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Catholic priest quits after “anonymized” data revealed alleged use of Grindr
- tolbish 5y agoI have updated the submission title to reflect the article's title change.
- culopatin 5y agoPoor 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 5y agoHmm. 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.
- gdulli 5y agoA 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 5y agoWell, at least he himself was just using grindr with consenting adults. Hopefully, at least.
- headShrinker 5y agoAnd 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 5y agoWell 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 5y agoWe won’t know the depth of your guilt (or innocence) until a full investigation is concluded. Your “peers” are also suspected child predators.
- thatguy0900 5y agoI'm really curious about this. I understand you disagree, but I really can't see how.It really was the case that the catholic church at all levels was aiding and abetting pedophilia. How can you still see the clergy as good? What, in your eyes, would they have to do to stop being good? Is there anything?
- headShrinker 5y agoYou go back & forth defending then attacking the church then the priest. I really don't understand your issue. I'm clear, I have issue with the churches 1: priest obstinance policy and 2: gay policy; it's unrealistic with a catastrophically negative outcome. I have a problem with people attacking gays or straights for wanting love. I don't care what your religion or organization is. Saying 'If he had sex, he's immoral and should resign as priest and the religious order' is consciously or unconsciously issuing a homophobic attack because it was Grindr for gay sex with a man. If it was a man that had sex with an adult woman, no one would care, The Pillar wouldn't have publicized the data findings, this wouldn't be an article on arstechnica, and you wouldn't care either. Also Priesthood isn't a job you leave. It isn't a job, it's for life. I grew up in the church. I have friends in the church. I know a lot of priests and I knew a lot of gay priests. There are a lot of good people there. If none of that was good enough to change your tack, you will N E V E R defeat the church, and people need/want it. The're the single biggest land real-estate owners in the world with 1.3 billion baptised Catholics worldwide as of 2019. Money is power and this scandal will blow over, they are on a long-term plan. You can help the church evolve to a kinder organization; kinder to its priests and its parishioners. Personally, I don't like church, it's not for me. Deep down everyone knows right and wrong, and existence a god doesn't help answer any questions I have. The idea of heaven allows people to think there is something better after. There isn't.
- 0des 5y ago>anyone who is still a catholic is kind of asking for it Would you mind expanding on this?
- thatguy0900 5y agoAnyone 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 5y agoCatholicism: the one religion you're allowed to openly call bullshit without being considered a bigot, apparently
- jwalgenbach 5y agoNo. They're all bullshit.
- adamrezich 5y agoglad 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?
- Dma54rhs 5y agoDang, can we get this gate speech removed?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thatguy0900 5y agoWhat, out of curiosity, would the catholic church have to do before talking about what the clergy has done stops being "hate speech" to you? Edit: Im guessing you actually meant hate speech, so I'm changing "gate speech" to that. I thought you were referring to some kind of gatekeeping
- headShrinker 5y ago“ 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 5y agoThis 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 5y agoI recommend you watch Six Feet Under
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ttt0 5y agoThere are plenty of examples of grindr users touching kids. https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/02/11/boy-grindr-sexual-abuse-tinder/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/02/11/boy-grindr-sexual-abus... https://nypost.com/2018/06/15/teacher-busted-in-car-with-teen-he-met-on-grindr-police/ https://nypost.com/2018/06/15/teacher-busted-in-car-with-tee... https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/02/13/grindr-rape-teenage-boy/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/02/13/grindr-rape-teenage-bo...
- tinalumfoil 5y agoThis 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-gen-sec https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/pillar-investigates-usccb-g...
- elliekelly 5y agoThis 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.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoNo 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 5y ago“ 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.
- geerlingguy 5y agoAs 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- elliekelly 5y agoIf 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 5y agoGrindr isn’t a gay bar directory. It’s a hookup app.
- headShrinker 5y agoHe 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.
- IndexPointer 5y agoHow 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.
- tsywke44 5y agoIt'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 5y agoMy thoughts exactly. You think they’ll ever drag the CEO of T-Mobile or Xfinity in front of Congress for privacy violations?
- GenerocUsername 5y agoI mean... on the cell network, IP alone is enough to put you within a quarter mile or so.
- blooalien 5y agoPretty sure these days they can triangulate you down to within something like 10-30 meters (with nothing but cell or wifi) with a pretty high degree of certainty, can't they?
- kevinventullo 5y agoWith ambient WiFi signals one can get the error down to 10 meters or even less depending on coverage. This actually powers some of the location signals which Google and Apple provide in their location API’s, as it costs less battery life than GPS.
- blooalien 5y agoThey might eventually. Seems like Congress is gettin' more'n more annoyed at various aspects of the tech industry as more of these crazy things keep makin' it into the news.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
- Hokusai 5y agoIf 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.
- nonfamous 5y agoFocusing 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 5y agoIncluding 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-brokers-to-emerge-from-the-shadows-94298 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-sharing-privacy https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17189078/grindr-hiv-status-data...
- schoolornot 5y agoAT&T is still installing CarrierIQ on handsets collecting all sorts of sensitive info about people.
- robertwt7 5y ago> The data that resulted in Burrill’s ouster was reportedly obtained through legal means. How is this thing even legal?
- dragonwriter 5y agoIt was “anonymized” data legally sold by data brokers that The Pillar acquired and deanonymized.
- mgh2 5y agoReposting this as a question to avoid misinterpretation: Is there a discrepancy on the Catholic church's teachings on celibacy? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%204 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%204... Hypothesis: It is unnatural to forcibly suppress desires for life, one way or another it will come out (i.e. child sex abuse). Studies 38% accused, 0.1% convicted “Cartor, Cimbolic & Tallon (2008) found that 6 percent of the cleric offenders in the John Jay Report are pedophiles; 32 percent ephebophiles, 15 percent 11 & 12 year olds only (both male and female)...” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report Critic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026966/\\\\ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026966/\\\\*
- mgh2 5y agoCorrection: total accused is 4.4% of clergy. The percentages above are based on this cohort