You need to consider this:
The Saudi Arabian government is using the recently leaked data from Ashley Madison to track down homoesexuals in their contry. As homosexuality is a crime, punishable by death, in Saudi Arabia the leak is estimated to result in the death of hundreds if not thousands of gay people in Saudi Arabia.
Or if you prefer your news with fewer clumsy typos, here’s another source.
The Ashley Madison leaks, as many observers began noting yesterday afternoon, will have real world, devastating consequences on thousands of users worldwide. When the dust clears, it will be most vulnerable among us — LGBT and women in repressive countries — that will ultimately pay the price. And unlike Josh Duggar, their price will not be paid in snarky internet comments but rather loss of employment, family, and, in some cases, possibly their lives.
Yeah, Josh Duggar is going to come out of this oozing piety. Other people won’t be so lucky.
I was completely unaware of Ashley Madison (I was more than a bit confused reading this post), and I don’t care if Duggar was looking to have an affair. I do care about all the people whose lives are now at risk – this is a terrible and shameful thing for someone[s] to have done.
I’m not giggling over these people being exposed. I’m angry that Josh Dugger still has access to children.
Who the Hell cares about Josh Duggar having extramarital affairs? The man is a pedophile who, due to the statute of limitations, got off easy because of his family’s collusion.
Fuck these “moral” internet vigilantes.
Prima facie evidence that belief in phantasms do not lead to moral behavior…..
re 4:
I read somewhere else [no cite, sorry. Slate most likely] that Josh’s “apology” was redacted by an “editor” to remove his reference to Satan being the cause of his “2nd life”. The edited apology sounds authentic; taking credit for being “supreme hypocrite” but the unedited version changes the tone quite a bit. IE attempting to claim victimhood for his transgression.
This is being extremely hopeful, but part of what makes it easier to go after people for “moral crimes” is that everyone who commits that crime stands aside for fear they’ll be next. If Saudi Arabia tries going after 1200 people all at once, that might encourage those 1200 people (and all their friends and family) to stand together against that horrible government.
Then again, strength in numbers didn’t do much for the millions of victims of the holocaust.
Wait, isn’t adultery itself also a capital crime in those theocratic shitholes? Or is that only for women who get raped?
I hear some other moralist also got caught having an Ashley account. I’d laugh about it, but you’re right in that the leak puts people at risk. Didn’t Saudi Arabia recently pass a law banning criticism of religion making Atheism illegal?
I have to plead guilty to having a chuckle over all the moralists that were caught with accounts. All of the coverage I had seen before this made it seem like it was an America centered site with maybe some European and Australian participation. I would guess that is probably what the leakers thought as well, that they were just exposing cheating hypocrites and taking their enabler down a few pegs. Their intent was questionable at best and in their zeal they are guilty of far worse than anyone on that site or running that site.
I can be sad that a fire kills a bunch of people, yet appreciate the schadenfreude of it also killing a known arsonist. Yes, it sucks that various private individuals will be hurt by this information, but that doesn’t mean one can’t also note the hypocrisy of a very public individual, one who used his fame to shame those who couldn’t meet standards that he himself violated.
They used a shotgun.
If they were going for a statement about hypocrisy, they could have used a stiletto.
Unless they’re not really that good at what they’re doing.
Tulse, 10:
I can’t possibly be the only one who had such a visceral reaction to this comment, right? (In the negative direction, lest there be any doubt.)
Ffs, these are other human beings we’re referring to here, other people
Couldn’t we please try to make it a little more obvious the we’re aware of that fact?
The arguments of many so-called ‘white hats’ and their variants more often than not just make me feel ill…
Chigua, 11 (oh how I loathe autocorrect for what it tries to do to your name!): Bingo.
I thought I did make it obvious when I compared the victims to those killed in a fire. I wasn’t at all suggesting that exposing Duggar’s hypocrisy justified the hack. I was just saying that I don’t see any reason to shy away from the information about Duggar, given that he is a public individual who has made a career of claiming to live a particular life and shaming others who don’t, all the while lying about it. One can decry the damage the hack will do to others, while at the same time be glad that this self-righteous child molester is (further) exposed as a hypocrite.
(And, to be further clear, I don’t think it was the intent of whoever hacked Ashley Madison to grab Duggar’s data — I don’t think they knew it would even be there.)
tulse #13
nope
Jesus Christ, there is no amount of shadenfreude to be had here. Wet already knew Josh Duggar was a pile of human excrement. This leak has put people’s lives in danger.
Fuck these wannabe Batmen. Vigilantism is deplorable.
They weren’t.
They’re moralisers cut from the same cloth as Duggar, insisting that cheating is always wrong, and anyone doing deserves to have their lives ruined – one way or another. This was the intended outcome.
This is the hackers final statement regarding the hack:
Note that this has very little to do with morals or any “white hattery”. It was, following from their own statement, about taking revenge on a site because it didn’t have as much women on it as the hackers wanted it to have. It is nothing more than another act of male privilege terrorism.
Yes, terrorism. The purpose of this is to spread terror and it will damage, if not end, numerous lives.
AlexanderZ @ 17;
This really doesn’t surprise me. It was always going to either be posturing pseudo-moralists too stupid to realize (or more likely to callous to care) that their actions were placing innocent people’s lives in danger – a far worse offence than anything done by the users or administrators of Ashley Madison – or angry internet doodz getting testerical because the site didn’t offer them the access to women they think they are entitled to
From the quote you provide, it seems that this time it is the angry internet doodz and their sad penises that have it. Not that it makes any difference to the innocent people who may have their lives ruined, or may even be murdered by the authorities where they live, all because some self righteous idiots decided to go on their own petty little moralising crusade.
Oddly enough, moving on with one’s life may prove rather difficult when you are dead because some entitled arsehat leaked your identity to the violently oppressive government who rules over the part of the world where you live. I for one would call that a bit more than ’embarrassing’. ‘Getting over it’ would also be quite the feat…
tulse @ 13;
A fire can start (or be started) in many ways, but is itself an energetic chemical reaction with no intentionality or malice behind it. The same cannot be said of this hack, which – as can be seen from AlexanderZ’s post @ 17 – wasn’t even based upon the poor excuse of taking some incompetent psuedo-moral stand against adultery, but actually was the product of angry, entitled men feeling cheated because the site didn’t help them have affairs and deciding to get their own back in a way that has the potential to hurt, and indeed kill-by-proxy, thousands of people who belong to vulnerable social groups. That is the headline here, not the unintended by blow being received by a child molesting piece of human shaped excrement like Duggar. Giggling over that idiot’s discomfiture while writing off thousands of ruined and even lost lives as merely ‘sucking’ is a shade callous to say the least, your personal amusement not withstanding.
re tulse@10:
I do see your second point that you want to still enjoy cackling over the schadenfreude of Jugger’s hypocrisy comeuppance.
However, to dismiss the other consequences of that hack, as just equivalent to a fire killing some randoms is a little misguided. I share the humor of laughing at Jugger’s hypocrisy, yet find it ~enlightening to be informed that this hack had morbid consequences. At first, when the hack was first reported, I too was, “so what? the wannabee cheaters were finally revealed? good on them.” The OP’s reminder that people have used this list to fatally execute some of the cheaters, is horrific news, and worth being highlighted, with Jugger as a mere footnote.
Gregory @ 18,
I’m going to guess that the assholes who did this weren’t at all aware of the real-life consequences of what they were doing. Most “Hackers” I’ve come across are pretty typical privileged young computer dorks, with all of the implications of arrogance and defensiveness that comes with that. I’d be surprised if the people behind this mass-doxing were even aware that there might be people in Saudi Arabia in those files. Other peoples’ life experiences probably didn’t even enter their heads, they were probably too busy giggling about the embarrassment they were going to cause people.
It’s the same poisoned well of the internet that brings us 4chan and gamergate and the slymepit and reddit. Anonymity really does wonders for demonstrating which people are conscious of other peoples’ worlds, and whether they care at all about them.
(Sorry for the awkwardness of this post, i’m not too proud of it. Was going to delete it after reading it over actually! But I’ll let it stand.)
re 20:
ugh, tpyos:
Jugger == Josh Duggar
Savant @ 21:
I think they knew exactly what they were doing, and the effect it would have on people. If you pay attention to AlexanderZ @ 17, the upset was over not enough women. If you take that particular grievance and combine it with the fact that a good amount of gay men used the site due to needed discretion, this is nothing more than ugly male privilege being acted out.
savant @ 21;
I do see your point; never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence and all that. I am afraid that I have seen so much callous disregard for other people’s lives over the years that I have become cynical. As you say, some of the more foetid reaches of the internet are now so toxic that this kind of thing is vomited into existence without ant specific intent to cause the level of harm it actually results in.
As for your post, I see nothing wrong with it. You expressed yourself both effectively and succinctly.
Caine @23;
The toxic mix of homophobia and entitled misogyny you describe is also a more than credible scenario, leaving us back at malice over incompetence again.
I forgot to give the link for the final statement. The “Time’s Up!” is written in ASCII so you can see only when properly placed, like in this image.
Caine @ 23, Gregory @ 24;
You’re right, Caine, quite a bit of it is ugly male privilege – I hadn’t meant to suggest otherwise. I do still think that the thought hadn’t struck them that it could touch peoples’ lives in places like Saudi Arabia, though. I also think that they wouldn’t particularly care – had someone told them “Hey, people get executed for this in some parts of the world” their reply would be a combination of mockery and indignation at being questioned.
I don’t think it’s just male privilege, though. I think there’s also a lot of plain old narrow-mindedness and an unwillingness to see other peoples’ viewpoints. Again, not too happy with how i’m presenting my ideas this morning, so I’m happy to agree with you that this is primarily about misogynists misogynizin’, and the horrible knock-on effects of same.
Ugh. thank you for the link Alexander @ 26. I made the mistake of looking through the Reddit comments. Yeah, it’s all about punishing people because they can (because no doubt they’re all 100% adulterers on there, you betcha), ridiculous military metaphors, and complaints about their own problems. The mentions of repercussions from the action are either laughed at or bitterly argued into the ground.
One mention of LGBT issues in some countries is laughed down as being from a joke news website – which is true, but at the same time these issues are real: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-ashely-madison-leak-puts-thousands-women-lgbt-lives-risk.
A mention of a suicide resulting from the leak which is completely ignored: http://unitedmediapublishing.com/man-outed-in-ashley-madison-hack-commits-suicide/.
And of course a bunch of references on how to search for people on the leak, how to build your own copy of the AM database, and heaps of self-justification and righteousness. Even a bit of liberal-bashing, too, ’cause it just isn’t a party without a liberal strawman in the corner.
Ugh.
PZ,
You might want to take down the first link–it’s to a site called “Libel News” whose motto is “Your source of apocryphal news”, and it seems to be an unfunny version of The Onion (e.g. a story about a farmer marrying his field as a comment on marriage equality). I have no idea which details mentioned on that site are meant to be apocryphal, but there are plenty of serious sites carrying the story (including your second link).
As someone who works in security and considers himself to be a “white hat” – those who participated in this hack were far from white hats. If they were, they would have scrubbed user data before dumping it.
White hats are not about “morals”, but about identifying security holes in systems and notifying those you’ve compromised. If they don’t pay attention, then you do a data dump, with sensitive info scrubbed. But only to draw attention to a security issue. Sadly, white hats rarely make the news.
Actually, that’s a bit unfair. Remember that the reason they’re able to look at the data and see the discrepancy is because it had been hacked. They are pointing out that in addition to the issue they have with cheaters, the site is also, essentially, a scam. The tone of the message seems to be pointing this out to mock the users.
While I don’t know anything about the people behind this, it’s a bit unfair to label the entire hacker community as “brogrammers”. In recent years “hacktivists” have absolutely stood up for feminist causes, and recently in Canada, been in support of aboriginal issues (which are largely ignored by so called “progressives”).
I’m not saying I support the Ashley Madison hackers… but I don’t think it’s fair to try and repaint their motives as anger over an inability to successfully get laid.
iankoro @ 31:
I’m not repainting anything – the hackers’ motive was right fucking there in their statement.
I am torn on the Josh Duggar case. I do think that if one makes a living from moralizing and lobbying politicians on “family values”, then the public should know if he practices what he preaches.
On the other hand, the hack horrifies me and I would have been uncomfortable even if the hackers had released only Duggar’s data (which is, I presume, what @11 meant by the term “stiletto”).
I think it’s also worth pointing out the MSM’s rabid delight in this story, especially when it comes on the tail of 6-12 months of them pearl clutching over the horror of internet shaming.
This is no white hat work. This is as black hat as it gets.
Outing women was done outright out of malice.
Outing LGBT people may have been done out of malice or out of ignorance for the consequences of their actions.
Jesus fucking christ what assholes.
There is a “BUT” however.
The “but” being that there there is far worse culpability in this thing.
The immensity of the consequences for LGBT people and the asymmetric treatment of women in many countries and especially in Saudi Arabia will be swept under the rug by the media because hey, they’re our best buds, and the deviants and uppity women need to die anyway.
People really shouldn’t believe what hackers say about themselves when they announce a hack.
Most likely, the hackers worked for AM for several years before a falling out. The way the site was attacked has all the hallmarks of a revenge attack.
They tried to extort cash out of the people running the site and they will probably try to extort money from the high rollers on the sister site Established Men.
So don’t bother to ask if they are really doing the wrong thing despite having good motives because chances are these people weren’t nice at all.
@Caine #23 and #32
The most relevant part of their statement is repeated below
That appears to indicate that they did not consider that people were signing up for same sex affairs. They were callous, misogynistic, assholes acting out because they privilege felt threatened and caused incalculable harm. I wish it were possible to charge them with accessory to ____ for every act of violence committed for their actions, but I don’t think the anti-LGBT motive you attribute to them was accurate. It doesn’t make their actions one whit better, but I don’t think they realized the specific harm they were doing to homosexuals as it didn’t even seem to register with them that homosexuals would possibly use the site. They thought all the men that signed up were being scammed because of the dearth of women. On that point, AM likely had up a lot of fake female profiles and the hetero men at least probably were being scammed. I can’t say I feel too bad that AM scammed guys looking to cheat on their spouses, it is certainly far less unethical that what the hackers did and orders of magnitude less harm seems to me too much of an understatement.
If this was ok, then it’s ok for anyone who knows how to blow the privacy lid off of a group they think is immoral? That can lead to some pretty bad places. There are a lot of people who would think it’s a great idea to oppose abortion by publicizing the name and address of anyone who got one, for instance.
Sigh.. The people that did this would no doubt make good Republicans, moralists, and/or legislators though… This is right up the ally of everything from sex trafficking laws that make merely providing workers a safe haven, or means of communication illegal, because making them less safe will somehow find them other work. (Had a thought on that one.. how many, “no longer working” are there, how many poverty level wage jobs, how many of them ones “women” are most likely to be taking, compared to men, how many of those jobs are being worked, a la GWB’s stupid, “Only in America can someone dream of working 5 jobs to make ends meet, hallelujah!”, BS are being worked by the same “person”, instead of giving 1-4 other people jobs, and, finally, what is the ratio of men to women right now? Seems to me, you don’t try to start a war one people selling something you don’t like, during a time when there are no jobs, and worse pay, and *nearly everyone* you are going to end up arresting ***has no other means of support, or other jobs to go to***. But then again, when has logic ever applied for these people?)
Seriously though.. this is the stance of all terrorists, and sadly, most moralists – the ends justifies the means, and who can be bothered to even acknowledge, never mind understand, the, somehow always in retrospect, obvious consequences to people without choices, options or even possibly even guilt, who get caught in the cross fire. Even when “victims” of what ever behavior being attacked are just as bad off, or dead, as the guilty, and the practice isn’t ended, at least its a “good fight”, right?
Honestly? The moralizing over Josh Duggar being a cheater infuriates me. Both because it justifies doxxing which is a crime that is traditionally used against women and other marginalized group members. It erases the massively entitled toxic masculinity surrounding the leaks in the first place and echoes the sick bullshit like we pretend that the problem of cheating is the most dire horrible thing on the planet*. It also echoes this notion that marriages must be protected at all costs, even to the detriment of the people inside and as relative moralizing go, doesn’t really go beyond the level of “ha ha, you are more sexually active/open than you claim” which reinforces anti-sex viewpoints.
And that it’s all happening with Duggar is the worst part of it, because it pretends that the worst crime he did was having consensual sex with people other than his wife and thus allows media attention to drift away from his real crime, which is the repeated rape of children including children in his own family.
(CW: rape apologia)
And that is so unbelievably fucked that I can’t even. And worse, it’s a moral panic that fits right into his chosen BS narrative for raping kids, which is that he’s “addicted to sex and porn” and those dark desires “forced” him to look to any available option. Now he can just point to Ashley Madison without having to even bring up the whole raping kids things and this storm in a teacup allows him to get away with it, because it sees marital infidelity as a more headline grabbing narrative than the fact that yet another moral crusader is a serial rapist whose family and coworkers have spent years aiding and abetting.
And so the whole thing just makes me taste bile in my mouth. Fuck the hackers and fuck the moralizers giving it additional support by playing tsk tsk against “acceptable targets” while ignoring the real bodies that are going to come out of this.
*Which is not to say that cheating is a good thing or that it isn’t an act of intentional disrespect to a current romantic partner as it states that said person is not considered enough to discuss things with and is assumed to be so stupid as to not notice something going on. Or that it can’t serve as a red flag for future people who want to date that type of person, just that on the list of horrible things possible in a relationship, it’s pretty far down the list under things like rape, abuse, controlling behavior, isolation, etc… Also that it can be a means of temporary escape for people who feel trapped in abusive relationships (I’ve known my share of people who cheated because they needed to feel like someone actually cared if they lived or died when they were trapped in an abusive relationship that they feared for their life in extricating themselves from).
Grewgills @37
It’s all worth pointing out, given the caliber of douchebro using the site for the most part, that Ashley Madison probably wasn’t even responsible for the “fake straight women profiles” given the proclivities of asshole troll types to make fake profiles for the “lulz” or the various harasser groups that have seen signing someone up for “embarassing” services like Ashley Madison is a great way to put a woman or other enemy “in their place” and create a justification for further harassment (see bitter GGers using the made-up tale of Zoe Quinn being a “cheater” to justify what has been a full year of uninterrupted non-stop violent harassment).
So yeah, a bunch of entitled manbabies sad that they encountered a handful of fake profiles made by other assholes and expecting as their right to have free access to free sex on demand from what they no doubt viewed as “damaged” women they could mistreat had a giant tantrum because it turns out straight dating sites tend to be swarmed with the type of creepy men that drive off women and brought down the site because they expected their boners to be instantly attended to the second they signed up. And in doing so, putting a lot of abused people and queer people into a lot of danger, not to mention the aforementioned targets of harassment.
Yeah, fuck the fucking hackers and fuck these script kiddie “hacktivists” and their overblown fake justifications for doxxing people.
Grewgills @37
I really can’t see why any gay man would go to AM which demands huge amounts of money to contact a vanishingly small number of gay users when there are services like Grindr which have a 100% gay membership at no to low cost. AM was a site that was virtually exclusively used by straight males.
There really isn’t a hookup site that works for straight males and the reason is quite simple. Women tend not to like being the only bait in town with fins to the left and right. So once a site falls to less than 25% females its in trouble. And once the number of females drops under 10% the men start resorting to ever more desperate tactics to hook up. They start to send dick pics and be generally annoying. Which drives even more of the women away.
Hacking into a site to Dox people is a crime. These hackers are criminals who tried to extort the site. They are no heroes.
Phillip Hallam-Baker @ 42:
Uh, no. If you click the link to the article at alternet, you’ll find that a good number of gay men did use AM because of the need for serious discretion – we’re talking about people who could end up in prison or a death penalty for a hook-up. Someone in such an environment would avoid a known gay site like the plague. As for the douchebag hackers, yes, it was male privilege, and yes, it was all about their boners, and it wouldn’t much matter if they knew about the gay clientele, because when someone is viewing life through the lens of toxic male privilege, gay men matter as much or less as women do, which isn’t a hell of a lot.
Stupid full page ads… Seriously it’s like 2004 on this web site…
Anyway, I had no idea that this web site existed and had heard “it’s a web site for cheating low lifes”.
So, when I heard about the hack I basically thought “yeah hacking is wrong, but any harm that comes to these cheater’s families is harm they brought on themselves, it’s just the truth coming to light and ultimately they’ve got no one to blame but themselves”.
Now you tell me that people in forced marriages around the world (around the WORLD? how popular WAS this web site?!) have been using it as an escape and their exposure will most likely lead to being stoned to death. Well, so much for a neat and tidy dismissal of this as “not my problem”…
@43 Caine
If a site has 32 million users it is going to have some gay men there even if only by mistake or experimenting.
But that doesn’t change the fact that virtually every user of the site was a male seeking a female.
Grindr has had issues with privacy as well. The geolocation settings were not a good idea. But I rather doubt AM was any better on that score. They promised a lot without any concern for delivery.
@Phillip #42
That is pretty much my take. I was a bit surprised that there were as many homosexuals using the site as is being reported when there are much better choices. Then again I didn’t realize that it was being used in the ME, so there is probably a fair bit about the users I don’t know.
I wasn’t aware of either of the sites involved until this story broke, but looking at how they advertised themselves it appears their target demo was entitled men looking for easy hook ups with no concern for anything in their partners other than appearance and discretion. That doesn’t seem like a model that would attract many women.
In any case, even if this site was used exclusively by entitled straight men, this act put a lot of people at serious real risk and the hackers are despicable people that did something despicable. That there were apparently more vulnerable groups also exposed, even if it turns out the number is small, increases the harm they did. Whether they did it because they thought they ‘deserved’ women, because they were disgruntled former employees, because they are pseudo-moralists, or whatever other reason doesn’t excuse their actions even a little. That they probably didn’t consider the possibility of more vulnerable groups being harmed also does nothing to excuse their actions even a little. It is disappointing, but unsurprising that the bulk of the media coverage is over gotchas on high profile hypocrites rather than the real damage done.
Oh man, fuck Saudi Arabia. I absolutely hate that we are allies with that horrifically backwards country. All because the political willpower to break our dependency on oil doesn’t fucking exist.
I feel no schadenfreude whatsoever, not even for Josh Duggar. Privacy is a human right. Rights do not have to be earned and cannot be revoked. I acknowledge that every now and then someone’s privacy must be violated to protect others’ – for example in a crime investigation – but only after a court order. Impact Team are a bunch of criminals.
I can be sad that a fire kills a bunch of people, yet appreciate the schadenfreude of it also killing a known arsonist.
Believe me, there’s very little such “appreciation” from the people who actually have to deal with the consequences of such fires. Just like we’ve never been all that giddy with joy over the fact that the 9/11 hijackers died along with their victims.
I really can’t see why any gay man would go to AM which demands huge amounts of money to contact a vanishingly small number of gay users…
Probably because they were living in places where AM just happened to be the only site they could find that looked trustworthy. Yes, there’s lots of other places they could have gone to, but can we really expect them to know that when they’re in a place with lots of censorship and surveillance and next to zero useful sex-ed?
The immensity of the consequences for LGBT people and the asymmetric treatment of women in many countries and especially in Saudi Arabia will be swept under the rug by the media because hey, they’re our best buds, and the deviants and uppity women need to die anyway.
No, they’ll be (are being) swept under the rug because the media are too lazy to pay attention to the larger picture.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/24/toronto-suicides-ashley-madison-hack