Email from a Married, Female Ashley Madison User | Hacker News Reader

Email from a Married, Female Ashley Madison User

firstlook.org

31 pointsetiam26 comments

Most journalists choose to present a simplistic view of the world. Greenwald seems unafraid of saying "the truth is complicated," and then proceeding to tell a readable, worthwhile story. Every time one of these comes up, I make a note to read The Intercept more.

Given that it's now clear that seldom any real woman used the site, it's more likely than Greenwald was taken for a ride by Ashley Madison marketing dept.

Not what I want from a journalist...

I wonder what would opinions be like if she was a guy...

"My institution has a morality clause in all contracts."

I don't understand this. What is this? Is such a thing legally enforceable? Do people have the chutzpah to put this in serious contracts, or is this some kind of whacky church or the like? I know that in the UK just putting something in a contract doesn't actually make it legally enforceable, but does something like this fly in whichever state in the US this woman is in?

The kind of institution that has people

"Write about marriage law policy, encouraging traditional marriage for the good of children."

Is it enforceable, IANAL but I think it really depends on where you are.

The only thing that needs to be judged is how the security breach happened in the first place, not the lives of its users.

Just another site has been hacked, so what?

I find the personal and social implications much more interesting.

Millions of people lie the most important humans in their life, their partners.

I'm organizing a polyamory meet-up every month and the new people there often have the same kind of questions. They are in a monogamous relationship and want to "meet" other people (often, but not only, for sex) and want to know how they could get their partners to approve of this.

All they want a magical solution, but everything I can say is "talk to each other".

But most people treat their relationships as an entity that exists in its own realm.

They have their lifes and their relationships.

They don't talk to each other about what they really want, but plan marriage, kids and whatnot.

I still don't understand why most users didn't just create a dummy address to sign up.

I mean, you're about to join a website whose sole purpose is to help you cheat on your spouse, can you take literally 1 minute of your time to create `darthvader9432@gmail.com` and make it your "cheating address"?

Most of them did (including the anonymous woman in the article), but they had to pay for the service somehow and ended up using credit cards tracable to their identity. It's pretty easy to make a fake email address, much harder to pay for something anonymously.

Fair enough. I commented as I did because so far, all the stories/reports I've seen mentioned only email addresses as a way to identify users. The only searchable DB I saw where using email address.

I knew CC information were leaked as well but I didn't know there were searchable DB for these as well.

Pre-paid credit cards could be used. AM also excepted common gift cards such as Star Bucks as payment.

I think that, by claiming "it is mostly wrong to judge, except for this particular case, in which you can judge as much as you can", he's doing exactly that which he criticizes.

If he's going to out those that "hypocritically crusade for legally enforced morality", fair enough. But then I'm going to have a field day criticizing those that "hypocritically crusade against legally enforced morality" while actually expecting to live under the umbrella of such a system.

He adds: "It’s worth remembering that the reality is often far more complex than the smug moralizers suggest", which is true. But I also find worth remembering that the reality is often far more complex than the smug anti-moralizers suggest too.

"hypocritically crusade against legally enforced morality" while actually expecting to live under the umbrella of such a system."

What does this mean?

Greenwald didn't do that though, as far as I can see. He even said that in the case of the woman, while it may appear she is a terrible hypocrite, circumstances of people's lives are complex. Contrast this with Dan Savage writing about Josh Duggar. Savage personifies the gleeful vengeful hate that Greenwald writes about.

schadenfreude

I don't exactly have a lot of sympathy for this woman. Or any one caught up in this mess.

"My institution has a morality clause in all contracts."

Choose to sign the contract, choose to sign up for the site, choose to (maybe) have an affair?

Aside from my lack of sympathy, I don't think this woman has done something unforgivable, or that makes her "unhireable". People make mistakes all the time, shit happens. I have to say that if your in a place where this "matters" then you need to address those issues, and move on. Its a big world, your an adult and free to make your own decisions both good and bad.

Lets see your high horse when your spouse is enduring a drawn out death and you have nothing to comfort you.

"... in sickness and in health..."

Very easy to say, most of the times in health.

Well, it's called `vows` for a reason right?

Her plight isn't about her spouse now is it?

Its about the fact that she has a morality clause in her contract, and that she's going to get fired for upholding an arcane and backwards system that she can no longer support herself.

Its not like they don't beat you over the head with support groups for both patient and loved ones when you get ill. She had options for "seeking comfort" that didn't involve her violating her own beliefs.

Should I feel sympathy that she broke her contract? Should I feel sympathy that she told others to live to a standard that she could not live to herself? Should I feel sympathy that she held on to an ideal rather than the real? Just because I don't have sympathy doesn't mean I give a shit about what she has done. As I have said people make mistakes all the time, and what she did wouldn't impact me hiring or working for, or working with her, or being her friend. Its simply irrelevant.

it's not just violating her beliefs

it's violating her beliefs when they became inconvenient, after spending her life shitting on others who didn't believe the same as she used to

Right, hence schadenfreude and someone down voted me to hell for it to...

   I also used to write about marriage law policy, encouraging traditional 
   marriage for the good of children. My institution has a morality clause in 
   all contracts.

another family values fundie now whining for empathy when she made a career out of not having it for others? Cue the world's smallest violin.

This isn't some private person who got caught up in an affair; this is a person who spent her life hurting others because of how they had sex or choices they made of which she didn't approve (not that it was ever her business), so it's awesome to have a little turnabout.

The choice to sign up for the contract isn't really a choice. It's the de facto standard in many kinds of jobs, people are essentially forced into it like people are forced to give their employer their IP, sign a noncompete, etc. The alternative is to not have a job, which isn't an alternative for most. The only way to fight back against it is to regulate it back into the stone age where it belongs.

edit: in fact I think we need a kind of regulation that prohibits firings/requirements based on things which aren't explicitly necessarily to complete the tasks associated with a job -- to prevent the current moral disaster that is employer ownership of their employees' private lives as well as bowing to social media witch hunts against anyone who dares utter a sentence which contradicts the social justice orthodoxy which are becoming more and more prevalent.

I agree with you that contracts are "required" in a lot of situations.

"I also used to write about marriage law policy, encouraging traditional marriage for the good of children. My institution has a morality clause in all contracts."

In this case her job was to uphold the institution that she was violating. She was part of supporting the "moral disaster".

Didn't catch that in my first read-through; thanks I wouldn't have noticed it. That adds an interesting dynamic to the whole issue in this case, though I think upon reflection it doesn't really change my opinion of the matter. For me it's about the right to keep your personal life seperate from your employability. It's essentially a privacy issue; we can't guarantee our private affairs can be actually kept secret (people will get doxed, often out of spite) but we could mitigate the damage it causes by preventing people in power from acting on it. This goes for law enforcement too, and is actually enshrined in law though there are loopholes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com