) According to broadcast reports here in Georgia, hundreds of govt employees including people working at the state capitol (possibly legislators) were users of the website as their digital footprints lead back to govt issued emails and accounts.… Read more »
1) People who are celebrating the release of this information are they against NSA/govt spying?
Or of the incident earlier this year when a bunch of celebrities had their private photos released on the net.
Or a few years ago when Jezebel openly bragged about having gotten that Hulk Hogan sex tape through illegal means and their refusal to get rid of it.
It’s really troubling to me when someone who is otherwise innocent has private info leaked – Hulk Hogan (who is a racist shit, we all now know) or Jennifer Lawrence (who, seemingly, is probably great) – there are people who think it’s “freedom” and others who think it’s a violation of consent. I just don’t see how people who see those as violations of consent DON’T see that here – like, yes, those people were doing something terrible, but their consent is still a thing. It’s still a REAL thing that we don’t want to dismiss. When we start saying,… Read more »
“I just don’t see how people who see those as violations of consent DON’T see that here – like, yes, those people were doing something terrible, but their consent is still a thing. It’s still a REAL thing that we don’t want to dismiss.” Is it really such a shock or surprise that some would calibrate their application of a principle on a sliding scale, rather than absolutely, objectively, and uniformly? Is it really so hard to see that some transgressions might, after all, just inspire the embrace of a double-standard? It may be hypocritical, yes, but it’s certainly not… Read more »
I just don’t see how people who see those as violations of consent DON’T see that here – like, yes, those people were doing something terrible, but their consent is still a thing. It’s still a REAL thing that we don’t want to dismiss. When we start saying, “everyone deserves to give consent” and then say “Well….. except all of you” then we start having a problem. Again, I do have my own personal exceptions to this – the people who are harming SO MANY others (i.e. anti-gay preachers) but are not even following their own words. But mostly, I… Read more »
I’m usually the one playing devil’s advocate, so I have to admit you make some very interesting points! I certainly don’t approve of lumping people of various levels of guilt or innocence and administering the same level of vigilante justice to them all. The one’s I really have no compassion for are the ones who created and run the site, who profit from this unethical “service.” I see these kind of people as predators preying on human weakness, like pimps in a way. If they fell into financial ruin from this, (unlikely,) at least some small sort of justice would… Read more »
I can understand feeling that way however that leaves one loose end.
The vigilantes that did this would walk away thinking that the ends (the small sort of justice) justifies the means (illegally stealing and circulating private information).
This to me is why intent matters. Sure its nice to see cheaters get their comeuppance and it would be nice to see the company behind the site go into ruin but did the law need to be broken to do it? Or if they are so proud of their work why not publicly identify themselves as the hackers?
Danny writes ‘but did the law need to be broken to do it?’ In our legal system there is a concept known as ‘jury nullification’. This is used by a jury when the jury decides the law is outrageous or unjustified. A society concerned with the welfare of its members would have shut down Ashley Madison the first week it opened. Because our society is amoral at best and perverse and twisted at worst, Ashley Madison was allowed to operate and this hacking group simply applied jury nullification and took the matters into their own hands. I will be very… Read more »
🙂
Well said.
“This is used by a jury when the jury decides the law is outrageous or unjustified. A society concerned with the welfare of its members would have shut down Ashley Madison the first week it opened. Because our society is amoral at best and perverse and twisted at worst, Ashley Madison was allowed to operate and this hacking group simply applied jury nullification and took the matters into their own hands. I will be very happy to represent them should they ever be apprehended.” So in other words this hacker group decided that the laws meant to protect customer information… Read more »
@ Fred The Lawyer Although I agree with theory of jury nullification, I don’t see why we should apply that to this case. The hackers clearly violated the law. What social good is served by allowing this violation to go unpunished? They’re violating the sanctity of marriage. Well OK, are we willing to make divorce illegal? He cheated. Well OK, are we willing to make adultery illegal? What if we had 12 like minded people decide that a famous male had raped multiple women, but we’re going to acquit him because it’s more important for our team to win a… Read more »
My ex-wife cheated on me.
My wife’s ex-boyfriend cheated on her.
My wife suffered huge financial ramifications of staying in a relationship with her ex while he was cheating on her.
The other side to this coin is that a lot of people will find out that they were or are being cheated on. And personally, I don’t care who knows that my ex-wife cheated on me. That says a lot about her and very little about me.
I think it’s worth considering my other points, too, Jimmy.
What about the people who signed up but never cheated? What ramifications are ou there for them and do they deserve them, even if they didn’t actually even talk to another human?
What about the people who DO care that the world find out? Whose children would be unnecessarily harmed?
This isn’t just about you – not everyone feels like you do and it’s not fair to assume they do.
Joanna, if they didn’t want people to know then they shouldn’t have signed up! Doesn’t matter if they partook of the membership benefits, talked to anyone or not. Shouldn’t have been signed up. Children will be harmed, but that is the parents’ fault.
I say, spread it far and wide. Let the world know who was on there!
Joanna – You wrote to Jimmy – “This isn’t just about you – not everyone feels like you do and it’s not fair to assume they do.” Of course, those who are morally and ethically bankrupt will not feel like Jimmy does – that is a consequence of being ethically and morally bankrupt. When a burglar (even an individual involved in an attempted burglar) gets caught the world finds out, his wife and children find out, his colleagues and friends find out. There are ramifications. Every individual who signed up for Ashley Madison knew, in their heart of hearts, they… Read more »
I signed up 4 years ago when I found out my (then) wife’s infidelity. I wanted to see if she was on there, to find out whether her affair was a one off. Luckily, I never entered any credit card details. I am not really concerned, because my account never had a credit card tied to it, but I am asking for people to be cautious about condemning people who have had their details revealed – some of them could have been doing exactly what I did.
I’ve already noticed that this is not getting anywhere near the outrage of other violations of privacy and that worries me a bit since I think its because the adulterous nature of the site is seen as justification for the violation. This is not too different from thinking men who go to prison deserve to be raped by other prisoners because they committed a crime.
And after reading up on this a bit more I’m starting to wonder if this was more specific than going after cheaters. Could this have been meant to specifically target men? http://www.wired.com/2015/08/happened-hackers-posted-stolen-ashley-madison-data/