I blame Bill Clinton.
No, seriously. Boneheaded 1990s policies such as crypto export controls foreclosed the option of building decent security protocols into the foundations of the then-emerging public Internet. If things had been done right back then, we wouldn’t be dealing with this crap now.
I certainly didn’t miss the specific that you consider this an “eternal verity” for young women in particular, nor am I blind to the implications thereof.
I don’t see any way in which “personal, provocative and intimate writings/images” are different from random lolcats, other than the analogous ways in which (for example) a Rolex is different from a cheap watch from WalMart. (Assuming WalMart still sells watches. Wristwatches in general seem to have gone out of fashion except as a status symbol with the proliferation of cell phones… but I digress.) Some things are enticing theft targets; others not so much.
Certainly, one could make a case that only an idiot would wear his Rolex to go buy crack in the sort of neighborhood where crack is generally for sale. However, as I remarked upon in an earlier message, that situation differs from the one at hand in that crime-ridden neighborhoods are rather easier for the average person to detect than subtle bugs in consumer electronic devices.
And nude pics generally just cause embarrassment, not devastating financial ruin. So I think this difference is not all that different, when you balance the consequences.
My basic point is that few people want either types of information to be released to unauthorized parties. That’s why we consider them sensitive and store them under password protection. We moralize sexualized behaviors and we rationalize everything else; that’s really what it boils down too.
But I do wonder. If this were a case of JLaw et al. having explicit sext messages (with no pics) mass disseminated, would we be saying they were irresponsible for opening themselves up for exposure? Such texts would be just as juicy and embarrassing as pics, but I have a feeling folks would be less judgmental. My theory is that there would be less castigation, because we don’t associate texting with pornography like we do naked selfies. And yet, really, there is fundamentally no difference between pics and texts.
Its really wrong that a persons private accounts have been accessed and personal information shared.
But, we live in a world where information is easily accessed and that is not going to change. So, the question should be, is this information (be it trade secrets, compromising recordings, nude selfies whatever) something that people will pay for? If so, it needs to be placed somewhere where ease of access does not exist, that means your private cellphone is out.
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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.
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Yes, they are non IT People, but not ordinary people. The difference between Jennifer Lawrence and me (and dare I say you?) is that i) she is a major public figure who has access to specialist advise on these matters from experts and ii) no one wants to see nude pictures of me. 
Putting i) forward, I do find it strange that her handlers did not advise her on such basic security measures.The fact that iCloud etc are highly unsecure has been known for some time. Even if she did not tell them about her nude selfies, phone hacking of celebs have been going on for years. I know that several soccer players in Europe do not text collegues because information contained on them is easily obtained.
Or if you are mugged and assaulted, you can get fix the loss of your wallet - but the migraines resulting from having your head cracked against a wall might never go away. So - don’t walk in the street, you might get mugged and assaulted.
And we won’t ever really know what sort of “damages” any celebrity has. Scarlett Johansson’s similar issue doesn’t seem to have hurt her career - and Paris Hilton’s career was made with a sex tape. Its embarrassing and its a violation, but here is part of the risk analysis - if it gets out, how much of a big deal is it really? For some people, it would be a HUGE deal since their image is built around a squeeky clean image or because this sort of violation is really emotionally traumatizing. For other people, its an emotional violation much more similar to robbery - to know that someone was in your bedroom searching through your underwear drawer looking for money and jewelry is an emotional violation.
For me, it would be a huge emotional violation to know nude photos had been seen by someone other than myself or my husband - so there are no nude pictures of me, despite my husband’s requests. I have a past history of sexual abuse and really don’t need to dredge up that sort of thing again. But who knows what Jennifer Lawrence really feels about this - whether its a horrible violation which will take therapy to uncover, or if this is a violation to her more akin to a robbery.
That however, doesn’t mean its not WRONG to hack and publish people’s images. Or hack and listen to their personal phone calls. And those people should be prosecuted.
Personally, I worry less about celebrities who can get security details and live in a bubble than I do about the more average women this happens to as part of revenge porn. This feels voyeuristic to me - that feels shaming and terrorizing. And those women seldom get help or see prosecution of their perpetrators.
Also, a credit card hack can cause you serious embarrassment (e.g. you took a bunch of friends out to dinner and found yourself unable to pay because your card was frozen and had to pass the hat), which is every bit as irreversible as the embarrassment of having your naughty bits posted to the net.
Stolen bank/credit card statements can also show embarrassing purchases. How many public figures out there would die of shame if word got out that they were viagara users or subscribed to JuicyJailBaitXXX .com?
Having your credit card info hacked doesn’t cause “devastating financial ruin” to the average person. You generally get your money back.
The difference is that the damages from “embarasment” are intangible.
I’m not “moralizing”.
That simply isn’t comparable.
Strikes me as an absurd analogy. The effort it takes to secure one’s sexy selfies is reasonably trivial - don’t use a device to take them that connects with the Internet. The effort it takes to avoid walking anywere is far from trivial.
Absolutely. I am simply taking these stars at their word that it was very damaging to them, personally.
I am nowhere questioning that it is WRONG to hack. The lesson, it seems to me, is to avoid using devices that connect to the Internet for anything that is objectively likely to ‘go viral’ and subjectively would cause one great distress if it did.
Note that doesn’t mean ‘avoid the activity’, just avoid using Internet connected devices to ‘do the activity’ with. It’s a security matter, not a moral one.
Sez you. Personally, I would find it far more humiliating to find myself suddenly unable to follow through on a promise (to pay for dinner) and be forced to rely on my intended beneficiaries to bail me out.
Every year – hell, every month – the steady increase in device networking (much of it hidden from the causal user) makes this suggestion less and less “trivial” and more and more similar to “if you don’t want to be victimized by high-tech failures, adopt an Amish lifestyle”.
As I said, the blame the OP proposes to assign to the victim rightfully belongs to the marketeers who make security promises their products fail to deliver.
I seriously doubt that your minor embarassment over the cheque is likely to go viral and be seen by millions of Internet viewers worldwide.
Now, write a nasty note to your server on a napkin, on the other hand …
I have a camera sitting on my desk right now that takes pics and puts them onto a memory stick. With this marvelous technology, I can take all the nude selfies I want, and no one but me and those I share the stick with can see them. If I load the stick into a computer attached to the 'net, of course, all bets are off.
Maybe someday in the future, there will be no such thing, or only retro-Luddites will use them.
However, the current incident - and others - demonstrates why there ought to remain a market for devices like this that don’t talk to everyone on the 'net unless you want them to.
I assign the blame to the hackers (no security is ever going to be perfect), but that is hardly the point. I am no interested in “blame”, particularly, but in drawing lessons - and the main one is this: assume that anything connected to the 'net can be hacked unless you know otherwise, and plan your information storage accordingly.
99.9% of the time, of course, that risk doesn’t matter much.
I think your question is rhetorical -
but I’ll answer anyway 
They were in / on “iCloud” -
Which is rather well known to be less than fully secure.
I’m no security expert, but I would never put anything that’s this potentially damaging onto something like iCloud, it’s just not that secure (in my mind)
I’ve read article after article about how easy it is for a determined person to access almost any type of online storage service, what more one that’s rolled out enmasse and by default like apples is