Is the Ashley Madison data breach morally justifiable?

Today is Thursday and if it’s Thursday, that means there must be story about a data breach.

Yes, and not just a data breach, but a data breach that’s worse than we thought.

But there’s a difference with this latest data breach. Because this involves a website called Ashley Madison, which made money by helping married men cheat on their wives.

Now, we can all agree that hacking into, for example, medical records is bad. And hacking tax returns? That’s bad, too. And exposing credit card numbers? Bad. Revealing nude photos of celebrities? Yeah, that’s bad.

But this Ashley Madison leak was deliberately staged by hackers to embarrass men who wanted to cheat.

And if you made a promise to be faithful, cheating is bad. Which is why many people think this hack is morally justified … interesting.

And yet, we must also consider this: according to various reports, at least 30 million Ashley Madison accounts have been exposed. Now cheating may be bad, but if 30 million people are doing it, it waters down the shame considerably. In fact, it tells you that cheating is almost normal.

Well, yes, for 10 percent of the population. So I don’t think we can dismiss these people as simply cheaters. These are citizens who share a unique set of values, which I believe would make them a special interest group.

In fact, I bet they’ve already hired a lobbyist.