What priests on Grindr can tell us about data privacy
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
A conservative Catholic group spent millions of dollars on app data that identified gay priests. A Washington Post investigation dives into how this secretive group got data from Grindr and other apps, and what this story can tell us about data privacy in the U.S.
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In the summer of 2021, a prominent priest, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, was mysteriously outed for being a regular on Grindr, the gay dating and hookup app. The scandal sent shock waves through the Catholic church.
Religion reporter Michelle Boorstein spent the past year-and-a-half investigating this story and figuring out who was behind this effort, and how they got access to this data. She stumbled upon a secretive group of conservative Catholic philanthropists that poured millions of dollars into obtaining data that identified priests who were using dating and hookup apps.
As Michelle and tech reporter Heather Kelly explain, this story goes well beyond the Catholic church and raises red flags for all of us about the lack of data privacy laws and protection for people using mobile apps.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | People sometimes do quip, I have nothing to hide. |
| 0:06.9 | That's usually not actually the case. |
| 0:09.2 | Most people do have things that they want kept private and rightfully so. |
| 0:14.4 | By now, most of us know that when we use apps on our phones, some information is getting |
| 0:19.7 | stored and possibly shared with advertisers. |
| 0:23.8 | But over the last year and a half, the Washington Post has been looking into a story that shows |
| 0:29.1 | just how vulnerable that data really is and who can access it. |
| 0:34.8 | This is one of the first times we've heard of a private group buying data to identify |
| 0:38.8 | people doing something that they don't approve of. |
| 0:41.9 | And this all started with a scandal in the Catholic Church. |
| 0:46.8 | A prominent priest, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrell, was mysteriously outed for being a regular |
| 0:55.0 | on Grindr, the gay dating in Hookah Bat. |
| 0:59.0 | Here's religion reporter Michelle Borstein. |
| 1:01.6 | A Catholic news site called the pillar reported that Monsignor Jeffrey Burrell, who was General |
| 1:07.4 | Secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference at the time, was activating the dating in Hookah |
| 1:13.8 | Bat Grindr on a regular basis. |
| 1:16.7 | Critics of the pillar noted that in their reporting, it never showed if he actually had |
| 1:21.7 | spoken to or met with anyone through the app. |
| 1:25.8 | It had given the church's teachings on homosexuality and priestly celibacy and questions around |
| 1:33.7 | data privacy. |
| 1:35.2 | The whole thing just blew up. |
| 1:37.0 | Burrell stepped down from his leadership role in the church and it seemed like that was |
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