[HN Gopher] A priest was outed for using Grindr, experts say it'...
___________________________________________________________________
A priest was outed for using Grindr, experts say it's a warning
sign for privacy
Author : jasonhansel
Score : 91 points
Date : 2021-07-22 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I'm torn on this one. I feel bad for the priest, but at the same
| time he chose to devote his life to an organization that hates
| people like him and has played a role in anti-gay sentiment
| throughout the world. Also, nothing wrong with being gay, but
| there is something wrong with having a libido so out of control
| that you're looking for hookups literally every day.
| _vertigo wrote:
| So, it's his fault for being part an institution that's
| judgmental of certain sexual preferences, but also you're,
| like, totally judging him for his sexual preferences?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yes. If you elide/abstract all details away, you can make
| anything sound hypocritical.
|
| Let's take a food analogy: The Catholic church has the
| equivalent viewpoint of "Anyone who likes pizza more than
| hamburgers is wrong and has no place here". My viewpoint is
| "Binge eating disorders are bad and you should seek
| professional help if you have that disorder".
| elliekelly wrote:
| Except being gay isn't a disorder so there's no
| "professional help" he could or should have sought.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Notice how I never said that being gay was a disorder,
| and even said "There is nothing wrong with being gay". It
| seems like you have issues with the Catholic church
| rather than me. The disorder I spoke of would be sex
| addiction, which exists independently of what gender a
| person is attracted to.
| vokep wrote:
| Except sex addiction is, gay or not. It seems uncertain
| if he really was having gay hookups all the time, or just
| was using the app. It does seem implied that the data
| points towards lots of hookups though.
| azinman2 wrote:
| You don't know that he was looking for hookups. I know that the
| data for a competitor of scruff showed that at least 1/3 of the
| people just wanted to find someone to chat with. I still can't
| see why the assumption here was that he broke his vow of
| celibacy. If he's gay and closeted, I can see the human need
| for connection (whether in real life at gay bars or on Grindr)
| of like kind even if he doesn't participate with an 'out of
| control libido.' You're snapping to judgement.
| perardi wrote:
| I'd be curious to see how secure Grindr's servers actually are,
| because if someone really enterprising could combine this
| location hunting _and_ get access to someone's message
| history...hoo boy.
|
| Not solely for the purposes of out-ing people. Grindr messages
| are, well, I've seen things, man. It's one thing to get outed--
| it's another to get your scandalous message history splashed
| across the internet as well. The blackmail potential is huge.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| And in the meantime... don't do things that could get you
| blackmailed if you can help it.
| tbihl wrote:
| This is exactly the same 'cancel culture' behavior that many US
| Republicans like to decry. In the same way that, in many recent
| high profile cases, right-leaning knowledge workers like
| professors have been forced from positions for sinning against
| the dogma of their professions in semi-private settings, this
| priest has been forced from his profession for his sinning
| against his employer's dogma.
|
| I guess the difference here is that the priest thought he was not
| doing so publicly, though on the other hand he was going against
| clearly stated requirements, which is not reliably true in the
| other case. But hopefully everyone on this site is well enough
| aware that anonymity is a myth in far more anonymous settings
| than ones where you provide demographics, photos, self
| description, and your location (I presume, if grindr is anything
| like other dating platforms I've seen.)
| snicker7 wrote:
| The position of a cleric is different than, say, a celebrity or
| a professor. Adherence to religious dogma (in both thoughts and
| actions) is a strict requirement.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Not all religions demand the same adherence to dogma as
| Catholics do. Some more, some less. This also varies across
| political movements, professors and celebrities in difference
| countries, etc.
| enkid wrote:
| All religions require adherence to some sort of dogma and
| have restricted behavior.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And it is probably safe to assume that even in those cases
| where they do that a sizeable fraction of those under that
| particular edict break the rules. You can impose all the
| rules you want if they go directly against some of the most
| basic human needs you can expect them to be broken.
| throwaway9980 wrote:
| Yeah, for this to be exactly the same the assumption would be
| that adherence to a certain dogma is a strict requirement for
| continued participation in society. Oh wait...
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| > This is exactly the same 'cancel culture' behavior that many
| US Republicans like to decry.
|
| Hypocrisy is a central tenet of the US Republican platform.
|
| "Laws for thee but not for me" is a cornerstone of their belief
| system.
| umvi wrote:
| This brings up an interesting dilemma.
|
| For example, there are some religious schools that require you to
| agree to certain living standards in order to attend (such as
| Biola, BYU, etc.). For example, no premarital sex, no drugs, etc
| (rules depends on religion and institution).
|
| Say you attend such a school and decide to break the agreement
| you signed and go to a party and do drugs and have sex, etc.
| Then, at the party, you get raped. So, you report the rape to the
| police and during the investigation into the crime the university
| discovers you were at the party breaking the agreement you
| signed. Does the university have a right to terminate your
| membership at the institution based on information it got from a
| police report?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Already a settled issue, Universities have removed students who
| had "extreme" beliefs in the past, or for going to parties
| without masks, or not being vaccinated. Because "extreme" is
| arbitrary, and universities can remove students, no reason why
| not. She might sue, but that's up to her.
|
| If you can remove a student for not being vaccinated, you can
| remove a student for violating your code of conduct.
| dogorman wrote:
| Don't sign these sort of moronic agreements if you aren't
| willing to keep them. Instead, go to a secular school that
| doesn't make such demands. If more people chose not to give
| these schools their tuition money, they will be pressured to
| reform.
|
| You may as well go to their church then complain when they shun
| you. It's self-inflicted. Don't go to their dumb church and
| don't go to their dumb school either.
| elliekelly wrote:
| No. It would be retaliation under Title IX.
| dmix wrote:
| > In 2018, Grindr, which uses highly granular location
| information, was found to have shared users' anonymized
| locations, race, sexual preferences, and even HIV status with
| third-party analytic firms.
|
| I've become pretty cynical at this point to the endless stream of
| privacy issues but even I found this part shocking. Even
| extremely private health conditions were shared with 3rd-party
| advertisers? And they thought anonymizing a few attributes was
| good enough protections while including timestamped GPS
| locations?
|
| This ranks up there with the worst of them...
| dylan604 wrote:
| So the people doing the outting bought the data to peruse, which
| at this time is legal. The people selling the data also broke no
| laws. The data was originally obtained through 3rd party networks
| that apparently are also not breaking any laws.
|
| Essentially, everything here has been legal. Is doxing illegal?
|
| Even if these people had used a hacked data dump, did they do
| anything illegal?
|
| Putting a pin in the app selling this data being morally/legally
| right/wrong, let's talk about people publicly putting their
| personal information on a site/app that is designed to use that
| data to connect you with another like minded person. Even if the
| app/site does not share that data, would it be legally wrong for
| the matched person to recognize and then do the outting? I get
| the desire to connect with someone might be very strong, but when
| you have this much to lose by being outted, you'd think the risk
| would be too great to actually follow through. Again, I'm not a
| millenial or newer, so all of thse types of apps/sites are just
| so different from how I think. <shrugs>
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I don't think doxxing is illegal, especially if it's publicly
| available information. Otherwise the phone book would have been
| outlawed before it became obsolete.
|
| Now if it should be illegal is a tricky one. I think dating
| "apps" have changed things drastically from dating "websites"
| of old, because the websites made it obvious that anyone can
| sign up and find you. The originals anyone could find you
| without even signing up. The apps try to hide this, which gives
| a false illusion of privacy. Then at the same time they're
| requesting more and more information, some of which may not be
| obvious to the user.
|
| So I guess I think the real fault lies with these apps for not
| making it obvious to their users that they are making this
| information public.
| tolbish wrote:
| Why is it legal for them to sell personal data? It should be
| explicitly asked each time, not buried in a ToS and legalese.
| If it's information you wouldn't just offer to a stranger (like
| your address or where exactly you went last weekend), why are
| companies allowed to just offer it?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| By this standard there would never have been phone books.
| JohnFen wrote:
| At least you could request to be unlisted in the phone book
| but still have a phone number. True, you paid a fee for the
| "privilege," but at least it was possible.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I feel like we can find a middle ground between phone books
| and "let me by the location of every homosexual in a
| country".
| toolz wrote:
| If you're implying phonebooks were a net value add to
| society I strongly disagree. Needing someones consent (not
| necessarily the person you're contacting) to contact
| someone should really be the default.
|
| Further selling ad space in a book filled with other
| peoples information and those people who are the unwilling
| product get nothing but spam calls in return? Seems pretty
| gross if you ask me.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Back in the day, phone books were pretty damned useful.
| Of course they no longer are, but arguing that they
| weren't a "net value add" is absurd.
|
| You could easily opt out of being listed in the phone
| book, and many people did.
| toolz wrote:
| So your information should be public domain until you
| opt-out? How is it that somebody else should be making
| money off of my information and I have to do the extra
| work to opt-out?
|
| That doesn't pass any smell test.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When you signed up for landline service, they would ask
| you if you wanted to be listed or not. Sounds more like
| opt-in if you ask me.
|
| I had a friend that allowed his number to be listed on an
| alias of David King so that in the book it showed up as
| King, David. It amused him.
| toolz wrote:
| That may be true for your friend, but it was not true for
| me - caller ID would even display names of people who
| asked to be unlisted. If it was opt-in I would have no
| issue, but it wasn't for me at least.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the caller ID thing is different. I don't think
| people should be allowed to opt out of caller ID, except
| in some pretty narrow cases. If you're going to call
| someone, you should be required to affirmatively identify
| yourself.
|
| I do agree that an opt-out-required phonebook sounds
| crazy now, but it didn't back in the 80s and 90s. Mass
| data collection was not the norm, and all that
| information wasn't available in digitized form to any
| person or company who wanted it. So abuse of that data
| was pretty low.
| toolz wrote:
| Well you can't really require identification and if you
| do you're placing undue trust in a system that would make
| no difference to pro-social users and grant malicious
| users more trust than is deserved.
|
| I agree that phone book data seemed just annoying at the
| time, but in hindsight it was a bad idea to normalize
| letting other people sell your data. Just look where we
| are now - I imagine a society more privacy focused when
| it was just annoying might not end up in a surveillance
| state quite so quickly.
|
| Hindsight 20/20 and all, so I'm just looking at the past
| through todays lens and wondering if the modest (at best)
| convenience was worth the normalization of letting other
| people sell our data.
| Sanzig wrote:
| The internet and indexing changed the equation.
|
| Before the web, a phonebook was mainly a local thing: you
| could look somebody up in your area, but you couldn't
| easily look up somebody across the country. You'd have to
| dial directory assistance in that other area, and even
| then, you're only getting a few names that way.
|
| With the web, everything is online and accessible using a
| simple lookup from a device in your pocket. You can also
| automate the acquisition and processing of entire phone
| directories with ease: going through the entire phonebook
| to annotate profiles on people would have taken weeks with
| paper, but you can do it in seconds with a Python script.
|
| Indexing and rapid data processing fundamentally changes
| the character of datasets, both in terms of positive
| utility and in terms of potential misuses. We still haven't
| figured that out yet as a society.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Why is it legal for them to sell personal data?
|
| Because there is no law preventing it.
|
| >why are companies allowed to just offer it?
|
| Because these users did just offer it to a stranger. That's
| what is so confusing to me. Users claim they would not offer
| this info to a stranger, yet they gladly post it on social.
| Maybe there's still confusion on how private settings
| do/don't work??? Maybe people just are not capable of
| understanding the difference of the stranger/social post???
| Maybe they don't really care, and are only saying they
| wouldn't give info to a stranger because they don't
| understand/like the question, and just answer how they think
| the questioner wants to hear?
| joshuaheard wrote:
| Yes, it may be illegal, in civil court. It's the tort of
| "public disclosure of private facts". Under California law, the
| public disclosure of private facts is defined as (1) a public
| disclosure of (2) private facts about an individual (3) that
| would offend the average person, that (4) was not of legitimate
| public concern; and (5) where defendant published private facts
| with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.
|
| You could sue for compensatory damages: Loss of reputation,
| shame and hurt feelings, damage to the plaintiff's trade or
| occupation, or loss of business income resulting from the
| disclosure.
|
| (Link to source: https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-
| injury/harm-to-reputat...)
| spoonjim wrote:
| So if they were true facts then there would not be a tort?
| tantalor wrote:
| What's an "average person"?
|
| The dating app example probably fails count 3, since one's
| dating life is not offensive to the average person. For
| grindr, it might be offensive to some minority of people.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the test here is, "would an average person find
| offensive the idea of someone selling/disclosing their
| real-time location history without their knowledge?" For
| which I would hope the answer is "yes".
| avalys wrote:
| 1) Maybe this is of legitimate public concern?
|
| 2) The last point - which must be present, thanks to the word
| "and" - seems to imply that publishing facts you have good
| reason to believe are true would be excluded.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I'm not making any conclusions, only that a prima facie
| case can be made. As the article rightly pointed out, being
| gay does not mean you are an abusive pedophile. So, I don't
| see the public concern, more like a private matter for the
| church. The last clause pertains to belief of
| offensiveness. More detail is in the link.
| x0x0 wrote:
| A senior policy maker in one of the most homophobic
| organizations in the world.
| dylan604 wrote:
| They did approach a Catholic organization about having
| this kind of information:
|
| In his CNA article, Bermudez wrote that the group that
| approached him had wanted "to provide this information
| privately to Church officials in the hopes that they
| would discipline or remove those found to be using these
| technologies to violate their clerical vows and possibly
| bring scandal to the Church."
|
| in a tweet saying that he and his co-author had weighed
| the question of individual privacy and decided that
| Burrill's Grindr use was a matter of public interest
| because he was a "high-ranking public figure who was
| responsible in a direct way for the development and
| oversight of policies addressing clerical accountability
| with regard to the Church's approach to sexual morality."
|
| There's the answer to your public concern from their view
| point. Whether you agree with it or not, that is their
| stance.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| One's sexual orientation is absolutely not a public
| concern.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| The sexual orientation is not the issue here. Just being
| gay is not a sin according to the Catholic Church. He is
| a Catholic priest and was having gay sex, which is a sin.
| That is a public concern (at least to the Catholic
| public).
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The article seemed unclear to me as to whether they were
| tracking the priests through their location data (maybe
| filtering on users who spent 8+ hours in churches) or if they
| were just filtering on known priests' names and ages.
|
| Either way, I think you're right - nothing in here seems
| explicitly illegal.
| spoonjim wrote:
| > Essentially, everything here has been legal.
|
| That's the problem!
| jhncls wrote:
| This suggests that laws such as the European GDPR are
| important, even if the exact way they are formulated can be
| discussed.
| jmcgough wrote:
| Grindr has also been used by oppressive regimes to find and
| imprison gay people: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/02/egypt-
| police-lgbt-dati...
|
| Add that to 3rd party apps that can find your exact location
| (https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-15-grindr-location-info.htm...)
| and Grindr becomes a dangerous weapon against LGBT people.
| tyingq wrote:
| The triangulation thing using Grindr's private api is pretty
| bad. I'm surprised Grindr doesn't "fuzz" the location enough to
| at least make it much less accurate.
| colpabar wrote:
| > _I 'm surprised Grindr doesn't "fuzz" the location enough
| to at least make it much less accurate._
|
| Why would they? Doing that would make their data less
| valuable. Just because grindr is the "gay hookup app" doesn't
| necessarily mean that the people who operate it care about
| gay people's (or anyone's) privacy. According to this [0],
| grindr ranks #4 of all mobile apps when it comes to
| collecting personal information. It's a free app that
| requires your location to use it, which means that it's a
| personal info collection app first, and a dating app second.
|
| [0]: https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/data-grabbing-
| apps/...
| aqme28 wrote:
| There's a difference between the location data Grindr
| serves to its users and the location data they acquire to
| use internally. You're talking about the latter, but OP is
| talking about the former.
| colpabar wrote:
| Is there a difference? I have used grindr, and if someone
| is close enough, it will say they are "x feet away." They
| are well aware of the precision of the location data they
| serve to users, because it's a feature.
| tyingq wrote:
| It may not be clear to end users that anyone, anywhere,
| can pull location data for everyone with not a lot of
| effort.
| tyingq wrote:
| Providing everyone's exact location data to anyone that can
| extract a key from an apk just seems dangerous to me.
| Fuzzing, rate-limiting, etc, seems prudent. I understand
| you're saying Grindr doesn't care though.
| azinman2 wrote:
| That'd be a nice option, but limits the use case.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| They don't care to do anything about it, either. Trilateration
| on Grindr was demonstrated by Wired in _2016_ [1].
|
| They also don't care when their app facilitates harassment and
| puts innocent people at risk[2], and they're willing to go to
| the Supreme Court[3] in order to defend their right to do
| absolutely nothing about it.
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/05/grindr-promises-privacy-
| still-...
|
| [2] https://www.lawfareblog.com/herrick-v-grindr-why-
| section-230...
|
| [3]
| https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publicati...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Whenever an app does stuff like that, you can't shake the
| feeling that that app might be a front for somebody.
|
| The FBI made fake anonymous phones. No reason an anti-LGBT
| organization or government couldn't make a Gay Dating app.
|
| Remember that Grindr is majority owned by Beijing Kunlun
| Tech, a Chinese company. And China isn't the most Gay-
| friendly nation now is it...
| willcipriano wrote:
| > It all began when my client, Matthew Herrick, a waiter-
| actor-model, exercised his right to leave an abusive and
| controlling relationship. His ex retaliated by impersonating
| Matthew on the gay dating app Grindr. Using Matthew's picture
| and name, the ex would say Matthew had rape fantasies and
| then directly message with men to set up sex dates. Grindr's
| patented geo-locating technology resulted in stranger after
| stranger going to Matthew's home and the restaurant where he
| worked expecting sex. Some days, Matthew had as many as 23
| visitors.
|
| > By the time Matthew arrived at my office, exhausted and
| traumatized, he had already gotten an order of protection and
| reported the matter to the police 10 times. Yet, the flow of
| strangers--over a thousand at that point--wasn't slowing. The
| unwitting strangers would wait for him in the stairwells at
| home, other times following him into the bathroom at work.
| "What about Grindr?" I asked. "They're in the exclusive
| position to help." Matthew said he had reported the matter to
| them 50 times.
|
| If I ran a dating site, I'd jump all over this. Sure it's the
| right thing to do, but even from a business perspective
| having your platform appear to be a safe place would be
| important for gaining new members. If this account is
| remotely accurate I can't think of an explanation for this
| other than colossal incompetence or evil.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Smartphones are dangerous in some contexts.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Then again, many powerful tools are.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Most dangerous tools are predictable in their danger. Take
| firearms; modern firearms are reliable[0] and tend to do
| exactly what their current handler intends. You would not
| for example expect your firearm to leave its case in the
| middle of the night and blow your windows out, for example.
|
| Smart phones are unpredictable in their danger. You would
| not expect Grindr to sell you out to an oppressive regime,
| for example. Nor would you expect your private dating
| profile to get you fired. These are unpredictable outcomes
| well outside the range of what most users would expect.
|
| 0 - Truly accidental discharges where the firearm goes off
| without a trigger press are rare and make the news. Most
| negligent discharges are the result of people mishandling
| the firearm, rather than the firearm doing something
| unexpected.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Nor would you expect your private dating profile to
| get you fired.
|
| I think the mistake is thinking those profiles are
| private. How could you ever meet someone without some
| ability for people to see your profile? I've never tried
| any dating sites, so may be overlooking something obvious
| to others.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| There's an expectation that that information is
| compartmentalized somehow, a bit like how everyone at a
| gay bar can see you there but _only_ the people at the
| gay bar can see you.
| dmos62 wrote:
| You could say that giving an untrusted app privileges is
| like giving a gun to someone you don't know.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I don't disagree, it just doesn't seem like that is what
| most people think.
| dmos62 wrote:
| I blame UX design, personally. Trying to make everything
| conceptually trivial made interfaces that glossed over a
| lot of important details. I'm all for simplicity, but
| this is shoving complexity under the carpet.
| agys wrote:
| Unrelated to main topic, but a case exactly as described
| by you made the news yesterday in Italy: a man
| accidentally firing a gun after falling down (accidental
| trigger press or not is still investigated) [Article in
| Italian].
|
| https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/07/21/news/voghera
| _as...
| dogorman wrote:
| > _(accidental trigger press or not is still
| investigated)_
|
| It seems like a moot distinction to me. Take Glock for
| example; they make a big deal about their guns having _"
| three automatic independently-operating mechanical
| safeties."_ But the fact of the matter is a glock has no
| traditional fire/safe toggle safety. ALL the safety of a
| glock is based on the premise that the trigger will not
| be unintentionally pulled when a round is in the chamber.
| The obvious consequence of this is people getting shot by
| completely accidental trigger pulls. Whether you drop the
| gun and it goes off or the trigger snags on your clothing
| and the gun goes off, a gunshot accident is still a
| gunshot accident, and both are consequences of the gun's
| design.
| zeteo wrote:
| By most definitions you would find that the Catholic Church in
| its current form is an oppressive regime. It definitely takes a
| lot of courage for a gay man to become a priest in such an
| organization.
| lurquer wrote:
| What is so courageous about violating one's oaths?
|
| If you want to go to gay bars and pick up guys on Grindr,
| leave the priesthood. If you want to be celibate and follow
| church teachings, quit going to gay bars. But, there's
| nothing 'courageous' about trying to have your cake and eat
| it too.
| worik wrote:
| Why is there no market for properly secure smart phones?
|
| I would have thought the market would be huge.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is this a problem solely on smart phone security? Let's say the
| data being collected by the app someone is using is on a
| hypothetically secure phone. Isn't the real breach from the
| apps collecting more data than necessary to provide the
| functionality the app provides, and then selling that data to
| anyone with the right amount of cash?
|
| If the app is free so the selling of the data is the number one
| source of income, then as "enlightened" technerds we shouldn't
| be too surprised this can happen. However, it's not illegal. Is
| it the selling of user data collected by your service the thing
| that needs to be made illegal? How would that even work?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| There is no such thing as a "properly secure smart phone"
| because of how people define _properly_. Also, so many
| "secure" phones are only secure because NSO and Friends ignore
| them - if they start paying attention, they'd burst from a
| thousand bugs.
| kube-system wrote:
| Because the phone isn't the problem, they are relatively
| secure.
|
| But when you install applications on your phone which mishandle
| your data or even sell it -- it doesn't matter how secure your
| phone is.
|
| The problem is the business culture and legal environment of
| software development. It's profitable and often legal to abuse
| data.
| dylan604 wrote:
| A secure phone or more importantly a secure phone OS would
| not allow an app to collect information like this. The exact
| geo-location is not something an app like this needs. A "find
| someone with in 10 kms" is probably good enough, but "allow
| me to be found within less than a meter" is just waiting for
| abuse. If it is a 911/999 app, then sure, let them have my
| exact location. However, the center of the "within 10 km"
| needs to be significantly offset from my position, otherwise,
| it's kinda pointless.
| techrat wrote:
| Wouldn't matter.
|
| Grindr requires GPS.
|
| On a 'properly secure' smartphone, you enable location access
| to use Grindr... or you don't use Grindr.
|
| The user remains the insecure link in the chain here regardless
| of how 'properly secure' the smartphone is.
| cameldrv wrote:
| The scary part about this is that if this random Catholic lay
| group can get access to this information, that it's
| overwhelmingly likely that foreign intelligence agencies and
| other groups know everyone who uses Grindr and can use this for
| blackmail.
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The scary part about this is that if this random Catholic lay
| group can get access to this information, that it's
| overwhelmingly likely that foreign intelligence agencies and
| other groups know everyone who uses Grindr and can use this for
| blackmail.
|
| I think that's understood. Grindr was actually sold to a
| Chinese company, and the sale was reversed for that reason:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grindr-m-a-investors-excl...
|
| Hopefully this will lead to some legislative action against
| data brokers. If privacy rights in and of themselves weren't
| able to dislodge legislators from their pro-business bias,
| maybe national security concerns will.
|
| Write your representatives: data brokers are agents for Chinese
| intelligence.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You can change that to 'is using this for blackmail'.
|
| This is - alas - absolutely not just theory.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Sounds like a reason not to embrace homophobia as policy. So it
| shouldn't matter if intelligence agencies get this info --
| being gay in the military or government is fine.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Refactoring society to eliminate discrimination is one of the
| mega challenges of our era.
| dylan604 wrote:
| While I do not agree with it, it is a religious belief. That
| puts it in a different bracket. Religions get to do things
| that normal people cannot do.
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Religions get to do things that normal people cannot
| do._
|
| In the past, people used their religions to oppose things
| like interracial relationships, and even judges[1] in the
| US would use religion to defend discrimination against
| interracial couples.
|
| Turns out that people don't get to use religion to
| discriminate[2]:
|
| > _Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a
| right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new.
| In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring
| integration in restaurants because of sincerely held
| beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw
| religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit
| students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases,
| we recognized that requiring integration was not about
| violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring
| fairness. It is no different today._
|
| [1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic
| le=55...
|
| [2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-
| religion...
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's not universally applied though. Religous
| organizations do not have to provide birth control to
| employees. Religious schools can not employee teachers
| based on differing beliefs. Religious business does not
| have provide services to people they do not like.
| x0x0 wrote:
| How does that make it a national security issue?
| threatofrain wrote:
| You need leverage to blackmail somebody, and your
| blackmail risk is part of whether you can attain
| clearance. Hence whether some government jobs are open to
| you.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When did it become a national security issue?
| worik wrote:
| Why?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why what?
|
| Why I don't agree with it? - Because I don't care what
| anyone does as long as it doesn't negatively affect
| anyone/anything else. I just don't have time to care
| about other people's shit as I have enough of my own shit
| to worry about.
|
| It's in a different bracket? - Because in the USofA,
| religions are put in a separate bracket. That's how it
| was founded.
|
| Religions get to do things others can't? - Because SCOTUS
| has decided that churches get to ignore certain
| protections of protected classes because of their
| religious dogma. They have spoken, so that's how it is.
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| Collective bargaining.
| worik wrote:
| What a good answer! Worth more than a upvote!!
| tzs wrote:
| Even if the military or government were enthusiastically pro-
| gay blackmail would still be a concern because people who are
| not out are usually trying to keep it secret from more groups
| than just their employer.
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