Grindr Sued by Catholic Priest for Alleged Privacy Breach
metroweekly.comouted as gay because his Grindr data suggested he was visiting gay venues is now suing the gay hookup app for violating his privacy.Starting in 2016, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, a priest from Wisconsin, served as the former general secretary of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops, which serves as the Roman Catholic Church’s official mouthpiece in the United States, and frequently rails against laws and policies that recognize the rights of LGBTQ people.But in 2021, Burrill resigned from his position within the church after The Pillar, a right-wing Catholic activist website, claimed to have uncovered mobile app data showing that he had not only used the Grindr app but had visited a gay bar and multiple bathhouses.The Pillar did not say where or how it had obtained this data, saying the information on Burrill’s alleged whereabouts was based on “commercially available records of app signal data.”While the data didn’t include names or pictures of users, Grindr assigns a unique number to each phone and tracks timestamped location data based on GPS signals.
The news site also said it hired an independent firm to authenticate the information.Based on that unique ID number, and cross-referencing data on the whereabouts of potential clergy members, The Pillar claimed to have used the Grindr data to allegedly track Burrill to a gay bar, a Las Vegas bathhouse, and bathhouses in other cities he visited as part of his work.The Pillar concluded that Burrill may have been engaging in extramarital homosexual trysts, thereby breaking his vows of celibacy and violating Church teaching opposing sex outside of heterosexual marriage.Shortly after the story broke, Burrill resigned from his position.
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