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.

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.

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 termination of a marriage, then external forces will have a great power over you.

If you live with a person that accepts external affairs, sex with other people and who is ok with your true sexuality (e.g. If you're bisexual or happen to like transgenders) you will always have someone on your side no matter what, and your relationship to that person can't be menaced by any eventual disclosure.

Social stigma might still have a leverage on you, but if you're open with your intimate circle of friends and business acquaintances it would be virtually impossible to use a sex-related scandal against you.

The Ashley Madison leak is interesting because of this, too. It's a breakthrough because it exposes behaviors that society still considers immoral and punishable. People that left behind this archaic way of thinking and built their life together with someone that shares more open sexual values are totally immune to this scandal.

This is certainly something that would have tickled Sir Bertrand Russell's mind.

The "God reasoning" isn't the only reasoning. Just like polygamy is a choice, so is monogamy. It's a sexual choice.

What is wrong is that people can't be open about that choice. People should be able to be open and honest about being polygamous or monogamous with their partner - yes, that might sometimes result in the relationship ending; but there's a good chance where there is a disagreement it would have ended with heartbreak further down the line anyway. This should occur long before marriage is ever on the table, or even, before a relationship is on the table.

In Africa it's important for people to know their AIDS status and be honest about it; I wish we could do the same thing with relationship preferences.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to have only one partner, there is also nothing wrong with wanting to have many partners. Both approaches to relationships have their pros and cons.

Either way, debate about polygamy vs. monogamy in this case-scenario is completely irrelevant. Someone was hacked, privacy was violated (it doesn't matter what privacy) and that is the end of that. There's no reason to attach another argument to the discussion because the hack was an outright violation in the first place.

Is it that simple? Would the outright violation of a hack be the end of the story if we were talking about something that we all agree is wrong and/or illegal? What if it was a hack on a website that connected child pornographers, or cocaine dealers, or human traffickers, or arms dealers, or planet-destroyers, or abortionists, or super-rich exploitative CEOs?

EDIT: That list started off in my head as stuff that I thought there might be agreement on, but I couldn't think of anything beyond child pornographers, so it turned into stuff that significant groups feel very strongly about but on which there is no general agreement. Hopefully both sets of stuff make my point.

Yes. The legal system is responsible for bringing criminals to justice. The system maybe imperfect but its better than vigilantes with a deeply held, righteous cause who honestly believe their targets to be evil. Fanatics of all stripes see themselves in that light and that kind of thinking is extremely dangerous. In truth, it should only be used in the event a blood revolution is the only option available to the citizenry.

In the context of a private company, yes, its never acceptable.

Whatever you do, someone will find it offensive or harmful to them, for some definition of "harmful" -- even the way you dress, or the music you listen to, or the books you read, or who you have sex with. This isn't a good enough reason to humiliate you in public.

I'd say you cannot compare infidelity with things like murder, extortion, or someone in public office engaging in corruption or grossly misleading the public. Those things do need exposing.

In any case, not every breach of contract must be made public for all to see and humiliate you.

Where does that end? "He has an STD"? "He is unfaithful"? "He cheats at poker"? "He is a bad father"? "If I'd known that, I wouldn't have had sex, therefore it wasn't consensual".

(edited for grammar)

"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 understand you correctly?

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!

Why is it automatically a private matter? Perhaps you think it should be a private matter, but someone else may think it shouldn't be, and thus the morality of something like cheating may be to them much worse than it is to you, thus morally justifying more extreme actions to be taken to expose cheating.

Also to note, something does not need to be legally considered a given crime for a person to morally consider it such. You may think them wrong, but their view is still consistent given their underlying values that you disagree with.

That a person may view this hack differently than you may not be the result of a different view on the morals of hacking or the right to privacy, but on something more nuanced like a difference in distinction between what counts as consent.

> Perhaps you think it should be a private matter, but someone else may think it shouldn't be, and thus the morality of something like cheating may be to them much worse than it is to you, thus morally justifying more extreme actions to be taken to expose cheating.

Sorry, I find this position totally unacceptable. Yes, we were always talking about people's moral opinions, which are subjective by definition, and everyone has one. People who are morally outraged about what other consenting adults do with their private lives are despicable (way more despicable to me than cheaters that keep their opinions to themselves) and they have no right to harm other people because of their own morals. Exactly how some religious fundamentalists have no right to publicly shame gay people, or some other religious people think it's their right to stone adulterous women to death.

This argument that some people care so deeply about what strangers do with their private lives that they are entitled to take "extreme actions" just doesn't fly.

PS: in which country is lying about a vasectomy exactly the same as rape then?

Exposing people to STDs is a problem which can also happen regardless of infidelity. Besides, are you saying if you practice safe sex while cheating then it's morally ok? Is it simply an issue of safe sex?

There are countries where having sex under false pretext is considered rape. For instance: saying that you are going to use a condom then removing it without the knowledge of your partner would be rape. One could argue that being in a marriage with the promise of monogamy, but failing to keep that promise, would mean that all instances of sex with your partner are then rape.

I repeat: I don't agree with this and I think that it belittles people that have actually experienced the horrors of forced rape. Perhaps there should be things protecting the victims of this situation, but calling it rape waters down the word and act. "Sexual Intercourse under False Pretenses" should have it's own set of laws and punishments around it if it should be punished, IMHO.

Having said that,

> For instance: saying that you are going to use a condom then removing it without the knowledge of your partner would be rape.

In which country is that rape? I think pretending to use a condom and secretly removing it is morally deplorable, and the mark of a terrible person, but it's insulting to actual rape victims to consider it rape.

> One could argue that being in a marriage with the promise of monogamy, but failing to keep that promise, would mean that all instances of sex with your partner are then rape

I can't think of any universe where this makes sense. It's an act of dishonesty, and a pretty serious one depending on your upbringing and personal convictions, but rape? Sorry, that sounds seriously fucked up to me. I wouldn't want to live in a place where being unfaithful is equated to being a rapist.

Exactly. And I'm not saying that is right or wrong. That is why I said 'possibly', because it depends upon if you agree with such a definition or not and if the legal jurisdiction you live in operates with such a definition or not.

If there are such countries, I wouldn't want to live there.

PS: if we're talking about countries where adulterous women can be stoned to death, I think we can all agree that is horrible and the public shaming of Ashley Madison customers completely pales next to the crime against humanity that is mutilating or murdering people for being unfaithful or gay. I'd consider those countries completely beyond the scope of this discussion.

The hell they don't. Talk to someone who was not only abused, but knows that there are unwilling photos of their abuse circulating online for sadists to jerk off over. Psychological trauma is a real thing.

I'm talking about greater goods than privacy and order, goods that make privacy and order good.

And I'm not just talking about things that one group or another really thinks should be illegal. I'm also talking about things that we've decided to tolerate as legal, but which we think are wrong -- maybe even grossly wrong -- and therefore (strongly) disapprove of and want to (strongly) discourage. I don't think things are so simple in those cases, either.

That's not much of a choice though. In several places you can go to jail for it. Or it is choice in the same way that being a criminal is a choice.

When that culture normalizes things like throwing acid at rape victims and violent mass retribution for violation of religious laws, well, yes, I can and will label that culture as being backwards and primitive.

Just like homosexuality "was not a choice" a mere few years ago: yet people did choose to be open about their homosexuality and did choose to fight for their rights as homosexuals. Look where we are today: the American courts now lawfully recognize that choice in marriage.

> archaic religious beliefs

So far as advanced societies go, believing in higher power(s) is a choice. It is certainly not archaic to those who choose to do so and in the somewhat broken world today, possibly more relevant to them than ever. I've never understood why those who are discriminated against have discriminated beliefs. It's not right when their force-feed their beliefs down people's throats, but that doesn't make it right to force-feed Atheism/Agnosticism down theirs.

Is it? That must be the reason why all recent U.S. Presidents were all fervent atheists...

Is it a choice in a society where swearing on a religious tome is still considered a rational way to induce people to tell the truth in court? I know that's just theater (otherwise perjury would not be a felony). Still, I think it's a telling detail of how far you would go without believing in something in contemporary American society.

The "wrong place" isn't HN, rather: it's text. A lot of nuance is lost in text and this is an incredibly nuanced subject. We'd most likely end up having a fierce fight 50 comments deep, where in person we'd probably land up agreeing on most things after 2 minutes.

You may not be aware that the NT says that people shouldn't take an oath instead let your "yes be yes"; ie just tell it straight, be honourable. It's never come up but I'd be unwilling to swear on the Bible in court as it's against my faith as a Christian.

I do not agree though that text isn't the right form. We will probably never talk to each other in person, but we had a text-mediated prolific and mature discussion that, in the end, enriched both of us.

Thanks.

You're not immune to this kind of scandal unless you're in a sexual relationship with somebody and you have no expectation to be made aware of their other sexual activities, in which case you're not in a healthy relationship.

I doubt Bertrand Russel would be very fascinated by polyamory - it's just another concept that works great in theory but becomes endlessly complicated in reality.

"The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue."

"There can be no doubt that to close one's mind on marriage against all the approaches of love from elswhere is to diminish receptivity and sympathy and the opportunities of valuable human contact. It is to do violence to something which, from the most idealistic standpoint, is in itself desirable." [...] "but I do not recognize in easy divorce a solution of the trouble of marriage[...] but where there are children the stability of marriage is to my mind a matter of considerable importance.

[...]

I think that, where a marriage is fruitful and both parties to it are reasonable and decent, the expectation ought to be that it will be lifelong, but not that it will exclude other sex relations.

A marriage that begins with passionate love and leads to children who are desired and loved ought to produce to deep a tie between a man and a woman that they will feel something infinetly precious in their companionship, even after sexual passion has decayed, and even if either or both feels sexual passion for someone else. This mellowing of marriage has been prevented by jealousy, but jealousy, though it is an instinctive emotion, is one that can be controlled if it is recognised as bad."

Bertrand Russel, Marriage and Morals

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.

Mine was a very specific assertion related to the king of leak we're witnessing: what's making this data so relevant and prone to gossip is the way we give for granted the monogamous nature of our relationship and how we deal with a moral set of dogmas that society inculcates on us "because God says so".

Who doesn't live by these archaic impositions and accepts more open forms of relationship has a strong advantage because his pursuit of perfectly natural sexual desires doesn't need to be hidden and is not considered (especially by the partner) as an immoral and punishable thing.

Don't pretend that monogamy is purely socially constructed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with consensual open relationships, and we'd all be better off if the taboo against them went away, but there is definitely something wrong with making a promise to someone you love about something that matters to them and then breaking it behind their back.

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 not single and have a Tinder account. I've noticed the "shoe on the other foot" has silenced many of the Twitter camp.

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.

Also: there's a neat parallel to the NSA here, in that a substantial portion of the users registered for A.M. probably haven't been unfaithful, and are getting "dragnetted" up with the people who have, because who's going to take the time to sort that out?

Isn't this akin to blaming Snowden/Manning for diplomatic fallout instead of blaming those who were engaging in the wrongful practices that led to the fallout.

I see three parts. Engaging in gay relationships, the hackers releasing data, and the people who do the stoning.

In the Manning/Snowden case, there are also three parts.

The US doing bad things, Manning/Snowden releasing it, and other governments reacting.

Now, in the Snowden/Manning case, media tries to place blame for 3 on 2 instead of 1, when blame should be placed on 1.

In this case, people seem to be placing blame for 3 on 2, when blame should be placed on 3 (unless you fully believe that gay relationships should end in death, in which case it should be placed on 1, but few people on HN believe that).

So there is a slight difference in that the blame should rest on the initial actor in the Snowden/Manning case while in this case the blame should be on the reacting actor (the ones killing people). But I think it is very similar in trying to blame the data release instead of the responsible party.

Needless to say, the plain-bellied Sneetches don't think much of being rounded up, so they hide. A few star-bellied Sneetches sympathize with the plight of the plain-bellied Sneetches, and help them hide.

Your neighbor is such a Sneetch, but is not careful enough, and you find out that there are a half-dozen plain-bellied Sneetches hiding in her basement.

Fortunately, when the trucks come around at midnight, it's not your fault just because you've told everybody you know. It's the fault of those damn star-bellied Sneetches.

I'm not sure where this leaves Snowden and Manning. I would probably argue that they exposed a greater evil than might have been perpetrated as a result of their disclosures.

Impact Team, though -- snitchy Sneetches, all of them.

Is it any less their fault if they find out via the National Sneetch Agency than if you tell them? I wouldn't think so.

So is it any your fault? Is blame like a pie such that if someone has 100% of it, everyone else must have 0%? Or is it limitless, where two people can be 100% to blame?

As you said, if we do think snitches are to blame, it does leave Snowden and Manning to be blamed. Maybe it is worth it, but they are still to blame.

What does change is who else might be responsible, and who among them bears blame. Your neighbor is responsible, but not to blame -- she intended to help the plain-bellies hide, but made a mistake. You would bear both responsibility and blame, as your disclosures led to the plain-bellies being whisked away, you can be expected to have know that would be the likely result, and you didn't have a good reason to do it anyway.

Snowden and Manning would also bear responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Blame? I don't know. I tend to doubt it. Even though they should have expected that there would be bad fallout, I do believe they had a good reason to move ahead.

Impact Team? I'm not sure what justifies putting a man in jeopardy of his life, but personally, I (edit: do not) think that outing millions of (by-and-large unsuccessful) adulterers rises to the occasion.

It reminds me that we should be careful with security, and also honest about what we can and can't do. Ashley Madison promised emails would _never_ be exposed - a promise they were either not willing or not able to keep.

Then I could be accused of being a dishonest immoral monster when my hookups discovered I wasn't really married.

No, it's only marketed/targeted towards that demo.

Is it legal.

Is it moral.

Should it be legal.

The last is quite complex and I won't get to it here because of the vast differences in moral theories as to what should and should not be legal.

As to the first, is it legal? Hacking isn't. The end.

But the middle question is interesting, and I dare say that many people have views such as my own, where morality is not dependent on legality but on morality. And I would also dare to say that most people do not have an issue exposing people who are using websites to commit very immoral actions. So the question becomes one of if the action of cheating is immoral enough to cross this threshold. That question is a really deep moral one and you probably have as much ability to change as most any deeply held moral view.

In short, most everyone agrees the right to privacy has limits based on extremely immoral actions. The difference is only in what counts as immoral enough, which is far less a distinction than 'right to privacy means hacking is wrong'.

"Strongly immoral" which belongs in the public sphere is more like human trafficking, murder, corruption in public office, etc.

Well, given that they're keeping their partner in the dark in the first place I don't see anything wrong with exposing the cheating scum.

Law enforcement is having it too easy with the "terrorists can't have safe spaces to communicate" and "think of the children" messages - but what about "think of the adults"? At least this way, people will think twice about supporting mass dragnets or having their data stored unencrypted.

This is an actual case used at British Telecom to emphasize how you should NEVER abuse your access privs.

The sobering end of the story he killed her.

There's a really amazing post here about outgroups and the distorted way we reason --- or fail to reason --- about them. It's a bit long, but totally worth the read.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups

"In sociology and social psychology, an ingroup is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an outgroup is a social group with which an individual does not identify."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_identity_theory

"A social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.[1] As originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and the 1980s,[2] social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to explain intergroup behaviour.[3][4][5]"

Still, individuals do change their ingroup membership and can remain as intolerant to then fully new outgroup. It would be good to have a name for this phenomenon: being intolerant to whatever person's current outgroup is. And there is one, which happens to have more uses than only this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice

"The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward people or a person because of gender, political opinion, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality, or other personal characteristics. In this case, it refers to a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group membership.[1]"

You have just described at least half of the dozens of posts on that blog.

(There's a best-of list, still intimidatingly long, here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mmg/yvains_most_importa... and a best-of-best-of subset of that, unfortunately with only the titles and no links, here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mmg/yvains_most_importa.... I haven't looked through either of those lists and make no claim that they have successfully selected the best. The lists include not only posts on Slate Star Codex, but also others -- mostly earlier -- from the same author elsewhere.)

This is something I've never seen stated outright before, and it seems totally true to me.

(For the avoidance of doubt, my comment that what you said applies to lots of things on SSC wasn't intended as any sort of criticism -- I wasn't saying "boo, you failed to describe the article in a way that distinguishes it from the others" but "yay, SSC has a lot of really good articles".)

Only you: freedom fighter, liberator

Only they: imperialists

Only you: protector

Only they: baby killers

Only you: collateral damage

I'm sure George Carlin could come up with more expensive shots… Man, I miss him.

"Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters."

Interestingly, some people discussing the leak show emotional and "religiously righteous" response to the people who possibly made or even just considered an act of "infidelity" (not to be confused with the "infidels.")

Infidel: "Late 15th century: from French infidèle or Latin infidelis, from in- 'not' + fidelis 'faithful' (from fides 'faith', related to fidere 'to trust'). The word originally denoted a person of a religion other than one's own, specifically a Muslim (to a Christian), a Christian (to a Muslim), or a Gentile (to a Jew)."

C.f. Barbarian, 2: "2. Hist. a. One not a Greek. b. One living outside the pale of the Roman empire and its civilization, applied especially to the northern nations that overthrew them. c. One outside the pale of Christian civilization. d. With the Italians of the Renascence: One of a nation outside of Italy."

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?)

> 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 poorer country. EG, an Indian recruited to work at Google in San Francisco would be an expat by your definition but I think most people would use the term "immigrant." Conversely, I'd expect the term "expat" to be used for an American white guy who was travelling the world after getting laid off, impulsively decided to stay in Bangkok, and now does freelance web design, lives in a nice neighborhood, and hangs out mostly with Americans and Europeans.

I am not saying I think this is how the term should be used, just describing my experience with it.

Also, one deeper, to my ear, 'expat' has a flavour of intending to return, where immigration generally sounds more one-way and permanent - which of course again parallels the 'rich' narrative: it's much easier to intend to return to your rich country of origin than it is to return to a poor one.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenonym

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenonym

There are going to be a lot of very embarrassed people who committed no adultery.

I think she might be fazed by your telling her what is and isn't playing God.

> you can't convince someone this is unethical behavior if they are emotionally invested in it.

It would be unethical for A.M. to give out this data. It is almost certainly illegal for a hacker to do so, and you can argue that it's immoral, but it's not clear how it's unethical. Since the hackers did not make monetary demands (or did they) they seem to be operating according to their own code of conduct.

I'd say the most clearly wrong thing about this is disclosing CC details. The rest of it comes down to public shaming, and your girlfriend is simply taking the position (I believe) most women (I believe) take that cheaters deserve to be shamed.

Now, as to the CC details thing, surely it's the CC vendors who are the most unethical. Their entire system is hopelessly insecure and yet they persist in using it rather than adopting a more secure system (which they could certainly afford to do).

It's no different from the people who support "Free Speech, except for hate speech". Or privacy, except when the person whose privacy is invaded is a racist piece of shit who doesn't deserve privacy because invading his privacy revealed him to be a racist piece of shit.

But from what I understand, after watching his talks, was that was THE REASON he gave the docs to journalists, so they could evaluate the downsides of releasing each doc.

Unethical, absolutely. He breached his employment contract, and exceeded access to systems under the pretense that he was given access to them.

Since you asked...

https://twitter.com/iron_spike/status/633988534546796546

https://twitter.com/iron_spike/status/633988845483126785

https://twitter.com/iron_spike/status/633989126639849474

If you come up with a resolution to the cognitive dissonance you just exposed then please let me know.

I think engineers tend to place higher values in legal principals, because (a) we tend to prefer rule based solutions and (b) the tendency to allow exceptions to the law also results in school bullying, which nerds have a greater experience with.

Perhaps the people who is having the affair should be outed, but what about their spouse? Shouldn't the pain of the extra marital affair be more than enough? Now you have to add in public shame as well?

That wasn't the intent.

The true intent: "In a long manifesto posted alongside the stolen ALM data, The Impact Team said it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee."

Impact Team's manifest is that AshleyMadison is fraudulent at business practices (e.g. charging people extra for profiles that were never deleted) and that's why the Impact Team is embarrassing the company.

I understand this is emotionally charging but don't twist the intent around to, "The Impact Team believes the members on Ashley Madison are guilty of the crime: marital infidelity and thats why they're leaking the 10GB Database."

Stick to the facts when opining, Thomas :).

So to show the people who use ALM's services that ALM lies about their policies, the users need to be exposed?

Well it's an effective strategy, I'll give them that. But I can't shake the feeling there's a hidden fuck-you in there somewhere to the people they're outing. Just be honest, this is a complex issue with so many permutations it's hard to take any moral position. A lot of cheaters will be outed, a lot of innocent people may have their lives destroyed. What has been achieved?

That's not what Thomas is saying. He's literally saying that the main intent of why Impact Team released the 10GB database is because they felt users are guilty of the crime of marriage infidelity.

His statement is counter to what Impact Team specifically said, "publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee."

I think you've misunderstood. "you" are the people judging that the hacking was OK and outing the victims, not the people who did the hacking. I'm pretty sure Thomas is making no claim about the intent of the hackers themselves.

Thank you for showing me that.

    Stick to the facts when opining, Thomas :).

To me, Thomas's opinion doesn't appear to be based on facts simply because Impact Team specifically said, "it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee."

Maybe if he edits his original opinion to not suggest Impact Team released the Database because of marital infidelity?

"We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members."

"Chances are your man signed up on the world's biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters."

"Find yourself in here? It was ALM that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you'll get over it."

This sounds like the real intent, "The Impact Team said it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee."

I don't like anything about that site and I have a really hard time feeling sorry for people getting "outed" by it, but you're absolutely right. Allowing the illegal when it's convenient for you is not okay, even though much of the public is totally fine with violating people's privacy as long as it fits their world view.

We already saw the response when a newspaper in NY published a map of registered gun owners a few years back.

With medical records digitized, what the public response be to publicly disclosing abortion data? We've already seen the general response to planned parenthood videos.

Your data privacy is either important or it's not. There can't be this "I think these people deserve it so it's okay now" convenience case.

But as somebody else said, when they're emotionally invested they don't care.

This is the new scary. I'm not even sure how you would defend yourself. Its not like the normal lies are easy to defend, now people are taking this database dump as holy writ without consideration of the source or skepticism of its contents.

This is similar to my view on the death penalty. While most people debate over the morality (Is it right to murder a murderer? Is it right to out a cheater?), I am more concerned about the "facts" (Was a person wrongfully convicted? Is the data correct?).

In the case of the Ashley Madison data dump, there are at least a few points where it could be manipulated. It could have been done to the original data dump, copies of said dump floating around (since the average person wouldn't know which one is the original), and sites that have popped up allowing searching of email addresses (since really, the average person wouldn't know how to download and search the data dump).

Even if all those weren't manipulated, someone's email address could appear because someone else used it. I randomly searched for case@aol.com and obama@whitehouse.gov on one of the email search sites and both showed as hits.

I can easily see someone inserting fake data just for the lulz or for ideological reasons.

The reaction to The Fappening was likewise equal parts glee and disgust.

Almost nobody would blink an eye at revealing a doxxing dump from a terrorist sympathizer or CP forum.

Ethics are a subjective thing, and lines are hard to place.

Let's say the hackers in this situation wanted to prove that Avid Life Media was acting unethically -- that they had lied about wiping old customer data. They could have worked with journalists to demonstrate that without actually leaking personal information to the world at large.

Snowden's critics have claimed that he's put people in danger, but they've never been able to back that claim up with actual examples. And honestly, since they've lied about every aspect of that situation over and over again, while Snowden has always told the truth, it's hard to believe them.

In this case, it seems very likely that people are going to get divorced, and that kids are going to go through the shredder over this.

Maybe you have to be middle aged to know this, but you hit a stage in life when people start having these incredibly hostile divorces, with really intense hatred on both sides. And that is terrible for kids. This is going to create that situation in lots of families. It's not cool. It's punching down, it's hurting people who had nothing to do with anything in order to get at some people who seem to be genuinely slimy (Avid Life).

I'm not sure how you see staying together blissfully unawares as the better option but then again I don't like children.

I agree, but that's not for us to act upon.

That's really only the bare minimum. He also exposed a bunch of obviously legal programs that just made the US look bad to allies or outted intelligence programs designed to attack future potential enemies. He did this because he believed those actions were morally wrong.

I don't see how that is different from outting cheaters on a website. Both are punishing people for violations of your moral code.

The NSA is a government agency, so what it does is in the public interest. A guy planning to bomb something is also by definition affecting the public so exposing that is also in the public interest.

This hack, the fappening and similar are completely personal and private so they are of no concern to anyone but the people involved in it.

It stops being a private matter when it trespasses into other people's life.

Or they could be cheaters who are lying to their SOs.

Regardless, we the general public have no horse in this race. We haven't been asked by the person's SO to find this out, the people in question are not public figures, and we have no knowledge of the specifics of their situation.

Or person A is in a sexless but loving marriage with person B. They have kids, and don't want to get divorced because they love each other, but person B is just done with sex. Is it worse for person A to cheat on person B than it is for the two to get divorced, upending the family structure and ruining them financially?

We could debate that endlessly, but the fact remains is its none of our business what's going on with the Ashley Madison people, nor is it our place to decide what's best for the partners of Ashley Madison customers.

Would you say it "comes with the territory" when someone's drug habit is leaked on the Internet? Or their private emails?

I sympathize with couples who have a consensual kink however and are now caught in the middle of it. Though I doubt it's anywhere near a major portion of the userbase, they are very unfortunate collateral here. Kind of U.S. govt informers who were revealed by Assange's cablegate (which majority here is positive about), but sans grave threat to their life.

I don't have sympathy for people who make their SOs an unconsenting part of three-way sexual relationship, and yes they are never an excuse short. All people are positive about their self image, and rationalizations of abhorrent actions are a natural consequence.

Do you have sympathy for people whose three-way sexual relationships are unconsentingly made public?

It's amazingly easy to label people 'collateral damage' when those people are not you.

In any case, this leak makes no distinction between people who are doing wrong and people who aren't, and it hurts all of them. Since when was it ok to smear a million people who weren't doing anything wrong, just to blow up the lives of other people who were?

There is also, as the top-level parent comment suggests, the point that adultery is more or less celebrated in much of popular culture. The mixture of hypocrisy and schadenfreude is obnoxious.

The case that isn't being made is that you should be able to tell Jane about Joe in a private way. That's called discretion. And besides being the better part of valor, it is part of being a wise person.

The people who are OK with this leak should ask themselves if someone should be able to tell a wife about her cheating husband without worrying about hacking and leaks. Or even government dragnets (maybe it's a drug problem, which could be illegal).

If we make people think twice about talking to each other, there are many cases where we make them think twice about helping each other.

Sure, but one could also argue the same about per-marital sex, divorce and homosexuals.

A family's structure and agreements is not public, nor should they be. Unless said family choose to disclose that fact by their own volition.

S/he is just like all the other people who engage in electing law makers that create laws that control how we live. Part of being in a democracy like government is that everyone gets a little say in how we all live our lives with a majority rule. Things like constitutions might mean a super majority is needed for some things instead of a simple majority, but the right to have a say is still there.

You're forcing your point-of-view upon others.

Churches have no ability to enforce promises with violence or confiscation. And they shouldn't. So it's important for governments to establish some sort of lowest common denominator and hold people legally accountable.

I understand the impulse to be non-judgmental, but when both laws and the rest of society get out of the business of enforcing marriage contracts, you actually take choices away from people that want a stronger marriage contract. They can no longer enter an enforceable contract that requires monogamy.

We're not adding more choice for everyone that way. We're just choosing (as a society) a different lifestyle.

Isn't that what prenups are for? (modulo the fact that it is sometimes difficult to enforce prenups).

Let's say you like the marriage rules pre-1970 (no no-fault divorce). You can't write up a prenup that resembles that and have it be enforced by the government (reject applications for divorce and applications to marry someone else).

More options and freedom weren't added when each state adopted no-fault divorce. One option was taken away (pre-1970 marriage contracts) and another was picked (no-fault divorce).

Someone might not like with pre-1970 marriage contracts, but who are they to judge someone else's culture and preferences?

If anything I would argue the problem lies then on how the estate sees marriage, not the other way around. The agreement I have with my wife is between us, no one needs to judge what we do with our private lives.

The point is, we have to deal with how things are actually now, and not only with how they may/should be.

They don't define a family as one male adult, one female adult, and some children by birth. So, personally, I use a broad definition of family that includes homosexuals and fostering and polyamory, while rejecting stuff like forced marriage or child marriage.

I think the burden of proof goes the other way, considering marriage laws (including those that punish infidelity) have been part of common law for hundreds of years.

That family is a fundamental unit in human societies is a pretty much self-evident thing at this point. The burden of proof lies squarely on those who disagree with observable reality.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Savages-Argonauts-Western-Pacif...

Eh. So you think the people exposing husbands and wives cheating on each other are the ones breaking families, not the ones actually cheating?

Don't shoot the messenger, comes to mind (okay, maybe imprison the messenger if he obtained the data in an illegal way, but I don't think he should be imprisoned or worse for "breaking families", when he wasn't the one committing the act that ends up breaking the family apart).

Isn't that kind of how private eyes work, too? Should they be punished for "breaking families"?

I am definitely not arguing for shooting the messenger (I apologize if my comment was not clear enough about that) - what I want to say is that I may agree the boundary between "ok hack" and "not ok hack" may lie on the public concerns/private concerns line, but IMO one could argue that Ashley Madison lies on the "public interest" side.

Reddit AMA - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3dy732/i_worked_at_as...

"We had one guy I'll always remember. His wife was in an accident and stuck in a wheelchair, unable to do anything. She forced him to join the site and encouraged him to find a woman he could have sex with. He ended up finding partners that would last a couple years at a time and it worked very well for them. "

It's great that you're calling people out. But I'd just stick with people deserve to have private lives, whether you agree or disagree on how they spend it.

"My co-workers were a bunch of mad geniuses"

"one of the best companies I've ever worked for"

"my gut reaction was "Great, the bitter wives brigade has done it again.""

Also, they had to retain your information for law enforcement, unless you paid $19 when they would do a super duper all layers deep wipe (apparently law enforcement no longer matters if you have $19?).

They claim be be a senior employee in management, but apparently also talked with every wife calling to find out about their husband.

It's an absurd AMA, and honestly could only possibly fool the gullible.

And FWIW, it makes no sense for someone in the situation described to use a service like Ashley-Madison. Not only is it overwhlemingly males, the few females are generally pursuing the sites dogma of having an affair -- is the healthiest way to fulfill that relationship to engage in someone else's domestic issues? It's like joining an "Al Queda Bombmakers" site because you want to make some cherry poppers for the cub scout glee -- the story isn't rational.

That seems like an absurd story to cast a sympathetic shadow on the site in the wake of a hack.

In the university I work the students must fill an anonymous poll about the teachers at the end of the course. It has a part where they can choose a number from 1 to 9 in each question and an open comment anonymous part. A month later the results of the polls are published in a web page.

The day they are published is very expected. Most of the teachers (T.A., professors, ...) just ignore the number part. They go straight to anonymous comments part. The worse comments are filtered, some comments are interesting but many of them are just a good source for gossip.

The takeaway is that people like to gossip.

And then there is the fact that most people don't seem to know that AM has the same business model as OK Cupid. You don't pay until you want to message someone. So, someone on a lonely night signs up for AM, forgets, and now their name is in a database when all they did was sign up, maybe search, but never took action. Now that person could lose their relationship.

Again, not defending these individuals, but offering an unpopular perspective.

Maybe you don't think it's inherently unethical to cheat on your partner. But it is certainly an act of questionable morality. In fact, it is literally illegal in many states: "Adultery isn't just a crime in the eyes of your spouse. In 21 states, cheating in a marriage is against the law, punishable by a fine or even jail time."

You, and all of the other moral relativists can tell me I'm an extremist, or a purist, but basically I just believe in justice. You cheat, you deserve to get caught. You run a site for cheaters, you deserve to get hacked.

"It is generally accepted that one of the reasons adultery laws remain in effect is that getting rid of them would require politicians to vocally oppose them, something few are willing to do. Additionally, "many like the idea of the criminal code serving as a kind of moral guide even if certain laws are almost never applied".

But that's a lot less powerful a missive than your screed about laws dating back to the 18th Century (hey, pop quiz, did you know that in six of those states, that crime of cheating in a marriage only applies to women?).

In the US, justice must be pursued by legal means, else there's no case. These hackers just removed any chance of prosecution in the 21 states, because of tainted discovery.

to the downvoters, have you ever heard of open marriages ?

Yes, the public knowing (if this bothered the open couple) is an injury.

But that aside, does it ? Do most people agree that the website shouldn't exist ?

Anal sex was illegal in some states up until recently, that doesn't mean it's a good idea for it to be illegal

The website doesn't force you to cheat on your partner, you could for example, let your partner know you are on it. Some people on it are in sexless marriages, for example

On the other hand, I can also understand the argument for choice and privacy. But, without going deeper here, this type and method of choice and privacy stinks to my nose (if you understand my sense).

I mean, seems like this site exists in a way where one partner gets hurt. Even if the partner in-the-dark doesn't know about an affair, the effects of the affair will still have an impact. The cheater may also act out more often with a false sense of security and access provided by the app.

This thing is bound to be controversial, and bound to get hacked/exposed. Morals and business mix potently here.

What makes you say that? In my experience it is extremely rare to find anybody who thinks cheating on a partner is ethical, and I see no reason to think this particular group is any different. This is one of those things that most people feel very strongly about, and almost always in the same direction.

And that's exactly why the reaction is so gleeful. The people who use this site are perceived as scumbags, precisely because cheating is considered to be a grave moral (if not legal) crime. Outing them is considered justice. The idea that some of them might use the service with the consent of their partner isn't enough to break through that, nor is the idea that two wrongs don't make a right.

I don't agree with the gleeful reaction, but I see no hypocrisy here.

> 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?

Many of these proponents of the hack will unabashedly praise this hack for making these 'cheaters' identities public, but would surely argue against the use of hacking for releasing their own private account information for any site they have an account on.

The hypocrisy comes from the fact that hacking is a double-edged sword, and people are failing to see the other edge.

Context matters a lot. For example, most people would agree that killing is bad. On the other hand, most people would agree that killing in self defense, or to save the life of an innocent, is acceptable.

In the context of a hack, I imagine we'd all agree that hacking fluffy-bunnies-and-flowers.com and releasing all the subscriber information would be bad. On the other hand, I'd argue (and I think a lot of people agree) that hacking lets-help-each-other-plan-mass-murder-of-innocent-children.com and exposing its subscribers would be perfectly fine, even a good thing. There's nothing hypocritical about criticizing the former but praising the latter. The nature of the target counts.

All it really comes down to here is what category you think ashleymadison.com.com is in. Some people think it's in the former, because consenting adults and whatnot. Lots of people think it's in the latter, because they think cheating is extremely wrong. If you hold that opinion, then there's nothing hypocritical about praising a hack against a site like that. We might disagree with the opinion that ashleymadison.com is a bad site, but that's a different thing.

Talk about a flawed analogy!

I would argue that it's totally ethical to hack/steal/gawk at the data from a "Terrorists R Us" website that publicly advertised itself as a social network for terrorists, and took money from terrorists and terrorist wannabes to help them connect with other terrorists and swap bomb-making tips.

In fact, that kind of targeted attack would be the exact opposite of "dragnet" surveillance. If we could steal and dump all the data from ISIS's central database, we should absolutely do that!

Edit: And before anyone jumps in here with "terrorism isn't the same as cheating on your spouse"--of course it's not--which makes parent's analogy even more ludicrous.

Even here on hacker news, I've seen a handful of callouts in a way that used to be much rarer on discussion sites. I'm talking about the things where someone makes a comment, someone else then researches them or their history and the replies with a comment challenging them on whatever - perhaps tangentially related, but just "out of bounds" enough to be embarrassing and silencing.

More generally, it seems to be culturally acceptable these days to asymmetrically name-and-shame someone for offensive yet private and legal conduct. The thing is, it is usually difficult to defend each offender on a case-by-case basis, but it still doesn't mean it's the right thing to do to call in the anonymous hordes to attempt to ruin someone's life.

This is a clear example - chalking it up to "if they didn't want to risk exposure, they shouldn't have signed up" is right up there with "if you're not doing anything illegal, then you shouldn't have a problem with being monitored/drug-tested/whatever". Maybe there's a split in our society where one demo is completely comfortable with having all their private data out there and occasionally exposed, or to feel more communally "owned", but that doesn't mean it's right to expose someone else.

People (and organizations) have competence in different areas. I was genuinely impressed (in a dark patterns way) by the deftness with which they handle new signups: http://www.useronboard.com/how-ashleymadison-onboards-new-us...

I much preferred it to a video presentation, which even if viewed at 2x speed would have been much longer. And since it's based on showing screen shots, plain text isn't a good option. I have no particularly strong interest in dark patterns (and in fact have extreme distaste for them) but I found their mastery of the craft to be extraordinary, and the presentation to be well worth my time.

I have also noticed the really strange response from what feels like (anecdotally, I admit) EVERYONE being ecstatic that not only did this leak happen, but that Ashley Madison's users are "getting what's coming to them".

The comparison to fighting against a terrorism-inspired surveillance state was great.

Something about infosec/def contractors arguing ethics I find quite comical, especially since governments and their contractors don't sit down with AT&T and the like and discuss the nuances surrounding the ethics of what they wanted done with customers of such over crips and tea (at best it was probably limited to lawyer speak with the providers in some secret court with secret rules),and then discuss how most of the work would be outsourced to private companies/individuals to "protect information" (information collected from providers who collected it from customers) from the "outsiders" (customers of such providers).

To me the publication of the data is not quite so black and white because ultimately the Ashley-Madison data was going to escape into the rest of the internet. This assumes it hadn't already been published prior to the recent event and that's an assumption because Ashley-Madison is and has been in position to monetize the data in standard ways [and perhaps rather non-standard ways] from day one.

Which is a roundabout way of pointing out that Ashley-Madison is and always has been in a position to publish this data via changing its terms of service or by selling itself to a successor company and transfer the data as just another asset. The key here is that individual users don't hold license to the data, and so a successor company can do with it as they please restricted only by actual law-enforcement Uber/AirBnB style [as opposed to hiring lawyers and restricting their actions based on what's on the books].

Web-scale infidelity [even if much of it is of the weaker Jimmy Carter sort: "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."] will inevitably be followed by web-scale exposure. Sharing a secret means giving up access-control to the information...someone else can read my diary or talk to my best friend or read it off a web-server, and the likelihood of someone doing so correlates directly to their interest in doing so.

Which brings me back to the ethics. There's no clear deontological case for a universal law against publishing data, and the long-term Utilitarian optimum solution is intractable. So we're left with the normal social context of those aspiring to extra-marital affairs are worse than gossips or vice-versa.