[HN Gopher] Catholic priest quits after "anonymized" data reveal...
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       Catholic priest quits after "anonymized" data revealed alleged use
       of Grindr
        
       Author : tolbish
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2021-07-21 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | Hokusai wrote:
       | If he was identified then it was not anonym data. This would be a
       | grave break of the GDPR in Europe. Anonymizing data is a hard
       | problem that usually requires statisticians.
        
       | IndexPointer wrote:
       | How much does it cost to buy that "anonymized" data from grindr
       | or tinder?
       | 
       | I feel it could be really useful if I ever need to blackmail
       | someone.
        
       | culopatin wrote:
       | Poor guy. Meanwhile a bunch of others get protected when they
       | touch kids.
       | 
       | Things like these make me want to drop out of anything software
       | related and live a life of physical stuff only. Move to a village
       | and be the local mechanic or baker without a website and just an
       | analog phone line, at most
        
         | thatguy0900 wrote:
         | Hmm. Your use of poor guy makes me wonder if I should feel bad
         | for him. I don't, because my gut reaction is that he lives off
         | of the donations for a religion he doesn't appear to believe in
         | himself, and presumably most of the people who pays his salary
         | would want him gone. What are the spiritual implications of
         | following and confessing to a nonobservant priest to catholics?
         | Though I suppose after all the high ranking pedo stuff came out
         | anyone who is still a catholic is kind of asking for it.
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | >anyone who is still a catholic is kind of asking for it
           | 
           | Would you mind expanding on this?
        
             | thatguy0900 wrote:
             | Anyone who is still a Catholic after long running high
             | level pedophile coverups and relocations should expect the
             | clergy to be a little less than holy, probably.
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | Catholicism: the one religion you're allowed to openly
               | call bullshit without being considered a bigot,
               | apparently
        
               | jwalgenbach wrote:
               | No. They're all bullshit.
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | glad you have it all figured out--may I ask how you
               | achieved this enlightenment? did the sense of superiority
               | over others come with it or was that the result of
               | something else?
        
           | headShrinker wrote:
           | " makes me wonder if I should feel bad for him. I don't,
           | because my gut reaction is that he..."
           | 
           | You don't know him and you can't claim to know what he thinks
           | or believes. No one follows the catholic theology to
           | absolutely strict adherence. Just some are more strict about
           | some aspects. You accusing him of having no faith or belief
           | in the religion he has dedicated his life to is offensive.
           | Your quick judgement is probably because he's gay... and
           | religious, thus a hypocrite, in some peoples eyes. Just
           | remember it's the Church that turned away from gays not the
           | other way around.
           | 
           | Having to abstain from physical contact with another adult
           | human is a deeply unnatural and inhuman protocol. I don't
           | judge any one for wanting to touched and loved.
           | 
           | As for your quick and abrasive judgement: A group of men
           | preparing to stone an adulterous woman to death were
           | addressed by Jesus with the words: 'He that is without sin
           | among you, let him first cast a stone at her' (John 8:7).
        
             | thatguy0900 wrote:
             | This is just absurdity. They can't have relations, and
             | relations with men is an even further crime. I don't care
             | that he's gay at all, I'm neither catholic or a Christian.
             | But to say he can believe in what he's preaching while he's
             | in the upper echelons of the church while using grindr at
             | the same time is just lunacy. I mean he doesn't even just
             | have a secret boyfriend or something, he's using a hook up
             | app. Jesus also destroyed a temple when he found it full of
             | merchants,I wonder how he would react to the catholics.
        
               | lupire wrote:
               | I recommend you watch Six Feet Under
        
           | gdulli wrote:
           | A linked article says that he "held a critical oversight role
           | in the Catholic Church's response to the recent spate of
           | sexual abuse and misconduct scandals."
        
             | thatguy0900 wrote:
             | Well, at least he himself was just using grindr with
             | consenting adults. Hopefully, at least.
        
               | headShrinker wrote:
               | And hopefully you don't have sex with children. Though we
               | don't have any evidence to indicate that you don't... so
               | you are suspect. Hopefully you only engage in sex acts
               | with consenting adults
        
               | thatguy0900 wrote:
               | Well you won't find that my direct peers and companions
               | have a recent history of shuffling pedophiles around when
               | they're caught so I suspect the situation is a little
               | different.
        
               | headShrinker wrote:
               | We won't know the depth of your guilt (or innocence)
               | until a full investigation is concluded. Your "peers" are
               | also suspected child predators.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | schoolornot wrote:
       | AT&T is still installing CarrierIQ on handsets collecting all
       | sorts of sensitive info about people.
        
       | tsywke44 wrote:
       | It's so interesting. There's a huge amount of privacy-related
       | online REEEing about irrelevant issues, such as anonymized error
       | telemetry in open source software.
       | 
       | Yet when mobile phone carriers sell your real-time location data
       | to random entities, it seems nobody gives a damn.
        
         | kevinventullo wrote:
         | My thoughts exactly. You think they'll ever drag the CEO of
         | T-Mobile or Xfinity in front of Congress for privacy
         | violations?
        
       | tinalumfoil wrote:
       | This article is just re-reporting what a newsletter discovered.
       | The original article seems like it has more info.
       | https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/pillar-investigates-usccb-g...
        
         | elliekelly wrote:
         | This article wrongly conflates being gay with being "only a
         | step away from sexual predation."
         | 
         | > But any use of the app by the priest could be seen to present
         | a conflict with his role in developing and overseeing national
         | child protection policies, as Church leaders have called in
         | recent months for a greater emphasis on technology
         | accountability in Church policies.
         | 
         | That a priest is gay might violate Catholic teaching but it has
         | absolutely no bearing whatsoever on his ability to develop
         | child protection policies and to suggest his sexuality "could
         | be seen to present a conflict" is, at best, willful ignorance.
        
           | lupire wrote:
           | A priest who is going to bars has less time for 1:1 private
           | contact with children....
        
           | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
           | No it's not attacking gays. These policies were implemented
           | back in the mid 2010s and sexual orientation is irrelevant.
           | It's a huge deal where priest basically are held to an even
           | higher standard publicly. So while in the 70s this priest
           | could've been shifted elsewhere, now because he's publicly a
           | sexually active person, the Church wants little to do with
           | them.
           | 
           | I've been through like 3 of these types of meetings our
           | church made us do (when I was still Catholic). They were more
           | like "if you see something, say something" and "how to catch
           | a priest predator" inadvertently. It's more like the Catholic
           | church only wants virgins and people who can't be proven
           | otherwise as priests right now.
        
             | headShrinker wrote:
             | " It's more like the Catholic church only wants virgins and
             | people who can't be proven otherwise as priests right now."
             | 
             | But let's be honest it's unspoken that they prefer straight
             | virgins right?
             | 
             | Actually it's spoken. Quite verbose in fact. The church is
             | constantly attacking gays and for them to be non-bias in
             | this case is completely out of character and you are giving
             | them way too much courtesy.
        
       | nonfamous wrote:
       | Focusing on the data privacy angle here, I can see how location
       | data from the telcos would allow the publication to identify the
       | priest's device ID from the location data, knowing where he
       | lives, works, etc. But how did they correlate that with his use
       | of the Grindr app? Do the telcos provide data on app usage by
       | location and time, or did they somehow get data from Grindr
       | directly?
        
         | GeekyBear wrote:
         | Including frameworks that collect and sell customer data is one
         | of the ways that developers can monetize a free app.
         | 
         | Selling that data to third party data brokers allows the data
         | brokers to build up a detailed user profile for pretty much
         | everyone.
         | 
         | >The data broker business model involves accumulating
         | information about internet users (and non-users) and then
         | selling it. As such, data brokers have highly detailed profiles
         | on billions of individuals, comprising age, race, sex, weight,
         | height, marital status, education level, politics, shopping
         | habits, health issues, holiday plans, and more.
         | 
         | These profiles come not just from data you've shared, but from
         | data shared by others, and from data that's been inferred. In
         | its 2014 report into the industry, the US Federal Trade
         | Commission (FTC) showed how a single data broker had 3,000
         | "data segments" for nearly every US consumer.
         | 
         | https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-third-party-data-br...
         | 
         | The data brokers buy the data from disparate sources and de-
         | anonymize it.
         | 
         | Another example of Grindr profiting off of user data that
         | should be kept private:
         | 
         | >Grindr is revealing its users' HIV status to third-party
         | companies
         | 
         | https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17189078/grindr-hiv-status-data...
        
       | geerlingguy wrote:
       | As a Catholic, I thought it might be important to raise one point
       | here (since it seems everyone immediately jumps to "the Church is
       | firing someone for who he wants to have sex with").
       | 
       | A Roman Catholic[1] priest is obligated (takes a vow when
       | ordained) to not have sex with _anyone_ , and it would be
       | scandalous to find a priest--especially one with so much power
       | and connections--to be hooking up with multiple partners in any
       | situation. The app and sexual orientation are immaterial.
       | 
       | The other takeaway is that all the HN preaching about the
       | importance of data privacy and how advertisers are grifting us,
       | and how 'free' services are _never_ free--this is probably the
       | most lucid illustration of those facts yet.
       | 
       | Even those who try to aggregate anonymous data in a safe way are
       | never going to be perfect at making sure nobody could associate
       | the data back to an individual. The best thing is to not use the
       | free (or cheap/ad-heavy) apps and services that do collect
       | location information or other identifiable metrics.
       | 
       | [1] There are other parts of the Catholic church where priests
       | are allowed to marry, and there actually are some Roman Catholic
       | priests who converted from other faiths that allowed marriage,
       | who are still married.
        
         | elliekelly wrote:
         | If it were only about celibacy then they wouldn't have bothered
         | to mention his trips to gay bars. Priests can go to a bar. They
         | can drink alcohol. They can exist near and around gay people
         | and straight people go to gay bars, too.
        
           | nonfamous wrote:
           | Grindr isn't a gay bar directory. It's a hookup app.
        
             | headShrinker wrote:
             | He knows that and is alluded to the fact that the article
             | mentions the gay bar to taint his character and create a
             | narrative that he is lurking on the down low.
             | 
             | Many people go to gay bars not to hook up, but to be around
             | other gay people. Gay bars are not a hookup app.
        
               | lupire wrote:
               | Why are there gay bars but not gay restaurants or gay
               | coffee shops?
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | tolbish wrote:
       | I have updated the submission title to reflect the article's
       | title change.
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-21 23:02 UTC)