Maybe I would come closer to agreeing with your point if we were talking about an off-the-cuff comment made in the middle of a larger discussion. But this thread essentially is devoted to faulting actresses for assuming files on their cameras would stay secure on password-protected devices, even if such files had long been deleted. It unlikely this thread would exist if it wasn’t naked photos that were released but rather credit card numbers or medical information. Data like that doesn’t quite whip people up into a lathered frenzy of judgement the same way naked pics do, and yet that stuff is just as private, just as likely to be stored on a phone, and just as tempting for a crook or an overzealous paparazzi to steal. I think it’s worth probing why exactly, we perceive a moral difference between nude pics and any other potentially damaging/embarrassing information.
The knee-jerk tendency that people have to finger wag whenever a crime even remotely sex-related occurs is tiresome, but at the same revealing. We can’t honestly examine what it reveals if we don’t call it what it is.
Except you’re wrong - if my email account was hacked, and someone read my cc number you know the first thing my wife AND my bank would say to me?
What the fuck were you thinking!!
If I stored passwords as a text message in my phone so I could remember, and I lost the phone and my account was accessed - how much sympathy would I get here do you think? I rather suspect people would be calling me a moron of the highest order.
It’s a rather simple principle - phones and their related storage systems are not very secure. It doesn’t take this instance for me, or anyone else to know that.
If I sold a computer, without first making sure the hard-drive was comprehensively wiped, reformatted, wiped again etc etc people would pour scorn on me. Why should this act be any different? Because women are the victims?
The more “damage” something can do to you if word gets out - the less advisable it is to do that thing.
Now, I don’t think these ladies did anything wrong. And I don’t care two hoots about the pictures - beyond the curiosity factor of wanting to see them naked. It won’t make any difference at all to whether I watch them in movies. But to some, it obviously does matter - I think those people are sad.
BUT - as a actress who lives on their image, the ladies involved are well aware of this - and if it worries them, they should modulate their actions accordingly.
Except it was a private event - an event he had excluded media from specifically because he didn’t want the pictures broadcast.
And I agree with the idea that the ideas expressed were repugnant and relevant to the campaign - so I’m quite happy they were broadcast.
Isn’t there some protections in law against filming people when they’re not in public? (I know different states have different laws and politicians are treated differently)
I also think that he was foolish to express the ideas ANYWHERE he could have been captured on film.
Just the same way - to SOME people, the idea of the actresses taking naked selfies is somehow morally wrong, and against their image blah blah blah (I don’t agree) and they had that some expectation that they would have privacy.
I very regularly did and still do get exactly these sorts of reminders - even at age 40 -
Hey - if you can’t afford a speeding ticket, don’t speed.
If you need a clear head tomorrow, don’t drink tonight.
Simplistic and self explanatory and perhaps even a little stupid?
Sure!!
It’s a good reminder of a truism none-the-less.
Once again - I would support the right of these ladies to do whatever they wish, and the pictures won’t impact my behaviour in any conceivable way.
And I would call out as stupid those that do change their behaviour because of it. I would be quite happy if the whole paparazzi industry would just die.
But the fact of the matter is - some people DO care. If the stars are willing to dismiss that fine. But they need to realise that their own risk calculus is a little different to mine.
A simple one liner is enough of a reminder of that - not to the people involved this time round, but to others for the future. And I am sure that people WILL learn from this case. They will amend their behaviour accordingly. And I would be very sure that there will be Disney agents across the country talking to their clients about what can be learned from this - the most simple lesson being - if you don’t take naked pictures, nobody can steal them.
Who is talking about an email account? A hacker with enough savvy could mine data from your keyboard the next time you buy something or pay a bill online --an activity millions of us engage in every day with little worry.
Is it stupid to shop online now?
Why are you concocting scenarios that have little bearing to the crime we’re talking about?
Computers aren’t very secure either, using this logic. Yet oddly enough, most of us store sensitive information on them. So does the U.S. government and every major corporation in the country. It’s a wonder we’re able to function in society, with everybody being an idiot and all.
No they wouldn’t. Most laymen don’t have the knowledge or ability to completely wipe a hard drive clean. This knowledge gap is one that police departments regularly exploit when investigating child porn. Shit, a large fraction of the public doesn’t even know deleted emails can easily be retrieved out of the trashcan. Given this reality, if you sold a computer without first giving it a deep-cavity enema, it’s likely no one would care because they wouldn’t even think such steps were necessary. And most people wouldn’t assume the worst would happen either.
But of course you do! This is the kind of crazy double-talk that Jimmy Chitwood pointed out earlier. If you don’t think they did anything wrong, you wouldn’t be implying they acted wrongly. You’re insulting everyone’s intelligence when you deny the obvious.
He may have wanted to exclude reporters but this was a public event by any reasonable definition. He was delivering a campaign speech to donors not talking things over with his family in his living room.
There’s nothing wrong with taking naked selfies. You wanna do it - have at it.
I even think that it’s possibly a good idea to do it while you’re still “young and sexy” - it may certainly be fun to look back on in your old age.
I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting drunk - I’ve done it lots of times myself.
Where I think these ladies were a little thoughtless is in “allowing” the images to be stored in a “not so secure” place.
I can’t help but be reminded - last week a friend of mine went to the bank - and drew over $30k in cash to pay a supplier - I scolded her, until she informed me that she had a security escort, because of the risk she was taking.
And I think there’s an analogy to be drawn there. I go to the bank and draw a few hundreds of dollars all the time without an escort.
But when it reaches that amount I think an escort is “prudent”.
Same here - for holiday snaps, an online storage is perfectly ok, for something that is so “nuclear” either don’t do it, or secure it better. Perhaps by maintaining physical control?
If I were to be taking naked selfies, I sure wouldn’t store them in an online backup service of any sort purely because of the risk of it being hacked is so much greater.
Particularly for famous people where we know there are always arseholes around that are actively seeking out and trying to hack your account.
It’s not wrong for people to give the sort of advice dished out in the OP here - if the appearance of naked selfies is so damaging, then simply don’t take them in the first place - no matter how much fun it is.
As has already been pointed out, you wouldn’t need to actively store them online for a hacker to get them. All that would be necessary is that someone takes a pic of you and sends it your phone. Stuff gets uploaded to the Cloud without people knowing all the time, and it’s retrievable even if the file was deleted shortly after it was created.
So yeah, you’re faulting them for taking the pics. See the OP; that’s the position he has and that’s what your arguments are supporting. Digital cameras are not immune from theft either, and are less secure than smart phones. Anything stored electronically can be pilfered.
Only in the same sense it’s a bad idea for any of them to do almost anything I would want to do if I were them, though. It is, strictly speaking and from a mercenary technical point of view, a “bad idea” for a celebrity to do anything that’s going to be sub-optimal to have everyone find out about, because we think we own them. And let’s not delude ourselves; these are “bad ideas” for Jennifer Lawrence and other famous women, who we think we own in a very particular way. When things go wrong, we can point and say see, this is exactly the way you would have thought this would go wrong. But that technical, mercenary point of view is not the only point of view.
But I don’t think that, all things considered, a celebrity should not take nude photos. They should live their lives. When the awful side of celebrity culture shows up, we should say “shit, that’s awful, but they’re allowed to live their lives” instead of saying “this was foreseeable given the awful celebrity culture.” Because, I mean, jesus. Nearly everything that is fun to do is bad PR in some way or another. It’s bad policy to expect something other than humanity from people.
Its also rather easy to break into a locked house or do a smash and grab through a car window.
Recently the neighbors were robbed. They were out of town. Broke in through a back door. He’s a cop - they got the guns. Now, no one is saying “he shouldn’t have had guns” or “they shouldn’t have gone out of town” - it is reasonable and expected for a cop to keep his service revolver in the house (and reasonable for a cop to have additional guns) and its reasonable and expected for people to go out of town. There is reason to believe he was targeted because he’s a cop and would have guns in the house - which he wouldn’t take on vacation. Gun safe was broken into.
There is a reasonable expectation that your stuff in your house behind a locked door is safe - as there is a reasonable expectation that your photos on your phone/in the cloud behind a password are safe.
I was all ready to argue with you until you mentioned the guns were in a gun safe.
To my mind - taking naked selfies and keeping them on your own computer, or better still, the memory card only (or suitable UNCONNECTED media) is like having your guns in a gun safe.
Having naked selfies wandering around cloud storage is like having guns in your wardobe while you’re away on holiday - while legal, not exactly a good course of action, and in the case of the guns something I would condemn in the way I wouldn’t naked selfies (cause guns are dangerous and naked pix aren’t)
I’d expect a cop to know how to keep guns relatively safe - which they should be in a good gun safe in a way that naked selfies in an iCloud account aren’t. The net is rife with stories on how insecure such storage is - the same way that I’d expect a cop to know a little something about gun storage, I’d expect that it’s part of what a good agent would be teaching their clients about good security with phones and such.
I don’t think it is reasonable for ordinary non-IT people to know the ins and outs of security of information. I certainly would not have known, before this incident, that pics that were deleted could nonetheless be uploaded into the cloud and remain there.
However, it is for just this reason - that it is unreasonable to expect ordinary people to know much about IT security - that it is a bad idea, and has been demonstrated to be a bad idea, to produce and or store information you truly wish to keep private on such devices.
The analogy with a burglar stealing your stuff is apropos. If a burgler breaks into your house and steals your stuff, the violation is terrible and the loss traumatic - but in the end, you can protect yourself with insurance, and at least the financial loss can be made good.
Personal information you wish to remain private is fundamentally different. The loss is not “compensible with damages”. Nowadays, if you are sufficiently famous, or the information is sufiiciently titilating or embrassing, the loss can go viral - as it did in this case. Very little actual effort is required on the part of the bad guy.
Morally, there is no difference between a burglar breaking into your house when you are not there and stealing your stuff, and a hacker breaking into your account and stealing your info. The difference is in the ease of the violation by the bad guy and in consequences to the victim. With a push of a button, the hacker can paste your info all over the net and you can never ‘undo’ that.
Another example. How many people’s credit card numbers were released during Target’s security breach last fall? Hundreds of thousands? It was kind of a big deal, right? And yet all those people still whip out the plastic at the register. Funny so many stupid people abound.
We shake our heads at the techo-phobic octogenarians who wag their fingers at the stupid whippersnappers that carelessly entrust their money to banks and electronic institutions rather than the trusty space under their mattresses…and then we turn into these people the instant the subject turns to nude pics. Lol.
There is a very big and important difference, as I’ve pointed out in the post above yours: if your credit information is ripped off and you are defrauded, usually you, the defrauded individual, can get your money back (the losers are typically insurers). This has in fact happened to me.
If you are hacked and embarrasing or humiliating personal info is spread across the net and goes viral, there is literally nothing you can do about it. You can sue and prosecute, but you cannot “undo”.
In short, one kind of violation is “compensible” and the other is not.
Aside:
Going back to the thread title and the naming of this “law”… Don’t Hefner and the other mainstream skin-mag publishers normally seek to get permission from the rights-holders (not necessarily the subject) before putting something on print?
/Aside
Actually, the bottom line is that the culpability the OP assigns to the victims really belongs to the vendors who fed them a line of marketing BS about Park Row and sold them a flat in Crime Alley.