In Theory: Do Ashley Madison hackers have the moral high ground?

Computer hackers calling themselves the Impact Team made news in recent weeks after hacking into the affair-enabling website AshleyMadison.com and threatening to release the information of millions of users if the site’s parent company didn’t cease operations.

This week, the group appears to have made good on that threat, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Under the headline “Time’s Up!” the group released a data trove that has been analyzed by two information security firms and deemed legitimate. Information on more than 30 million users — data that includes usernames, passwords, full names, home addresses and limited credit card information — has been dumped on the so-called dark web.

“Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men,” Impact Team wrote in a statement accompanying the online dump Tuesday. “We have explained the fraud, deceit and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data.”

The group went on to offer their advice to the site’s millions of users.

“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,” the release said. “Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you’ll get over it.”

It could be argued that the hackers were acting on moral grounds by exposing cheaters and hopeful cheaters. But the breach is almost guaranteed to end marriages and ruin lives, especially with the names and addresses of millions of unfaithful spouses online for anyone to see.

Question: Do you condone or condemn the hackers’ actions?

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St. Paul writing in the New Testament says that all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. While what the hackers did by exposing those who were looking into the idea of cheating on their spouses, and who may have actually cheated, was not wrong, it also wasn’t helpful. True, they shouldn’t have done it — but who the hell gave the hackers the authority to be the whistle-blowers, and what was their purpose?

In the gospel according to John, a woman is brought to Jesus, and this woman had been caught in the act of adultery. Those who caught her were just itching to stone her to death, as the law allowed, but Jesus stopped them in their tracks by saying, “Whoever is without sin, cast the first stone.” Of course, no one dared to cast a stone, because even those who wanted to kill her knew that they weren’t perfect.

That’s what I would say to the hackers: “Are you without sin? Are you proud of everything you’ve ever done? Maybe you haven’t cheated on a spouse, but how about a girlfriend or boyfriend? Or maybe you’re perfect in the love arena (probably not!), but how about in the financial arena? Have you ever cheated on your taxes? Have you ever taken your employer’s property (e.g., a pen) home from work with you?”

So exactly what did the hackers have in mind? Those who “outed” the sinners by exposing them have also “outed” themselves as hypocrites. Why don’t you folks come to church? We always have room for one more hypocrite!

The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge

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The hackers illegally stole private, confidential information and released it to the public. ALM enabled people to cheat on their spouses. Adulterers used ALM to cheat on their spouses. There are no innocent or noble parties involved in any of this. Each party committed acts worthy of condemnation.

Of course, none of my sins paints a pretty picture either. In Romans 3:10 the Bible says of humanity: “There is none righteous, not even one.” Verse 23 affirms that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Sin is never noble or worthy of praise, and neither is exposing sin by sinful means.

God exposes our sin for what it is by the holiness and truth of his law. He exposed the condemnation our sin deserves in what his holy son Jesus Christ had to endure on the cross in order to pay the price for our sins. God exposes the destructiveness of sin by the horrible consequences it always produces, including broken marriages, ruined reputations and exposure to shame and blackmail and, in some cases, even disease.

Still, one of the most amazing truths is that God loves sinners enough to sacrifice the life of his son to redeem them and reconcile them to him. It seems that ultimately God is the only one whose actions we can condone.

Pastor Jon Barta
Burbank

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Exposing criminal actions for the purpose of stopping crime has its valid place in society.

Hacking as moral police?

People are going to do whatever they want regardless of exposure. However, many may change their ways if exposed, or their way of doing things, while others are only remorseful that they were caught.

Moral policing, whether by legislation or public exposure, may suppress some immoral behavior, but that doesn’t seem to stem the tide of it as a whole. The bigger problem is the loss of values within our society at large; the promotion of immoral behavior through music, movies, games, advertisement, lifestyles, etc. The truth is each individual must take responsibility for their own actions and enjoy the benefits or suffer the consequences. And misbehavior is usually the outward sign of an inner conflict.

Without finding a solution to life’s inner conflicts, on an individual level, society (including hackers) may expose misbehavior, but not stop it. It only changes when an individual recognizes their “troubled ways” and reaches out with their heart for a solution. The good news is the creator of our universe and the giver of life has provided solutions. One just has to look for them.

Terry Neven
Pastor
Montrose Community Church

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Did the Impact Team have the right to hack into the Ashley Madison and Established Men website and reveal the data of men and women committing adultery ?

Adultery is a crime so heinous that it is one of the five prohibitions of the big Ten ( the Commandments, not the football league). However, how one goes about reporting such offenses are as regulated as any biblical prohibition. In our tradition, we are commanded not to shame anyone in public . It is considered tantamount to murder. Therefore, we are to tell those who may be harmed by the infidelity of the partner, privately, of our suspicions and /or knowledge.

As has been reported, already, there have been suicides attributed to the public announcement of the adulterous liaisons. Those who went public with the information might be seen as “accessories before the fact” to murder in a civil court and certainly in a Judaic court.

Rabbi Mark Sobel
Temple Beth Emet
Burbank

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Stories like this one must be the electronic universe’s way of keeping me entertained without the heartache Trump quotes bring me. There is so much condemning to be done here that it seems silly to single out Impact Team, but I certainly don’t condone them either.

The Impact Team seems both blissfully ignorant and not a little self-righteous to single out Avid Life Media and their Ashley Madison.com and Established Men for exposure. Are these hackers unfamiliar with the unfaithful, duplicitious and just generally tacky level of human interaction comprising way too much of the Internet?

They call ALM and its members “stupid,” as though this is some deep insight. At least 30,000 people — doctors, lawyers, public officials and apparently huge numbers of civil servants — used their real names, addresses and work emails to hook up with other people who have their brains in their pants. Sorry, stupid doesn’t come close here.

ALM apparently guaranteed customers their information would be kept private. On the Internet. This is not fraud and deceit, because it is an impossibility that should have made any buyer beware. To me the customers and the company found their perfect match in each other. The blindly immoral meet the immorally blind.

Yes, shamed customers, please bring legal cases, I need the laughs.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose

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I don’t condone the hackers who dumped the Ashley Madison information however; I don’t fully condemn them either because I sympathize with their cause.

AshleyMadison.com and EstablishedMen.com along with their parent company, Avid Life Media are despicable, in my opinion. I also have a hard time feeling any sympathy for most people using these sites.

The bottom line is that the very idea of these websites is antithetical to moral behavior. The fact that ALM sees no problem making money in this way is a sad commentary on unfettered commercialism: our society’s capitalistic drive to make money by any means. Although it would not be legal and therefore I would not condone hackers just shutting these sites down by crashing them either, I would have a much harder time condemning that action. In my opinion, that would have been the more ethical move by the Impact Team.

Impact has no idea about the specific situations of every person whose information they made public. Although most Ashley Madison members don’t deserve any consideration for their actions, we don’t know them all personally. It may have been mutually agreed upon between a married couple who are polyamorous and wanted to spice up their love life for instance. Some of these men may have been about to shut down their membership, confess, and seek help, forgiveness and reconciliation. The women who joined EstablishedMen.com were not acting in their best interest by making wealth their first criterion for choosing a mate but, they were not doing anything illegal or immoral necessarily, just misguided.

Punishing potentially innocent people for the acts of guilty ones is reminiscent of the cruel god depicted in the Old Testament. How any higher power could decide to punish the Pharaoh by hurting and killing innocents with plagues is beyond comprehension. He also supposedly drowned the entire Egyptian army as it followed after the Jews. Even if the story were all true, certainly many were military conscripts fearful for their lives if they disobeyed or enlisted soldiers just trying to support their families in any way they could. Yet, he drowned them all, innocent and guilty alike.

I would be extremely pleased if these websites never came online again and those engaging in clandestine, destructive, deceitful extramarital affairs deserve no sympathy. But to invade the privacy of people you know nothing about and potentially destroy families and lives is not an effective way to prove a point about morality.

Joshua Lewis Berg
Humanist Celebrant
Glendale

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My first inclination upon hearing the news was to breathe a sigh of satisfaction that this miserable organization (that profits by encouraging and facilitating infidelity) had been so overwhelmingly smashed and exposed for the scummy company that it is.

When I had first heard of Ashley Madison, I wondered, “who was this jaded gal to create such a company?” Was she the evil twin of the snack-cake queen? Was she a disgruntled divorcee who determined to fill her calendar with adulterous suitors in revenge for the women her philandering husband once squandered the family resources upon? I thought that such a company was not only damnable, it was traitorous to civilization and even treasonous to nations, as the deliberate act of destroying families could ultimately destroy what’s built upon their strength. We should all cheer AM’s downfall!

However, the Impact Team, so called, that caused the exposure of the company’s fraud, and named its customers, hacked into private files. It appears to be breaking-and-entering, digitally speaking, and it’s hardly different than having the Chinese spy-hack the personal data of our citizens, or some rogue civil servant releasing classified files to compromise government agents and operations.

The Impact Team used blackmail, sent filthy rants, and presented an overall callous spirit and creepy relish regarding this whole affair (pardon the pun) and I don’t see that they are morally superior to the organization that they exposed. Theft, property destruction, even assault could possibly be charged, as their actions brought such anguish to Ashley Madison members that some reportedly committed suicide. Imagine doing something so harsh to someone that the only option they perceive is to die. Imagine having your own worst thoughts displayed for everyone else to judge!

God says that adulterers “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1Co 6:9 NIV). Most of us agree that “cheating” is faithless and rotten, and certainly immoral. Worse is anyone who would promote it and also profit thereby.

Jesus taught that, “It is inevitable that temptations to sin will come, but how terrible it will be for the person through whom they come!” (Luke 17:1 ISV). It’s clear that the whole Ashley Madison enterprise is godless and under judgment, but its demise looks more like a Satanic attack than a righteous crusade.

Remember, Satan’s very name means “accuser,” and now millions of foolish sinners will face public accusation and condemnation and have their lives destroyed as a result of the Impact Team’s ratting them out. Perhaps it is just desserts, but what if it was something else, something that would humiliate you to death? The one benefit of all this is that people will think twice before joining anything online, and those on a journey to Hell have just been given opportunity to repent. That’s an opportunity God extends to any of us for our own skeletons in the closet.

Rev. Bryan A. Griem
Tujunga

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There are important lessons to be drawn from the release of the stolen Ashley Madison data. One is that deception has a price, in this case the public shaming of millions of people who thought that they could cheat on spouses without consequence.

Another is that the rewards of bad behavior are illusory, especially when compared to the peace that comes with trust and fidelity. The Ashley Madison website attempts to make infidelity alluring, but ultimately, adultery is destructive. In this case, even the basic proposition may have been false. It has been reported that the majority of accounts for women were faked, meaning that millions of men have risked their reputations and marriages in pursuit of women who don’t exist.

We don’t know with certainty what motivated the hackers, but even if we assume that their intent was pure, we also must recognize that embarrassing Ashley Madison’s management and customers doesn’t guarantee that their hearts will change. Personally, I believe it is even less likely that our larger society will develop a greater respect for marriage vows because of the hackers’ work.

A website that encourages, and even facilitates, adultery is repulsive by any measure. By promising confidentiality, Ashley Madison appeared to offer those seeking to cheat a clandestine channel for finding the like-minded. But in truth, there are no secret passageways to happiness and joy. The true path, as outlined in scripture, is straightforward and clear. It is based on being faithful to the covenants we make with God and, in the case of marriage, with our spouse. On a practical level, keeping those covenants instills peace of mind. Spiritually it helps us prepare for life in the presence of God.

Michael White
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
La Crescenta