The recent hack of the Ashley Madison website, which connects married adults who wish to have affairs, has exposed 50 current and former California state government employees who allegedly used their official e-mail addresses on the site, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The state government would not confirm that the e-mail addresses were real, but Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for the state Government Operations Agency, told the Times: “Any misuse of state resources is a concern and is taken seriously and investigated accordingly.”
The Ashley Madison hack creates immediate personal and repetitional problems for those exposed, and raises troubling ethical questions for journalists covering it, who are poring through illegally obtained information about private behavior that, while immoral, may not be unlawful.
Still, if there is one likely point of consensus, it is that government email ought not be used for intimate personal affairs.
A state employee who spoke to the Times‘ Patrick McGreevy, and whose email address was exposed, said that he had not actually used the site’s dating services.
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