Betrayal

Progress continues.

Don't be too alarmed by the title, there has been no NEW betrayal since this last unfortunate one. Well, of us anyway.

The rogue employee has been accounted for. Twice, in fact. First we found a body that had been extensively modified to LOOK like the foolish individual, but the DNA did not match. An effort to fake the death and make it clear it was faked to create the illusion the employee's benefactors were covering for them. That would have been a rather clever way to discredit my predictions and perhaps encouraged further treachery.

However, through means I am not about to reveal here we eventually tracked the former henchperson down, literally, to where they had been disposed of, buried deep in a landfill. Employees are welcome to check the information themselves and a brief wake will be held before their remains are interred respectfully.

We were fortunate on this point. Unfortunately the agency responsible for this has cleaned up after itself quite thoroughly, which was to be expected. They have been at this longer than Arketer Labs has existed or I have even been alive.

Now, you might ask if they are going to go through the trouble of faking the death of the traitor, why still kill them at all?

Because they don't want to encourage treachery in their own people. Just ours. They don't want to take the risk their own people will see someone profit handsomely from betrayal and consider making a bargain of their own.

This is not for any love of loyalty as a virtue, it's just practical- and hypocritical. The people at the top are just... full of treachery. The only backs they wouldn't stab are their own, but I wouldn't be surprised if they viewed themselves suspiciously in the mirror all the same.

When THEY do it of course, it's clever and practical- such as the killing the rogue employee. When someone beneath it does it, it's unacceptable and must be punished lethally.

Which they do, because they can.

Speaking of treachery and shit-heels at the top, have you heard about the Ashley Madison hacking?

Just to take a break from personal recent events, while remaining very very relevant to the topic of treachery...

An online website created to better enable people with hearts as constant as a fart, but not as honest and somewhat more vile, Ashley Madison was hacked by a group calling themselves Impact Team.

Impact Team didn't really care about the cheating, supposedly, but did take issue with the fact that the company promised to delete all personal information from the site on request... for a nominal fee... and did not.

What? A company run to encourage people to betray their supposed loved ones betrayed their faceless customers they don't really know for a profit?! Say it ain't so!

As such Impact Team has issued an ultimatum to the owner, apparently one Noel Biderman, to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men- the latter being a dating site for wealthy men who are happy to have their pick of attractive women with nothing more than a monetary interest in them- or alternatively by some accusations effectively a prostitution network. The difference becomes very hard to define when either way it's all about money.

If Biderman refuses, Impact Team will release the stolen personal data of the Ashley Madison customers. There has been a released example already.

What is perhaps most amazing is the curious amount of sympathy the media has been showing everyone involved in this besides the hackers. Wired.com said "At first glance, the breach seems like an almost unprecedented personal privacy disaster:.."

Unprecedented, yes, in sheer numbers. But what is most hideous about this is that there were 33.5 million or so Ashley Madison customers to expose in the first place. The hack of the U.S. Government's OPM netted only 22.1 million people's personal information. Which was still enough to make America China's Gimp.

But I digress.

I rather hope Impact Team successfully releases the information, because all I have seen of Noel Biderman suggests they will not acquiesce.

Ashley Madison: The Most Honest Site on the Internet. Lie to the person you married to sleep with strangers! Honestly!
This video was uploaded to YouTube BY Ashley Madison by the way.

No one this full of crap is going to heed such a thing. The best thing that can come of this is that the angry customers destroy this guy financially. Exposed or not, Impact Team has made it clear they were very betrayed by this guy and however much someone could argue they deserved it, there is no reason they should be any happier with this treachery profiteer.

That is a fascinating video by the way, interviews with happy customers who exhibit a cognitive dissonance you can hear.

Mind you, I have a measure of sympathy for some of these cheaters. People do marry the wrong people, it happens, especially with so many wrong people out there- but we already invented the solution to that problem. It's called divorce.

Anything else is cowardice, treachery, greed or all of the above. Greed above all rules the day for the likes of Biderman. By the way, the chief outcome of that appearance on Dr. Phil was that Ashley Madison got to start advertising 'AS SEEN ON DR.PHIL'.

As for Impact Team, I hope they are protecting themselves. There are no doubt some people with power and money on that list of names they've got, quite possibly the reason the media has soft-pedaled this as some horrifying act. 

Impact Team can be accused of far less treachery than anyone else in this absurdity. Criminal, yes. Wrong? Yes, but less so than everyone else. Go team lesser evil!

Speaking of lesser evils and going back to our own personal problems- we caught some of the minions used by the agency that might have killed, but certainly had a hand in disposing of the body of the rogue employee.

They're still alive and if they have any friends or family to claim them from the local police drunk tank, where they stew under suspicion of narcotics use only vaguely aware of their own names and completely incapable of remembering things such as where they live... They'll be fine. They'll remember almost everything in time.

They knew nothing unfortunately, all of them just middlemen following orders from people they know nothing about, paid well for their ignorance. They know even less now, of course, and will find their bank accounts almost entirely empty. One of them was funding vital medical treatments for a relative, their money is now in that relative's account. Whether they get any of it back will have to be that relative's call I suppose.

If it stays there, diminishing only to cover the payments, it will never quite empty.

Enough of this grim business, yes? How about some comedy?

Progress continues.