Some assholes at SONY thought it would be entertaining, and profitable, to produce a movie about the assassination of a sitting government’s leader. And people are shocked, SHOCKED, that someone might take offense.
The leaks prove that Hollyweird is a shallow, backstabbing place where it’s only important to fake compassion and concern.
Maybe people are rightfully shocked that someone (whoever they may be) are so powerful, and so ingrained into U.S. (world?) companies computer systems. Then again, maybe people are too busy to care.
I don’t know why the public should be worked up about this. Sony has been hacked a few times this year alone and they still didn’t do enough to secure their information. It has been reported that Sony probably could not have been protected against the latest attack.
I feel for the little people who are caught up in this, but Sony made their bed.
I’m surprised Sony doesn’t have better Network security. They can certainly afford to hire the best people and purchase up to date software. Networking isn’t my area. I setup and ran a NT server for our dept 15 years ago. It became aged and CS setup a new server for our dept several years ago. I’m not an administrator on it. I do very little Networking at work anymore. Its become too specialized and not something just anybody can do. I’ve had my share of headaches getting Computing Services to properly configure Active Directory. The staff in my dept needs access to printers, files, and other network resources. Active Directory can be a PITA because it locks down everything. I’m not sure what CS is running for a Firewall. We nave a very experienced Network Manager that comes from a corporate background.
Sony is so big that they’d need multiple networks and managers. I imagine managing the trust relationships between those domains is a nightmare.
I haven’t seen anything reported about Sony’s network. Its reassuring to assume its sloppily run and that the hackers didn’t use any sophisticated techniques. We just don’t know how vulnerable a properly patched and administered Windows Server and Active Directory are to to the better hacker groups out there.
Fine, so pay them for the info. There.
Bust I must agree, the general public looks and says* “Huh, another data breach in some MegaBuck$ corporation. Maybe we should look into secu… what? they said WHAT about Angelina? And what about THE PRESIDENT? Oooohhh… we’re going to watch rich corporates executives sweat and squirm! Oh, we LOVE watching rich corporate execs sweat and squirm!”*
I’m not that surprised. Lots of companies, big and small, are frankly negligent when it comes to security. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the big ones is that they often gamble that they can absorb the financial impact of a breach. I used to work at a company that had VERY private data, including health and financial data, on millions of Americans. One day, the Chief Information Security Officer – the guy in charge of security – told me, “We’re a 20 billion dollar company. A million dollar breach is a rounding error.”
Corporate America does not care about your data, and they won’t start caring until the cost of bad security is higher than the cost of good security. As bad as this breach is, it won’t kill Sony. They’ll make some security improvements and go about their merry way. So it goes.
It’s an ugly invasion of personal privacy. I know it will never happen, but I would like to see the media refrain from publishing the private details of hacking victims (similar to the refusal to identify sexual assault victims or to link to leaked nudes like those of Jennifer Lawrence).
Some of the leaked stuff is clearly of public interest, like the MPAA working with state AGs against Google, and some is clearly private, like employee personal data. Some of it seems to fall in the middle: for instance, I would probably publish the executive’s racist meanderings about the President, but not the criticism of Angelina Jolie.
It takes a lot to make one sympathise with the North Koreans, but if another country made an allegedly funny movie about their plot to assassinate the current US president, America would shit a lung about “terrorism”.
I think Americans have “hacker fatigue” and that’s why we aren’t as upset about the Sony hack as we should be. There have been huge hacks recently, such as the Target and Home Depot hacks, and many smaller hacks. We’ve gotten desensitized. It’s like turning on the news every day and seeing reports about warfare and murders. “Oh, yeah, another one.”
Frankly our dependency on computer systems makes me nervous, especially in terms of utilities – the electrical power grid, municipal water systems, oil and gas pipelines. I can only hope that there are some offline backup systems that can keep major utilities functioning in case of hacker attacks.
People (well, some people) are starting to take a bit more care about their own online security in the wake of l’affaire Snowden – while it’s too soon to say, the furor over the Sony hack may enhance the effect over the long term:
Well, FWIW there was a 2006 British movie (“Death of a President”, more like a fake documentary) which presented the assassination of George W. Bush and how things generally go to the dogs in the aftermath.
Now, I think there is a fundamental difference in behavior here – When “Death of a President” was released, the US government did not demand the British government or the producers of the movie in question to block its release, and it did not unleash a hacking attack on the producers to damage them. The movie went on to be released, and although it ended up winning some awards, and there was controversy swirling about it, it is not really remembered nowadays, 8 years later. I think that this is the best way to deal with this kind of thing – you find it offensive, and its taste is very questionable, but it is something that doesn’t really have “staying power”, so to speak. Time will mostly wash it away.
It seems to me as if NK does not really understand what “The Streisand Effect” is. With all this brouhaha, they have guaranteed interest in the movie, and I am sure that more people will watch this movie because of the NK snit and the later hacking affair than because it is a Seth Rogen movie.
Sony Pictures will suffer from this, but it won’t go under; not by a long margin. The movie will end up being released anyway, and in most non-US markets it will be released as planned.
The only thing that NK has achieved, in the long term, is to call attention to a movie they deem offensive, and very likely to make people curious about it and wanting to watch it, even if it is only for the controversy around it.
I don’t care because Sony doesn’t hold the nuclear launch codes or invasion plans of Belgium.
I don’t care because a reveal of a millionaire senior executive making a multi-million dollar salary is not news to anyone.
I don’t care because a very well capitalized company that doesn’t spend time or effort to protect the privacy and security of their employees and their intellectual property is stupid and one can argue that it’s surprising they weren’t hacked until now.
I don’t care that nasty, petty, small minded, petulant assholes who should know better than to send nasty emails to one another like a bunch of middle school bullies, don’t in fact know better than to send nasty emails to one another. Thus, they deserve to be embarassed by being exposed for the nasty, petty, small minded petulant assholes that they are. Fuck 'em.
I don’t care because Angelina Jolie (among others) really is a spoiled talentless hack and that’s not news to anyone either.
I would say that Death of a President is a fundamentally different situation than the Interview. In spite of what the right might say, Death of a President wasn’t celebrating or advocating the assassination of Bush, it rather used the assassination as a setting to explore further concepts. The Interview is a different in that it is advocating in favor of the assassination of Kim, and playing it up for laughs.
The US has a pretty strong stomach when it comes to freedom of speech so I doubt that if say Iran produced a movie advocating the assassination of Obama for laughs there would be much in the way of official response, (we already know the don’t like us very much), so the larger points stands, but I think the Death of the President is a poor comparison.
It’s almost as if none of the Zucker-Abrahams films and their spin offs were made.
And I strongly suspect that a good 50% of the American public wouldn’t give two shits if a movie about the assassination of a sitting president were made.
Does it make a difference that SONY Corporation is a Japanese company? North Korea and Japan have been feuding over territorial/international water rights for some time now.
SONY USA is under attack because SONY execs, and Rogen, believed that they could insult anyone, at anytime, under the guise of “entertainment”. Sometimes, people get really pissed off when you insult them. Most people are unable to fight back against a SONY and can only laugh off the insults. It appears that some people can fight back.
I don’t care because the NSA has hacked my email account, records my Google searches, collects my phone records, knows how much I spend on what, will know where I will walk and drive today (cell tower records) and of course, will know all my medical records which are accessible online. They will know if I am conducting an affair (I’m not), go to a medical marijuana clinic (ditto). In fact, NSA will know if I send this post, and may even know about it if I don’t post it. They can be collecting my photo as we speak to add to their facial recognition software and collect live streaming video of me and anyone around me. They can turn my cell phone on and listen to my conversations.
