Why is the Jennifer Lawrence leak worse than the Anthony Weiner leak?

Great Debates
121

Do you think you can just keep repeating the word “idiosyncratic” and that it changes the meaning of the terms we are discussing? You keep arguing the term doesn’t fit despite several definitions pointing out you are wrong. At think point, I don’t think is worth my time trying to correct your willful ignorance.

No, that is not the issue. Moral standards are not based on the level of violation felt by the victim for obvious reasons. If Lawrence didn’t feel bad about it, it doesn’t mean the violation was any better or worse.

But nobody broke into anyone’s house. The original analogy fits, and once again, we are not talking about how Pharell feels, but rather if I have should feel less bad about downloading his song because he performed it on TV.

The point is the foreseeability of that violation. My unlocked bike being stolen is still a violation, but not locking it has certain foreseeable risks. Similarly, uploading to the cloud does as well. Doesn’t mean you don’t have an expectation of privacy, just that said privacy should not be expected to be absolute.

Wrong again. What I said was:

That has nothing to do with how violated a person feels.

Do you even read what you are responding to? You compared something being stolen from you with something you lost. I said, that if I bought the item in either case from a third party with full knowledge that the item belongs to you, and that you want it back, I am doing something morally wrong.

Given the leaks we have seen, and the clear vulnerabilities that exist within any technology, how is it any less “stupid” to take nude photos of yourself with your phone, then upload them to the cloud? If you are famous, those photos are worth tens of thousands of dollars. More importantly, being stupid doesn’t make you less of a victim.

I’ll take it up with you. You are the person who so boldly proclaimed the term useless to them; except of course when naming their main means of communication, or attracting attention, or getting people to their site using terms everyone understands. Yes, but beyond that, it’s useless. :dubious:

Geez. Once again your basic misunderstanding of language leads you astray. Let’s use an example you may understand. When I say “African-American”, most people understand the term even if the words themselves introduce confusion in some cases, and despite the fact that better, more accurate terms exists. Now, if someone refers to some as African-American, and you chime in saying it doesn’t technically fit because the guy isn’t from Africa, then you don’t understand how the term is being used or understood.

122

Says the guy who confuses personal and professional.

Yes, it is.

No. Legal standards might not be, but moral standards very much are. This is why it’s morally OK to look at a stripper, but not women in a changing room.

Yes, it does.

That’s it, I’m finished talking to you. I see no point in arguing with people who have their own private dictionary.

123

Pretty much this.

I do have to confess that I misread your username on this tread as Mr.Dribble.

124

I looked at Weiner’s pictures.

I haven’t looked, nor do I want to look, at any of the pictures published in connection with the hacked iCloud celebrity skin parade.

I believe that my motives for looking at Weiner’s pictures were legitimate. The pictures were published along with a story in which Weiner alleged that they were planted, and did not depict him. CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, CBS’ Nancy Cordes, MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur, and others all suggested that the pictures were fabricated. Wonkette wrote:

So my interest in the photos was not prurient. I was not looking for an illicit thrill via Congressman Weiner’s genitals. I was looking at information relevant to a political story in which a prominent Democratic politician had either (a) been viciously smeared by false, doctored evidence or (b) lied about being the victim of doctored evidence in order to conceal his own actions.

This is, I contend, a legitimate matter of public interest. Voters certainly have the right to learn if their elected representatives, or would-be elected representatives, have been the victims of scurrilous attacks or if they have fabricated such attacks to conceal their own behavior.

In contrast, Jennifer Lawrence’s photos prove (I imagine) only that Jennifer Lawrence possesses breasts and a vulva, a matter that I never really seriously doubted, and maybe that she has an active sex life, another matter that never crossed my mind to question. Looking at pictures of Lawrence naked would, for me, be an expression only of prurient interest.

125

I did no such thing.

Which is a terrible analogy. A closer approximation of your illogical assertion would be arguing that staring at a stripper in a changing room is not as bad because she is a stripper. A stripper in a strip club does not object to being viewed and both Weiner and Lawrence do.

What nonsense. So you think if Lawrence et al just shrugged it off, the crime wouldn’t be as serious? Is that your standard now? Hey, I know you were just mugged, but how bad to do you feel about it, because that should dictate how we react.

Says the guy who contradicted several definitions linked to and quoted because he “didn’t agree”.

Why are your motives important?

How would you viewing of someone’s penis give you any insight as to whether the pics were legitimate? The initial pics didn’t have his face, so I am not sure how viewing them helps you determine if they are real. And even if they had his face, its not like a good fabrication can be detected by most.

What does that matter whether your interest was prurient? Would it be okay to look at Lawrence’s if your interest wasn’t to get an illicit thrill? Should we have the links to the pic posted, but require you have to promise not to masturbate to them in order to gain access?

Looking at the pics brings you no closer to determining that.

Perhaps, but they have no professional obligation to investigate the matter or be privy to all available information. I can certainly make a case for why a person at the FBI might want to view the I-cloud photos, but making such a claim on the basis of public interest is far too broad, and unnecessarily violative of others’ privacy. More importantly, the basis of my objection was the standards suggested by commentators who argued privacy should be inviolable.

Why prurience bad in your opinion? Also, what exactly did you expect to see in the Weiner photos? How is a reporter telling you they saw a picture of Anthony Weiner’s penis not clear enough that it doesn’t require you to then view them yourself to verify their findings?

126

Prurience is not bad, but it’s an insufficient reason to violate the privacy of a person who wants to keep their body parts private – or, if not totally private, as least private with respect to me.

By looking at the Weiner pictures, I expected to gain a fuller understanding of how Weiner’s political enemies were trying to discredit him, or to become convinced that Weiner’s claims were false.

I don’t agree.

When George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service record was at issue, a memo supposedly from the personal files of then-Lt. Bush’s former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, was made public. The memo purported to lend support to the claims of Bush critics concerning his failure to report for duty or serve satisfactorily.

Had the audience simply accepted the reporting concerning those memos, we would have missed the visual observation that the supposedly professional reporters missed: the memos, purportedly created by a typewriter in 1973 were amazingly similar to the type produced by a proportional-spaced Microsoft Word document made with 2003 default font settings.

127

Are you just basing that your own moral standards or do you think that is a rule everyone should follow?

You really thought looking at a picture of someone’s penis does any of that? How? The first pic is him in his underwear. How does reading that have lack any clarity for which a picture would help? Seriously, this is an laughable bullshit excuse. I seriously cannot believe you think looking helps you in any regard. But do tell. What exactly did you learn after staring at a semi clothed torso and penis? How exactly was the picture of Weiner’s penis edifying for you? Had you seen his penis before, and seen enough penises in your life to make a firm ID?

Yes, by typewriter experts, not YOU. Are you some kind of photoshop expert such that your perusal of these photos would allow you to determine their authenticity one way or another? Again, I am not saying NOBODY should view them. I am saying YOU had no reasonable expectation that you viewing them would clarify things given you are not a reporter, photoshop expert, or investigator of any sort AFAIK. Feel free to state your credentials if I am am wrong about the above.

128

No, that’s simply my own rule.

Actually, the initial comments about the typewriter mismatch came from Harry W. MacDougald, who is. . . . an attorney, not a “typewriter expert.”

I’ve used Photoshop since version 2.0 in the early 1990s on the Mac OS, and currently use GIMP, an open-source Linux raster graphics editor. I am generally familiar with artifacts problems that poor image manipulation can create. I don’t say I’m an expert, but I’m not a novice either.

And even if i didn’t have that knowledge – which admittedly was not applicable in this case, as the images were not manipulated, which made them indistinguishable from images that had been manipulated but too skillfully for me to detect – I still gained value. The initial reporters’ description minimized the salacious impact of the photo by describing it in subdued, clinical terms, and seeing it was much more information than relying on someone else’s description of it.

This is especially true as the initial media reports accepted Weiner’s lies as the truth, and sought to minimize the damage.

129

I know I’m responding late, but your answer to my question is nonresponsive. The question isn’t whether it’s possible to hack the iCloud; of course it is. The question is whether Apple employees are looking at the images. I say they’re not.

You want analogies? First, the “unlocked” part is absurd, since the accounts that were hacked were password protected. Instead, say that the famously-wealthy guy put his money in a locker with a standard lock on it, a type of locker that, to the best of his knowledge, had not been the target of theft previously. You fancy yourself an amateur locksmith, so you know that the lock is pickable, but the average schmoe doesn’t know that.

Of course people are shocked the first time they hear of this locker being broken into.

Furthermore, it’s really ridiculous to suggest that the rich guy was sharing his money with the locker’s owner. WHen you talk about how Lawrence shared her pictures with Apple, that’s what you’re saying.

130

So in accepting others have different standards of when they have the right to violate someone’s privacy for their edification, don’t you think a blanket prohibition as suggested by commentators is untenable morally speaking?

Are the two mutually exclusive? Certainly someone who can state something with confidence has some expertise.

Yes, but there is still no reason to think you could have ascertained whether the image was Weiner or not. Even if we grant you photo alteration expertise, why would you think viewing the photo would allow you to tell if it were Weiner?

Couldn’t someone say the exact same thing about many the celeb leaked photos? In fact people here have minimized some of the images as not much worse than modeling photos, etc.

But his lies were not uncovered by people looking at the photos in question. It was by finding corroborating evidence in the form of others’ testimony.

I have no idea if they are, but I would not be at all confident they are not. What makes you confident they aren’t? Employees routinely sell and view things like that. Given that Apple doesn’t even have basic security features on their log in, what makes you think they even know if their employees have looked at others’ photos?

The locked part has nothing to do with it. The point was to highlight a foreseeable bad event. Even if you want to make the locker locked, the point still obtains.

Fine. I guarantee much of the commentary would be who would be so stupid to carry around that much money. Similarly, if I had $30mm in my checking account, and my bank’s vault was robbed, allowing the thieves to take all my money, I bet most people would point out the stupidity of leaving so much money in an account insured for only a fraction of that amount (among other things).

Yes, but this isn’t really the first time. Maybe the first time this particular lock got broken, but we know that similar locks break routinely.

I was not suggesting the rich guy was sharing his money. I was responding to the first part by arguing that uploading something to the cloud is essentially sharing something.

131

A blanket prohibition is untenable. For example, all the jurors at the trial of the hacker will need to see the images, and there’s nothing morally bereft about it.

A fabricated photo would suggest it wasn’t he.

Don’t know – haven’t seen 'em.

But if the photos were doctored, it would tend to show he was not at fault.

132

You know how ridiculous you’re coming off, brickbacon? You are straight face saying that stealing images and distributing them should be considered no worse than forwarding pictures that were sent to you. Give us a break already. .

133

Why would anyone fabricate a photo of an unidentifiable torso? Did any one even suggest the photo itself was altered? You said these people did, but do you have a link to them stating this?

Read the thread. I have not said that at all.

134

Yes. Weiner himself made the claim:

135

There is a double standard. Some men may be bothered that their nude pictures and that bother usually would revolve around whether or not they think their penis is big enough to be shown in public. Women on the other hand are not concerned about whether or not their breast are big enough to show in public, they’re worried about them being shown at all even if the as small as a man’s breast.