Who are you, or anyone else, to question or evaluate "commitment" in a relationship that you have no part of, and know nothing about? Or to force someone's personal private life out in the open where it will be used to judge them without context?
Nothing is as black and white as you are claiming it to be.
One could argue privacy is a more natural right than, for example, property rights since strong encryption can give you absolute privacy, even against the state.
that would be a right to encrypt, not a right to privacy. the 'right to privacy', as established in the US, constitutes a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' that is - if you passively (e.g hiding behind a wall) or procatively (enclosing a letter in an envelope) take measures to hide what you are doing then you have the legal right to go after someone who tries to breach this privacy.
In the context of encryption, A right to encrypt says that no one can stop you from encrypting your work. A right to privacy says no one is allowed to try to break your encryption.
I think you and I have different ideas of what absolute means.
Encryption protects infromation as long as A) the computation power, time and desire available to break your encryption does not exceed the level you encrypted, B) the underlying math principles on which the encryption was based do not see a change in some manner reducing the effectiveness of the algorithm for this task, or C) The implementation of the encryption algorithm did not suffer some flaw reducing it's effectiveness to the level if can be beaten.
I know A and C have happened in the past. I'm unsure whether B has occurred. It's worth noting that in the case of B or C, the strength you choose now may not have any effect on the outcome.
While one could be wrong about the basics of physics and math, you can encrypt things, cheaply and quickly, that would take a computer made of all the matter and all the energy in the universe to break in more time than the universe has existed.
You have to take some care. But an NSA magic code breaking machine is in the same category as flying saucers at Area 51. Exceedingly unlikely.
That's about as good a guarantee as nature can offer.
There's a very specific reason I included B and C in my listed cases. I agree in many or most cases it could be said that it's unlikely certain encryption methods would be bypassed, but to me that only gives you a fairly good prospect of being secure, not an absolute certainty. That may or may not affect your original argument, I'm not sure.
>Yes, it absolutely is always unethical. [...] Nothing is as black and white as you are claiming it to be.
The irony thickens.
Let me rephrase you: "Who are you, or anyone else, to evaluate 'abuse' in a relationship..." -- the answer is "anyone who knows how to count". While there are exceptions to every rule, the majority of cases fall into rather ordinary examples. Not everyone is special.
Of course, indiscriminately doing this sort of thing like the AM hackers is terrible -- notwithstanding those in third-world countries facing draconian legal consequences -- but plenty of the people exposed certainly deserved it.
Nobody asked you to intervene in their marriage, investigate their spouse, or enforce any laws -- adultery isn't even a crime in many places. You do not get to impose your morals on others. A stranger cheating on another stranger has nothing to do with you.
Clearly from the response we're seeing from society outside of this tech bubble where your privacy must be protected at all times otherwise doom ensues, people want to know when their spouse is cheating on them. You make an assumption that quite frankly ignores reality in favor of a weird moral relativism where any sort of judgment is bad.
Odds are that people don't want their spouse cheating on them.
Someone stealing from someone else doesn't have an affect on me either, but I would operate under the default assumptions that
1) they want their things
2) they would want to be notified if someone wanted to steal their things
3) they would want to be notified if someone actually stole their things
And guess what? People acting in this way has the prosocial implication of teaching people that stealing is bad, and gives me the assurance that if someone is trying to steal from me that people will let me know!
Hacking into a dating website is not analogous to merely observing someone stealing. If you set up cameras pointed into my bedroom, I'd have a big problem with that even if it did catch a burglar.
The fact that some people approve of vigilante justice and disrupting the personal lives of people they don't like doesn't mean it's a good idea. There are many obvious historical examples of terrible harm that sort of thinking has caused. If you think adultery is a crime that requires help from people not involved in the marriage, I suggest you campaign to make it illegal in all states and ask for police resources to be dedicated to it. If you see someone stealing, you should call the police.
Again, you have no way of gauging intent. An example the poster above gave is a really great one. A couple having a consensual S/M relationship that involves controlled pain, possibly leaving visible marks. Your method would be to immediately rat them out to the authorities. Congratulations, you just ruined a happy couple's relationship because you can't see past your own thin worldview, and never bothered to think before you act.
BDSM is legal under Lawrence v. Texas in the United States, as I recall. The police are generally aware of this. Though, in this situation, a reasonable person would ask first.
From what I've seen, interest in the Ashley Madison leaks has been almost entirely prurient ("OMG look at this guy!"), which is a common human foible, but not something that's generally considered good to encourage. Many people also reacted positively to the theft of compromising photos from dozens of celebrities last year, for very similar reasons.
Let me rephrase you: "Who are you, or anyone else, to evaluate 'abuse' in a relationship..." -- the answer is "anyone who knows how to count". While there are exceptions to every rule, the majority of cases fall into rather ordinary examples. Not everyone is special.
I'm guessing that you haven't talked about this with anyone who is into BDSM. Just because you witness something that you think is violent abuse doesn't mean that you're right.
Conversely I've seen perfectly pleasant looking couple who engage in constant verbal abuse disguised as pleasant commentary. Most people won't recognize it for what it is. Go read http://www.amazon.com/The-Gentle-Art-Verbal-Self-Defense/dp/... and you may do better than most people.
Be very, very careful about judging what happens in other people's relationships. It may be bad. Or you may not know. For real.
Who are you, or anyone else, to question or evaluate "commitment" in a relationship that you have no part of, and know nothing about? Or to force someone's personal private life out in the open where it will be used to judge them without context?
Nothing is as black and white as you are claiming it to be.