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Only days after The Washington Post鈥檚 of abuse by various governments using Israeli firm NSO鈥檚 Pegasus spyware, on the case of a Catholic Church official in the US, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned after being shamed as apparently gay by the Catholic news outlet . The publication claims to have conducted an investigation that involved considerable expense. It required purchasing a trove of data that had been analyzed by a technically qualified consulting firm to charge its victim.

Concerning the collection of personal data, technology providers are required to protect the identity of users by formatting the data in such a way that, even when all the details of a person鈥檚 behavior are analyzed to produce a consumer profile, the user鈥檚 identity remains hidden. To solve this problem, The Pillar鈥檚 team worked in two stages. 

The first stage consisted of purchasing data from a firm that exercises the that Tech Crunch refers to as 鈥渄ata brokers.鈥� The data in question is the result of tracking the user鈥檚 behavior while using apps or consulting internet sites. Data brokers collect and store the result of that permanent tracking before selling it to advertisers who can then 鈥減rofile you, understand your tastes, your hobbies and interests, and use that information to target you with ads.鈥�

Is Spying an Art or a Crime?

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The data thus serves to create consumer profiles. The brokers may not legally associate the data they sell with named individuals. They must anonymize the data before selling it to a third party. But inevitably, among the mass of behavioral information collected, clues will be present enabling anyone with the requisite time, patience, analytical skills and sheer animus to make the attribution.

Once the data was in its hands, The Pillar hired consultants to set about deciphering it to identify a culprit. The consultants narrowed down all the connections, including geographical data, that eventually led with near-absolute precision to the individual The Pillar suspected, Msgr. Burrill. Not only did The Pillar carry out the investigation in what it deemed to be the public interest, it immediately reported it, thereby shaming the victim and forcing him to resign.

Axios points out that awareness of the ethical issues linked to this system of recording and marketing the behavior of individuals is not new. 鈥淧rivacy experts have long raised concerns about ‘anonymized’ data collected by apps and sold to or shared with aggregators and marketing companies.鈥� This may, however, be the first time those concerns have proven justified. 鈥淪ome privacy experts,鈥� , 鈥渟aid that they couldn鈥檛 recall other instances of phone data being de-anonymized and reported publicly.鈥� The experts add 鈥渢hat it鈥檚 not illegal and will likely happen more as people come to understand what data is available about others.鈥�

Today鈥檚 Daily Devil鈥檚 Dictionary definition:

De-anonymize:

Undertake a complex process of data manipulation for the noble purpose of publicly shaming (or blackmailing) someone whose behavior one doesn鈥檛 condone

Contextual Note

Axios explains why this affair is significant: 鈥淭he small Catholic outlet, The Pillar, was able to achieve this by obtaining 鈥榓nonymized鈥� data from a broker, and having a consulting firm analyze it and link it to the church official 鈥� showing how easy and legally this can now be done.鈥� In the age of cancel culture, we finally have the ideal toolset to get the job done.

What was the monsignor鈥檚 crime that justified The Pillar鈥檚 鈥渋nvestigation鈥�? As it reports, 鈥淏urrill鈥檚 mobile device shows the priest 鈥� visited gay bars and private residences while using a location-based hookup app in numerous cities from 2018 to 2020.鈥� That is something the public definitely needs to know.

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鈥淣o federal laws prohibit buying this data,鈥� The Post reminds its readers. One expert cited by The Post explains that users 鈥渉ave no idea where this data actually lives. But it鈥檚 out there, and it鈥檚 for sale.鈥� That may sound shocking, but it corresponds to a deeper logic at the core of today鈥檚 economic culture. The syllogism goes like this. Premise one: Data has value. After all, it is the key to Google鈥檚 and Facebook鈥檚 prosperity. Premise two: Anything that has value can be sold. In any commercial setting, it is likely to be sold. Conclusion: Data, however damaging its dissemination may be, will be sold and then either exploited for another purpose or disseminated. This correlates with another law of modern economics: If you don鈥檛 sell what has value, you are a loser.

Making money out of data has become the first principle and the central axiom of what we call 鈥渢he information society.鈥� Data is a valuable commodity. Human dignity and social integrity may be worthy ideals, but they will always be deemed secondary because they cannot be transformed into a commodity. The Pillar understands that principle and calls that choice 鈥渋nvestigative reporting.鈥�

Historical Note

In 1974, the distinguished 69-year-old French theologian, Jesuit cardinal and elected member of the French Acad茅mie, Jean Danielou, died in the apartment of a young female 鈥渇riend.鈥� The 24-year-old blonde was known to have financial problems. In particular, she hoped to pay for a lawyer for her Corsican husband in prison for pimping. Gilberte worked in a bar frequented by underworld figures, where she went by the name of Mimi or Gaby. Some suspected she had different ways of supplementing her income.

Monsignor Danielou was said to have been a frequent visitor to her apartment. At the time of his death, he had 3,000 francs on his person. (New York governor and Republican presidential contender appears to have died in a manner similar five years later.) The French media, often with a touch of irony, noted these facts and assumed that the truth may have been slightly different than the official explanation, that the theologian was paying a pastoral visit to his friend in need, Gilberte.

In its account, the French newspaper that five years before his death, Danielou had proclaimed that 鈥渟exuality is a gift of God,鈥� adding: 鈥淚 understand personally that certain priests may be sensitive to the beauty and charms of a woman.鈥� He insisted that 鈥渨e expect too much from a priest since he is only a man.鈥�

In an article in the National Catholic Reporter, theologian the ethical principle The Pillar seems to ignore: 鈥淚 am a sinner. So are you. So is Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill. Not one of us has a personal life that would withstand the sort of scrutiny The Pillar has applied to Burrill.鈥� Millies identifies a problem that goes beyond the question of the ethics of the Catholic clergy and is of particular concern in American society today. The mission to shame and cancel other people has become perversely elevated to the status of an act of virtue.

Millies cites Canon Law: “No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses nor to injure the right of any person to protect his or her own privacy.”While exposing other people鈥檚 sins harkens back to the Puritanical roots of the Anglo-Saxon American experiment, the role of technology has turned this nasty trait into an authentic social plague.

In the European Catholic tradition, sexual excess (lust) has always been considered one of the seven deadly sins. It has also been the one easiest to forgive and the most prone to being charitably confused with the ultimate virtue in Christian ethics, love. If Don Giovanni (Moli猫re鈥檚 Don Juan) 鈥� an ancient but less slimy version of Harvey Weinstein 鈥� deserves his final plunge into hell, Christian audiences can鈥檛 help secretly sharing Leporello鈥檚 admiration for his accomplishments (鈥溾��). After all, unlike Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein, the Don carried them out with style.

In the case of Cardinal Danielou, the French media and people took the case in stride, laughing about the embarrassing allegations. and the stand as exceptions since both are always ready to mercilessly exploit any apparent hypocrisy for humor. But on the whole, the French avoided impugning the reputation of an authentic thinker who, though a conscientious priest, was also a man and, therefore, a sinner.

Sam Sawyer S.J., the senior editor of the Jesuit publication 鈥淎merica,鈥� the outcome of The Pillar鈥檚 article by noting that 鈥渨hat the church is left with is the specter of effectively unlimited retroactive surveillance, deployed under private direction at The Pillar鈥檚 discretion for the purpose of policing failures in celibacy through the threat of public disclosure.鈥� 

More broadly, society is left with a similar specter of 鈥渦nlimited retroactive surveillance鈥� by anyone, public or private, with the financial means to carry it out and an undisclosed motive for doing so. In such circumstances, Monsignor Burrill鈥檚 real sins and other people鈥檚 crimes may be exposed, but the notion of trust within the community will be the ultimate victim. In an era in which social media is used for increasingly aggressive antisocial behavior, trust was already on the defensive. Thanks to our deteriorating social climate crisis that parallels in intensity the physical climate crisis, trust may be the first species to go extinct.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil鈥檚 Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil鈥檚 Dictionary on 51吃瓜.]

The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.