Catholic Vigilantes Buy App Data, Out Gay Priests. Is App Privacy Possible?
Think something similar couldn’t happen to you? Think again.
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, the Catholic-homophobia side of this story, or the Internet surveillance-culture side
Let’s start by getting the facts on the table. Last week, The Washington Post broke shocking news that a private Catholic group in Colorado has for years been buying online advertising data then mining it to identify priests who use dating/hookup apps like Grindr, Growlr, Scruff and Jack’d. The vigilante group say they routinely pass their findings on to the bishops who supervise the priests.
Defending their actions, the group casually conflate being gay or having consensual same-sex encounters with being a criminal sexual predator like defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who for decades abused his power to pressure Catholic seminary students, some of them teenage boys, to have sex with him.
The Church side of this story is bad enough, and I’ll return to the sordid homophobic details in a moment. But first …
