Thread by @DawnofMercy

On a related note:

I've long been researching efforts by the Napa Institute & its friends--that is, wealthy advocates of unbridled free-market capitalism--to gain power over the US Church.

In particular, I've researched their efforts to obtain data. ...

https://twitter.com/DawnofMercy/status/1417678647566159872

So the news that The Pillar used data to expose alleged gay activity by the USCCB's incoming general secretary doesn't surprise me. It was only a matter of time before those who owned such data would begin to use it to name and shame those whom they were willing to see fall. ...

As I've said, no one wants to see a priest who engages in scandalous behavior remain in ministry.

But what we're seeing with The Pillar is an anonymously funded media outlet engaging in expensive data mining that enables editors to choose whom to target & whom to ignore. ...

To help readers understand what's at stake, I'm starting this lengthy thread to answer the following questions, in order:

1) How did The Pillar's editors link Burrill's phone to Grindr?
2) From whom might they have obtained data on Catholic clergy to help them make that link?...

So, let's start with (1). It's been reported that Grindr shares only anonymized data. That's technically true, but it's misleading. As @natashanyt and @Aaron_Krolik reported in @nytimes, Grindr sold its list of user-tracking codes to multiple parties. ...

nytimes.com/2020/01/13/tec…

As the @nytimes article explains, Grindr also sold location data associated with each tracking code.

Each code is connected to a unique phone. Thus, if you have a code and you have location data for that code, then you know where a particular phone has been. ...

A tracking code, however, is not a phone number. Grindr did not sell its users' phone numbers.

However, as @samschech, @EmilyGlazer, and @patiencehaggin explained in @WSJ, once you know a phone's tracking code, you can easily find out the owner. ...
wsj.com/articles/polit…

All you need is a second data set--one that contains names and addresses. If the tracking ID and location data of a phone tells you the phone's being used at night at 555 Main Street, then a data set that shows who lives at 555 Main Street will tell you whose phone it is. ...

So it's clear that The Pillar's editors, or their informer, used two data sets to identify Burrill as an alleged Grindr user:

-- Via Grindr, they had a set of user-tracking IDs and location information.

-- And from another source, they had a set of home addresses of clergy. ...

Now, it's possible that The Pillar didn't use a large data set of clergy. The editors might only have acquired Burrill's home addresses and lined them up with the Grindr data.

But that's manifestly unlikely. Evidence points to their having a large set of clergy addresses ...

See this interesting CNA article, which came out more than a day before the Pillar exposé: catholicnewsagency.com/news/248412/co….

There are some holes in the story. It appears to have been vetted by lawyers; the use of all-anonymous sources (even an anonymous theological expert!) is odd. ...

Nonetheless, I believe CNA when it says an individual offered it the data-mining technology to connect the Grindr data with a large data set of clergy. That individual offered examples that would "expose" priests. The Pillar's editors were CNA's US and DC editors at that time...

Now that we see how The Pillar aligned two data sets to link Burrill's phone to Grindr, we come to question (2): From whom might the site have obtained a large data set on clergy?

I don't know, as Pillar hasn't disclosed that. But I can think of 3 reasonable possibilities: ...

The first possible source for The Pillar's Catholic data set is Steve Bannon. When the UK Catholic Herald launched its US publication, its directors consulted with Bannon, who advised them on collecting a mailing list of "Catholic influencers." ...
buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/…

Bannon is well known as a master of collecting and instrumentalizing data--just Google his name and #CambridgeAnalytica. In 2018, he worked with CatholicVote to target Catholic churchgoers with political ads. ...

thinkprogress.org/exclusive-stev…

A second possible source of The Pillar's data on clergy is the person most responsible for building up CatholicVote's database: Sean Fieler, a multimillionaire hedge-fund manager and major GOP power player. ...

philanthropyroundtable.org/philanthropy-m…

Fieler chairs Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund and the American Principles Project, and is a board member of CUA's Busch School of Business, American Conservative Union, and the Acton Institute. Here he is praising Bolsonaro at the 2019 Brazil CPAC:
...

In 2014, Fieler provided $150K to CatholicVote consultant Thomas Peters to fund uCampaign, which developed apps for Trump 2016, the pro-Trump PAC Great America, the pro-Brexit VoteLeave, & the NRA, as well as CatholicVote & other Catholic orgs. ...nytimes.com/2018/10/20/tec… ...

In addition, Fieler started the Culture of Freedom initiative, now known as Communio (no relation to the magazine). He's now co-CEO of Communio along with Toby Neugebauer, the mogul who connected Cambridge Analytica with Ted Cruz's campaign. highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/me… ...

In 2016, Fieler's Culture of Freedom initiative hired Cambridge Analytica to develop a program using harvested data to enable churches to use microtargeted marketing to "try to change behavior" of churchgoers. ...
web.archive.org/web/2018072905…

And in 2017, Culture of Freedom paid $374K to Scott Beck of the data-analytics firm Gloo. It's not clear what that money paid for, but Gloo's Winter 2018 report boasted that the company had “thousands of data attributes on 265 million people in the US."
static1.squarespace.com/static/5c573a6…...

In short, Fieler's a veteran funder of data-harvesting ops that target Catholics.

This brings me to a third and final possible source of the Pillar's data. And, among the three, this individual has the greatest access to data that specifically concerns clergy. ...

The third possible source is Frank J. Hanna III. I've written extensively on his background--a longtime Legion of Christ funder who made his millions selling subprime credit cards--and on his ownership of the Official Catholic Directory. See my blog: dawneden.blogspot.com/2020/12/frank-… ...

And see my follow-up article in @Where_Peter_is (with the most boring headline in history--thanks a lot, @mfjlewis 🤪): wherepeteris.com/catholic-found….

Hanna is a major donor to CNA & a board member of parent company EWTN. He was funding CNA when The Pillar's editors worked there. ...

Although the USCCB must approve OCD listings, the directory is a for-profit business owned by Hanna, who markets its data If he wished to give material support to The Pillar, he'd be capable of giving the editors not only priests' current addresses but also their former ones...

Those are three possible sources for The Pillar's data on priests.

The actual source might be any one of them or none of them.

We don't know. And we still don't know who funds The Pillar. ...

Although The Pillar is a Substack, and thus at least partly funded by subscribers, its editors, both of whom are married, wouldn't have quit their CNA jobs without substantial seed money to ensure the enterprise would last well into the future. ...

Whoever funded The Pillar's research, 3 things are certain:
1. The funder wishes to be hidden.
2. The funder is pleased to see The Pillar go outside the Church's judicial system to remove a powerful USCCB official. One can detest priestly hypocrisy & still find this disturbing...

3. The funder wishes to enable The Pillar's editors to pick which clerics from its data set to expose next.

Thus, what is being presented as a victory for all laity--exposing priestly hypocrisy--may well be rather a victory for select laity desiring power over the US Church.

P.S. After I posted the above thread, it was brough to my attention that Pillar editor @jdflynn (who's blocked me) had posted the attached statement. It confirms the intuition I posted above, namely, that The Pillar obtained, in Flynn's words, "a dataset." ...

And then, in Flynn's words, the editors "discovered" the alleged "corrolation" between Grindr usage and Burrill.

Interestingly, Flynn paints The Pillar's acquisition of the "dataset" as part of a long-term project involving discussion with Church officials. ...

As I wrote above, two men with families don't quit their jobs to start a Substack without substantial seed money. There's a donor behind this. And that donor paid for the dataset. And if he were one of the men I mentioned above, he was capable of providing data for it as well...

Let's look again at that carefully worded CNA article. It says "CNA and others at the time declined this party's offer" of data on priests.

Questions remain. Who was this anonymous party? Did CNA, after declining the offer "at the time," later accept?...

catholicnewsagency.com/news/248412/co…

Perhaps CNA continued to decline the offer. Perhaps it would never even think of using data as The Pillar did, to try and convict a priest, extrajudicially--and, on top of that, to insinuate that his alleged gay behavior was a slippery slope that would lead to sex with minors...

If that's the case--if CNA has never, and would never, employ such data, it should say so.

For my part, given the Pillar's admission that it's long been working, I can't help but wonder if such data-mining is The Pillar's entire raison d'etre. ...

And I can't help but think that somewhere, a donor who funds both CNA & The Pillar is printing out 2 articles-- CNA's oddly worded attempt to distance itself from data-mining & The Pillar's exposé of Burrill--& laughing all the way to @NapaInstitute's meeting, which starts today.

Addendum: When I wrote that Hanna was a major donor to CNA, I was referring to the donations he makes through the fund he uses for his philanthropy, Solidarity Association. Until recently, Solidarity's website listed its grant recipients--see web.archive.org/web/2020113017….

Technically, however, despite what Solidarity's website said, the donations that Hanna makes through Solidarity go to EWTN News, which owns CNA. (See this follow-the-money article by @HeidiSchlumpf: ncronline.org/news/media/mon….) Hanna is also on EWTN News's board of governors.