Really, any strong pro-surveillance arm of the military-copyright-industrial complex is a valid conspiracy theory. Want Washington bigwigs to come down hard on internet anonymity? Show them what would happen if they did nothing - if their illicit deeds were made public.
'Cuz a betting individual could make a lot of money wagering how many senators and representatives and powerful lobbyists have an Ashley Madison account.
exactly. this shit has been going on since J. Edgar Hoover
My guess: frustrated users.
I don’t believe that for a second. Intelligence agencies lose all their power making things public. This was also an extremely blunt tactic, which would just as likely upset friends as enemies.
And it’s hardly wise to piss off senators and representatives in some childish act of revenge. They can strike back in ways that actually matter, like cutting funding or firing people.
I’m torn. If they’re going to release any images, shouldn’t it be the dickpics?
MISANDRY
So, is there more information about this facet of the story?
my theory: disgruntled current/ex-employees.
The data they grabbed came from so many different internal servers, if it was grabbed remotely on the internets they have some seriously bad security/network setup.
If you want to see dicks, watch C-SPAN.
I think they made it clear they’re former employees. There’s no way the FBI would act this way - they would probably just flush the data, because none of it is probable cause.
The question is: did they try to extort money from the site’s owners?
yeah, they are the ones wearing neckties.
Nah, dicks is Fox News. C-Span is wrinkled old scrotums.
Grammar in hackers’ answers to Motherboard awfully similar to Boris Badenov. Is, of course, too obvious and simple to blame Russians for hack. Therefore, must be moose and squirrel.
All I know is several of my friends who went on rants when the celebrity nude pics leaked last year about staying out of peoples private lives and how evil it was these private intimate images were published are all happily posting like crazy about Duggar and a bunch of other high profile religious types caught in this.
The hypocrisy of it is really pissing me off.
Without going too far down the rabbit hole …
On the one hand, we have Duggar, a gentleman who actively promoted himself as - and cashed in on seeming to be - a straight up, law abiding, god fearing, good sort. But - surprise! - it turns out he’s actually into child molestation, incest, and cheating on his wife. His rank yet lucratve hypocrisy is right up there with Palin The Younger’s profitable shilling on abstinence.
On the other hand we have Taylor Swift, who trusted someone she shouldn’t have.
These are NOT the same things. Superficially - when all you look at is the headline - they appear to be the same, but they aren’t. They really aren’t. Since they are not the same thing, it is sensible to treat them differently, and respond to them differently.
Doubtful. It sounds like a very cursory after-the-fact rationalization of what they did. There’s a lot of people that consider all sex work to be “human trafficking”, regardless of the reality of the agency of the workers, and they’ve previously said that many of the “women” who were supposedly AM members were really fronts for escort services.
they should be really proud of their work and the side effects, like these:
“A source in the Saudi Arabian government has revealed that this information is now being used to track down and imprison homosexuals as well as persons with “adulterous or immoral sexual fantasies”. Many of these crimes are punishable by death, and it is feared that this leak might result in an as of yet unseen amount of executions”
its not often that you get the chance to be responsible for the dead of people that have different values than yourself - and don’t even have to fear anything for yourself. Brave guys …
I don’t believe it is OK to take down 37 million people just because Josh Duggar is an asshole.
"… [T]he hackers wrote that they had been collecting information from the company “over the past few years.”
A lot of questions …
Did the intrusion begin with the same purpose it’s claiming now? Why peruse private files in a db with “bad” security for “years” before deciding to expose sex traffickers?
And was evidence of sex trafficking found in these data? Why not release the evidence of sex trafficking to law enforcement?
Well, it is a conspiracy theory. 
No revenge, simply a warning shot - “we need to make sure the bad guys can’t get at your information!” is something a senator can understand when his Ashley Madison info is up for sale.
