The hackers threatened to make public all user data if the site, where married people seek adventure on the side, is not closed. This event makes you wonder: what will be the world where moral standards are protected by hackers?
In July 2015, hackers calling themselves The Impact Team sent a threatening letter to the Canadian website Ashely Madison. This is the first site designed for married users who would like to make an acquaintance for the purpose of adultery. Among other things, the service “travel” was offered for those who go on a business trip: the site made it easier to find new acquaintances in the place where the traveler arrived.
The hackers reported that they obtained the personal data of all users. And they presented an ultimatum: either the site is closed, or this data will be published. Since payments on the site were made using credit cards, customers could be traced even if their emails were fake. The threat is serious: the site had more than 37 million members, including the rich and influential, mainly from the United States and Canada. The hackers then proceeded to consistently deliver on their promises.
Pass the tests
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Who is the victim?
Ironically, among those who went on a dubious “journey” was the CEO of the company, Noel Biederman. In print and on television, he was often and not without pleasure presented as the “king of infidelity”, while emphasizing that he had in mind only his work: as a father of two children and a happy husband, he never needed to commit adultery, he declared.
However, the hackers published the emails that he exchanged with “Melissa from the spa”, “Mila” and the third girlfriend, whose services he paid for. So Biederman was caught failing to keep users safe and obviously lying. He had to quit.
This case is fundamentally different from previous hacks and raises new ethical questions. So far, hackers have targeted government crimes or financier fraud, such as when WikiLeaks published reports of torture by the US army in Iraq, or the SwissLeaks group uncovered tax fraud that was handled by the HSBS bank. But this time the hackers have a new goal – privacy. Their actions can no longer be justified by the fight against the system, now they invade the realm of privacy and morality.
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Of course, the company that became their victim can hardly be called impeccable for many reasons, including because prostitutes offered their services under the guise of married ladies on the Ashely Madison website, and the correspondence with visitors (who paid for it) was also conducted by the company’s employees and bots themselves . However, in addition to the direct ones, there are also secondary victims: these are men, women and children who, as a result of the disclosure of data, will be involved in family quarrels, divorces and litigations.
And this is where the problem is revealed: what is good and what is bad on the Internet is decided by hackers. But are we ready to trust their judgments?
The Age of Transparency
We are on the cusp of a new era where the internet, by virtue of its transparency, will succeed where religion has failed — it will restore humanity and honesty to us, suggests Australian philosopher Peter Singer.1. This is an optimistic view that not everyone agrees with. “What will it be like for us to live in a world where we are watched without our knowledge and then paraded in front of everyone? — French philosopher Alexandre Lacroix argues2. “Are we going to lose the ability to not think about how we look from the outside, drinking too much, talking nonsense or showing sexual curiosity? Isn’t some secrecy a condition of happiness? Do we really dream of constantly living under the sun of Good?
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Any dating site is a huge repository of personal data. Which are not so well protected from indiscreet curiosity from the outside. Let’s imagine for a moment what would happen if homophobic hackers made public user data tomorrow him?
Now we seem to have to think not only about Big Brother – the state that collects and stores our personal data, but also about a lot of unpredictable Little Brothers.
It remains to add that in this story, Ashely Madison showed a marked resistance to moral pressure: his leaders offered a reward of $500 to anyone who provided information that would allow the hackers to be identified. After adultery, they decided to encourage denunciation as well.
1 P. Singer «Visible Man», Harper’s Magazine, 2011.
2 A. Lacroix “Hacking is cheating?” (Philosophy, 2015).