Posted on 09/02/2014 11:46:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s a late entry, and a sad one, but the trove of stolen celebrity nudes that hit Reddit like a bomb over the weekend may just qualify as the Internet story of the summer. After all, it’s the perfect Internet scandal: sex, Bitcoin, shadowy hackers and long-reigning Internet darling Jennifer Lawrence.
And yet, the ongoing incident — which the FBI has said it’s investigating — is far more than a tawdry tabloid story. It also raises a lot of profoundly important issues about technology, security, privacy and power in the digital age. There are practical implications, as well: The leak is inspiring many inhabitants of the “cloud” — a club that, in all likelihood, you belong to — to take a second look at their security settings. Let’s parse the key questions.
What happened, in a nutshell?
Here’s the TL;DR version: On Sunday, a large cache of nude celebrity photos were uploaded to the anarchic message-board site 4Chan. It’s not entirely clear who uploaded the photos, or how many people were involved, but the images seem to have come from a loosely affiliated network of undeniably creepy dudes.
From 4Chan, the photos spread to Reddit. From Reddit, they moved to the rest of the Internet. Celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton have since confirmed that some of the photos are genuine. Which has left law enforcement, security experts and site moderators pondering what, exactly, they should do.
Which celebrities got hacked?
The cache purportedly includes photos of several dozen female celebrities, including Lawrence, Upton, Kirsten Dunst, Avril Lavigne, Lea Michele, McKayla Maroney and Ariana Grande. There are also some lesser marquee names in the mix, such as Jessica Brown-Findlay (“Downton Abbey’s” Lady Sybil) and Hope Solo (the U.S. women’s soccer star).
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
One of those bimbos was quoted as saying “The photos are real.” There are some good jokes there.
exactly! It tells us what kind of people they are, and the fact that they are upset says the price wasn’t high enough.
Why do I find it comforting that I cannot put a face to any of these names from memory?
The rationale for taking the photos is indeed an enigma. But if one is taking such photos, why in the world allow them to be stored by someone else? Even as a “backup”?
Because people have been told that “the cloud” was super secure and data could never be lost or hacked etc. People were actually stupid enough to believe that.
Well, thats the part that leaves me scratching my head.
Many of the photos I have seen (there are cleaned up, edited versions around) seem to be photos the folks have taken of themselves—over a long time. These are images that are sitting right there on their phones or laptops. And some, it is pretty obvious, were meant to be sent to other folks.
If you can hit these phones, or grab them as they go from one phone to another, you have gold.
That said, there are a couple of things that cross my mind:
These “women” seem to be very comfortable being naked in front of the camera. And they seem very comfortable being around “live” cameras. I am not sure why they are shocked to have the world see their boobies. Clearly, some of them don’t have an issue having us pay money to see them in movies. By having their photos on their phones, they are opening themselves up to all sorts of hacking.
Finally...it is interesting that very few men find themselves in this position. Is it because there are plenty of shirtless and butt shots of most famous hollywood stars out there? I also think men are much more “conservative” when it comes to taking pictures of their “junk.” Or is it that women are not interested in pictures of their junk.
Psychologists are going to have a field day over this stuff for the coming weeks.
Those of us who work in IT and warned of potential “cloud” issues are smirking.
It seems logical that to claim as some have that the pics are fake would make it impossible to seek any kind of legal action based on copyright protection.
Regardless of why the pics were taken or where they were stored, they are still the private property of the person who took them. If they are fakes, legal issues become murkier, because the faker could invoke the same “fair use” argument that protects parodies and other forms of limited usage.
I have seen some of Kate Upton’s photos. They are real, and they are spectacular.
If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
I can assure you nobody will ever post a naked photo of me on the internet.
There is a very simple way to make sure this doesn’t happen.
It starts by not plastering your junk out in the open in front of God and who knows who else to take pictures of it.
“very few men find themselves in this position”
Although it’s been rumored that Anthony Weiner has been franically uploading his entire library to iCloud, hoping for another hack ;-)
All of the Robertson women went on record to say if you see a naked photo of any of us, it is fake.... ...because we have never taken a naked photo.
they’re real and they’re spectacular!
Or in this case, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em both.
LOL, I do not even care.
There are no celebrities anymore.
These guys also got into my account and got several nude photos of me.
I’m very upset and not sure what to do.
They sent them back to my account with a note telling me how to change my security settings
So that that they didn’t accidentally get them again.
Oh and they sent a link to a penis enlargement site.
likewise
Women are not as stimulated by images of the opposite sex like men are. It is widely known that the primary viewers of nude men is homosexual men, not heterosexual women.
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