Why the Ashley Madison hack should scare you

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Heather Havrilesky explains that the moralizing and schadenfruede around the leak has obscured what it means for everyone, even those of us who don't sign up to cheat on our partners: everyone has something to hide.

This isn't just a particularly suspenseful episode of Mr. Robot we're witnessing. The world is changing quickly, and real lives are being destroyed by the recklessness at play on civic, corporate, and individual levels. Every other day, there are new security breaches, and more private information is shared with strangers. Simply proclaiming that all of our secrets will be revealed, or naïvely asserting that you have nothing to hide — this is the behavior of citizens who don't know history, or who've surrendered completely to a modern sense of learned helplessness, or who simply don't care about protecting the weakest or the most vulnerable among us. Yes, that includes cheaters. It includes all of us. We are all vulnerable now. We are all at risk.

And here's Glenn Greenwald on the smarmy moralizing going on: "whatever else is true, adultery is a private matter between the adulterer and his or her spouse."