Ashley Madison offers £300,000 reward amid reports of member suicides

[DGuller]

I agree with what Berkut said and ultimately I think this cuts to a deeper issue - we are all a society of horrible busy-bodies. We want and need to know what our neighbours are doing, what they are up to and whether they conform to our standards - and sex and sexual life style are the areas where we are the worst offenders about it. We should learn to leave people alone - but I think in this culture, including the media culture, it is a pipe dream - and focus on our own lives instead (where, I suspect we subconsciously find enough stuff to worry about and be afraid of, that we rather look elsewhere - to our "shadow" we project on other people).

That goes too far the other way.  We as society are busy-bodies because to some extent that is a necessary condition for society to exist.  Societal norms exist for a reason:  we're all collectively better off when they are adhered to, but individually there is a lot of temptation and incentive to violate them. 

In modern societies we delegated a lot of that enforcement to the judicial authorities, but it's neither practical nor desirable to delegate all of it, unless we want to live under sharia law.  That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be some price to pay for violating societal norms that aren't covered by judicial authorities.  The trick is to have the punishment fit the crime, and to have collective flexibility to declare some old societal norms obsolete if that's where the consensus is shifting.

[Razgovory]

They gave a private 3rd party information, and that information was stolen and made public.

That is no more a betrayal of their "right to privacy" than if a guy told a friend in confidence he was having an affair, and the friend went and shared the news broadly.

More like the person eavesdropping behind the door blabs to everyone. I think most would agree that that person has invaded your privacy.

A guy who eavesdrops and shares secrets is an asshole, I agree. Not sure I would start talking about "foundational rights" though.

My point is that this is not something that people should have even one bit of "Yeah, but..." about. Obviously it is a crime, what I am talking about is how people respond to it - there is a lot of "Gee, of course privacy rights...but HAHAHA THE ADULTERERS GOT CAUGHT!!!!" which makes me rather doubt that they give much of a shit about actual privacy rights to begin with, since they clearly don't understand what it means.

I don't see how privacy rights really factor in here that much.  An adulterer can't sue his/her partner for revealing the affair and breaching privacy laws.  Nor can they charge a third party  that set them up for violation of civil rights if they blabbed.  It generally is not illegal to reveal information about someone, if it was newspapers wouldn't be able to print anything.

[Razgovory]

Some bits from one of my faves, Dan Savage.

I tend to disagree with Dan - the problem is not the sex outside the marriage, the problem is the lying about it. Lying about significant matters tends to be corrosive to a loving relationship. Simply saying "relationships aren't depositions" is just glib. Sure, people lie to each other all the time - about inconsequential stuff. I don't think it is right to lie about things that are important, and from what I've seen, it rarely ends well.

I think his musings on a recent case of a mid-level executive who was caught "cheating" were much better - essentially, we do not know the reasons or the background, nor we have a right to ask or find it out - this is the content of his right to privacy. BB already gave a number of reasons; the guy could also be in an open relationship, he could have agreed with his wife to hook up with other people (but in the Ashley Madison case, may not want the spouse to know all the details - and neither the spouse may want to know them), etc.

I agree with what Berkut said and ultimately I think this cuts to a deeper issue - we are all a society of horrible busy-bodies. We want and need to know what our neighbours are doing, what they are up to and whether they conform to our standards - and sex and sexual life style are the areas where we are the worst offenders about it. We should learn to leave people alone - but I think in this culture, including the media culture, it is a pipe dream - and focus on our own lives instead (where, I suspect we subconsciously find enough stuff to worry about and be afraid of, that we rather look elsewhere - to our "shadow" we project on other people).

A gay man against Gossip!  Now I've seen everything!

[Martinus]

I agree with what Berkut said and ultimately I think this cuts to a deeper issue - we are all a society of horrible busy-bodies. We want and need to know what our neighbours are doing, what they are up to and whether they conform to our standards - and sex and sexual life style are the areas where we are the worst offenders about it. We should learn to leave people alone - but I think in this culture, including the media culture, it is a pipe dream - and focus on our own lives instead (where, I suspect we subconsciously find enough stuff to worry about and be afraid of, that we rather look elsewhere - to our "shadow" we project on other people).

That goes too far the other way.  We as society are busy-bodies because to some extent that is a necessary condition for society to exist.  Societal norms exist for a reason:  we're all collectively better off when they are adhered to, but individually there is a lot of temptation and incentive to violate them. 

In modern societies we delegated a lot of that enforcement to the judicial authorities, but it's neither practical nor desirable to delegate all of it, unless we want to live under sharia law.  That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be some price to pay for violating societal norms that aren't covered by judicial authorities.  The trick is to have the punishment fit the crime, and to have collective flexibility to declare some old societal norms obsolete if that's where the consensus is shifting.

Well, it should be known by now that I never held societal norms in high regard. This is a reason I dislike anything with a whiff of puritanism.

Besides, as I said and psychology has amply demonstrated, usually extreme, disproportionate reactions to perceived violations of social norms by others (so, pretty much all the internet lynch mobs we have seen of late)  actually result from own, unresolved complexes and frustrations (something called "shadow") that we project on others. It is much healthier to try to resolve those instead - so as a society we should rather encourage introspection and discourage pillorying, at least as long as we think psychological health of the people is a good thing (not necessarily true, at least for most politicians and corporations, who find it easier to manipulate and sell stuff to neurotics).

[Eddie Teach]

I don't see how privacy rights really factor in here that much.  An adulterer can't sue his/her partner for revealing the affair and breaching privacy laws.  Nor can they charge a third party  that set them up for violation of civil rights if they blabbed.  It generally is not illegal to reveal information about someone, if it was newspapers wouldn't be able to print anything.

It's the method of gathering information that is illegal, in large part because it invades people's expectations of privacy.

[Razgovory]

I don't see how privacy rights really factor in here that much.  An adulterer can't sue his/her partner for revealing the affair and breaching privacy laws.  Nor can they charge a third party  that set them up for violation of civil rights if they blabbed.  It generally is not illegal to reveal information about someone, if it was newspapers wouldn't be able to print anything.

It's the method of gathering information that is illegal, in large part because it invades people's expectations of privacy.

Yes, the method of gathering the information is illegal here because it is theft (or whatever the computer equivalent here is).  Not because it violates others expectations of privacy.  If the website revealed the information it had voluntarily, I don't think it would be a crime.  Websites sell user information all the time.  It would depend on all that little text they make you agree to, but I don't think there is a hard and fast law that says a private entity can't reveal information about another private entity.  There are always some expectations.  I don't know if you can reveal someone's credit card information (that might be abeding fraud), and there are defamation laws (which are weak in the US), and a few other laws that rarely used and of dubious ability to prosecute.

If I were to invite you to my house and we talked privately, there is no way I can legally prevent you from telling others what we talked about, or that the carpet was dirty, or that I wore brown trousers.  The constitution doesn't protect private parties from talking about one another, which is good since it would severely impede the First Amendment.

[Admiral Yi]

If the website revealed the information it had voluntarily, I don't think it would be a crime.

I bet it would be fraud.

On a different note, I saw a commercial for Ashley Madison on TV the other night.

[Eddie Teach]

Yes, the method of gathering the information is illegal here because it is theft (or whatever the computer equivalent here is).  Not because it violates others expectations of privacy.  If the website revealed the information it had voluntarily, I don't think it would be a crime.  Websites sell user information all the time.  It would depend on all that little text they make you agree to, but I don't think there is a hard and fast law that says a private entity can't reveal information about another private entity.  There are always some expectations.  I don't know if you can reveal someone's credit card information (that might be abeding fraud), and there are defamation laws (which are weak in the US), and a few other laws that rarely used and of dubious ability to prosecute.

If I were to invite you to my house and we talked privately, there is no way I can legally prevent you from telling others what we talked about, or that the carpet was dirty, or that I wore brown trousers.  The constitution doesn't protect private parties from talking about one another, which is good since it would severely impede the First Amendment.

You could choose not to invite me into your house and not to say anything to me. Since you chose to reveal those things to me, you're accepting the risk that I reveal them to others. That doesn't mean you accept some third party spying on the conversation and publishing a transcript.

If Ashley Madison revealed the information themselves, it would probably go against the agreements they made with users. Assuming it didn't, they would be in their rights to do so. But that's not what's at issue here. You can call this hack a theft- but what did they steal? Confidential personal information. It was a violation of the users' privacy.

[Martinus]

If the website revealed the information it had voluntarily, I don't think it would be a crime. 

I don't know what the US legislation on data protection is, but at least in the EU voluntary or negligent disclosure of sensitive personal data about customers by a business is a serious criminal offence, unless there is an express consent.

[Tonitrus]

If the website revealed the information it had voluntarily, I don't think it would be a crime. 

I don't know what the US legislation on data protection is, but at least in the EU voluntary or negligent disclosure of sensitive personal data about customers by a business is a serious criminal offence, unless there is an express consent.

It's probably buried somewhere in the Terms of Service.

[Martinus]

If the website revealed the information it had voluntarily, I don't think it would be a crime. 

I don't know what the US legislation on data protection is, but at least in the EU voluntary or negligent disclosure of sensitive personal data about customers by a business is a serious criminal offence, unless there is an express consent.

It's probably buried somewhere in the Terms of Service.

By express consent I meant a consent to a specific disclosure (e.g. to transfer it to a subsidiary on whose servers the data is stored), not a blanket consent to disclose the data to anyone under any circumstances. Incidentally, again probably a EU vs US difference, but when it comes to sensitive data protection, the consent needs to be separately given (usually by ticking a box next to the content of the consent on the terms of service form) and cannot be inferred from accepting general T&C.

[Tamas]

Meh. Now you complain about caring too much for other people's private lives, in other cases people complain about modern society being a collection of shutoffs never caring what's up in the lives of others.

I wouldn't overdramatise it. People shared private information with the company and the gazillion other customers. Stealing that and sharing it with people the customers did not want it to get shared with is a crime.

And while they have their right to privacy and to have sex with whoever they want to without me interfering, I have the right to have an opinion about the users of the site, which is not particularly positive.
Yes, there can be a million reasons why they decide to cheat on their spouse, I would even concede that many of those are valid reasons, but for MOST of those reasons they would not need to post pictures of their genitalia on a site SPECIFICALLY meant to keep the whole cheating part in secret.


Now, like garbon's Man of Excuse Making pointed out, if a marriage is ONLY about laying exclusive rights on the private parts of your spouse, then it is probably not very strong to begin with HOWEVER the oath of fidelity IS a key part of it unless there is an explicit agreement between the parties otherwise.

Does that make it ok to have their info stolen and published? No, not one bit.

Can that, in turn, make me feel sorry for them? No, not really.

[garbon]

Now, like garbon's Man of Excuse Making pointed out

Talking about infidelity is one minor thing that Dan Savage has done in his career.

[Martinus]

Now, like garbon's Man of Excuse Making pointed out

Talking about infidelity is one minor thing that Dan Savage has done in his career.

I don't think Tamas would know about him, unless Dan Savage's interests included goats and beets.

[derspiess]

Does that make it ok to have their info stolen and published? No, not one bit.

Can that, in turn, make me feel sorry for them? No, not really.

Ditto on both.