When Lust Leads to Espionage

The recent massive hack into married-but-dating website Ashley Madison’s files may not only have breached the customer’s reasonable contractual expectations, but is now also said to lead to serious counter-intelligence concerns.  

Both China and Russia are collecting personal and sensitive information about people who may be involved in American national security operations.  What better leverage to have against operatives than information about their most secret, erotic desires. The temptation to resist such information being shared with even more people may persuade some operatives to render otherwise secret information about United States national security issues.  Recall that quite a few affair seekers used their official government addresses to arrange their attempted or successful trysts.  In combination with another recent OPM hack, countries that are seen as adversaries have apparently also been able to obtain information about who has sought security clearances and can use this information for counter-intelligence purposes.

That seems to provide a good public policy argument for why courts should find against Ashley Madison if it came to a contractual lawsuit regarding the breach of “100% secrecy” and “full deletes” promised, but not delivered, by Ashley Madison.