Over the weekend someone released hundreds of revealing photos of celebrities that appear to have been stolen from private storage. In response to this, a bunch of anonymous guys on the internet copied them and posted them all over the town square, because the internet is written in ink and if you are ever a victim once in your life the internet will remind you of it forever.
These men are the detritus of human society for whom the internet provides a warm blanket, so let’s remove the warm blanket for a minute.
If the NSA spies on us, it’s a massive violation of privacy and omg government and #impeachobama. When some (hopefully not for much longer) anonymous hacker breaks into the personal, private accounts of dozens of famous women, steals their most private photographs, and posts them online, these same men shouting from the rooftops about the NSA retreat to their bunkers, share the photos as much as they can, and do much more I’d rather not imagine right now.
Props to The Verge for this article.
Sad.
One could argue about lots of things, but it seems the personal security of the storage is the problem with those leaks.
Instead of blaming the victims, perhaps in the long run it will make people more aware and careful where they store their data.
As long as people want to see lewd pictures of celebrities such data will be sought after. Remember the age old controversy over the paparazzi that ambushed celebrities in the shower and so on. (I think it was for The Sun in the UK)
Hopefully this leak will make it harder for such things in the future.
Random observation: people really like to talk about a few nude pics.
Yeah, the whole thing of people going crazy about this is undoubtedly much more enjoyable than the pictures themselves!
And this will raise awareness about privacy and security concerns… I wish!
This article is based on what was said on Twitter.
Is it just me or do people put a bit to much emphasis on what people say on Twitter, a medium which doesn’t allow easily to go in to detail ?
I find it really odd that news stories are using twitter now as well as though it’s some kind of scientific journal.
They say:
“x has happened and we’ll tell you all about it”
They mean:
Here are all the best twitter comments we found in 10 minutes of searching about this new celebrity drama to fill up a page.
It is laziness, pure and simple. Twitter is not representative of the wider community, but of twitter users.
Hey, if they don’t want people to judge them, then they shouldn’t put their stupid opinions online for everyone to read.
#dumdum
And don’t step on downed power lines.
I’m completely in agreement with you on the hypocritical attitudes that many on the internet have been taking on this stance. I’m showing my support for those who’s privacy was violated by not viewing the pictures in question.
With that said, I would ask that you not be dismissive about the current administration’s laxidasical attitude toward privacy. I was also vehemently against it when Bush opened the door to this possibility however It’s Obama that has opened the floodgates to privacy infringement to all Americans.
It is absolutely imperative that the next president push constitutional principals. I’m not seeing this as a likely scenario from most of the candidates…. including Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Jeb Bush. Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee
Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul are the only candidates I see with the likelihood of adhering to constitutional principals.
Edited 2014-09-01 20:14 UTC
I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything when reading that bit, because I might have spit it all over my monitor in a truly WTF moment.
Ralph Nader, perhaps ?
Kochise
Nah, Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold. Feingold being the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT act. Sanders for being absolutely awesome.
But the right to privacy isn’t mentioned in the US Constitution (it only exists as an unenumerated right).
The likes of Ted Cruz are archetypal textualists, so you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think they’ll be on your side on the issue of privacy.
Fortunately, I wasn’t one of those men. In fact, I said then that privacy on the Internet doesn’t exist, and probably never will, so you might as well get used to it. And I’m saying the same thing now. And now that this has happened to a bunch of celebrities, maybe the mainstream public will finally get the point. If you don’t want your shit in tomorrow morning’s headlines, DON’T F-KING POST IT ONLINE!!! It really is that simple. Because even private keys can be compromised. And if you DO Post it online, accept the fact that there’s ALWAYS a chance it could get out, no matter what kind of safeguards you put into place, ESPECIALLY if it’s something that a lot of people really want access to, like nude celebrity pics.
When are people finally going to learn that at the end of the day, whether you’re Joe Sixpack or a billion dollar corporation, it’s all just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s, and the Internet doesn’t discriminate based on what you want to have shared with the world and what you don’t. And once it is shared with the world, it’s really a pointless endeavor trying to put the cat back in the bag. It’s just a dark side of technology that we have to come to terms with, instead of deluding ourselves that we’re in complete control over anything we put online.
There’s going to be a lot of discussion about how STUPID these women were to store these pics in the cloud, and that is EXACTLY what needs to happen. Especially if it encourages other people to delete their own nude pics off the cloud.
Edited 2014-09-01 20:33 UTC
It’s my understanding that they didn’t post it so much as it was automatically sync’d to an online backup.
Well, let’s make it even simpler:
NEVER take a photo that paints you in a bad light.
NEVER take a photo that you cannot show to Family, Friends and Co-Workers.
NEVER store ANYTHING on Servers that open you and your family up to being Violated.
So basically you cannot have a private life ? Especially if you’re a celebrity ?
Kochise
The point is, if you take some photos that you don’t want everyone to see, you can’t trust online or cloud services that are available to keep them private.
It’s not about being a celebrity. Everyone should have a a healthy does of paranoia, to keep out of this kind of trouble.
Take your damn nude pics on a device that’s not online and automatically shares everything.
We know that, but most people don’t. It’s not their fault, as they were led to believe that these services are safe. Or, even if they aren’t considering these things, they shouldn’t have to worry about their photos getting lose form these services; services that automatically does this for them.
Edited 2014-09-02 07:49 UTC
Truth is, why breaking into people privacy first, then sharing found data ? Why it would be people’s fault for having privacy and trusting cloud storage ?
While it look lot like the chicken and egg paradox, it’s more about the white and black hacker. I can understand people’s attraction to the Pandora box (nude celeb. pics) but when you find data compromising citizenship (Bradley/Snowden) it’s a civil right to release them for public awareness. When you break (why in the first place) into a private account and find obviously private pics, don’t share them, warn the owner, don’t seek for greedy online community fame.
So don’t put fault on the people for taking pics of them using Apple’s unsecure devices/services, put the blame on people too dumb to not act like civilized citizens that would be first to scream if their own private data were disclosed.
Those pics/vids would be saved on an external hard drive as backup, stored at home of elsewhere, that wouldn’t prevent a robbing or something like what happened to Paris Hilton’s private vids to be officially bought some years back at a storage auction.
What are you asking for, people not to do kinky things, celebrities to be not like any other humans ? What’s that shitty moral stance ?
Kochise
I don’t know how my comment shows that I have a shitty moral stance.
“Take your damn nude pics on a device that’s not online and automatically shares everything.” was my comment, not that you shouldn’t do kinky things. Certainly not something targeted at celebrities.
I’m not blaming these people, as I pointed out that I believe that most people don’t know about the security problems with online and cloud services.
Also made the point that it doesn’t only apply to celebrities, so I don’t really know why I get blamed for wanting to treat them different than normal people.
Yes, the people who shared these things are assholes, in case you want it spelled out.
Edited 2014-09-02 08:40 UTC
Exactly, I see three parties with blame here.
1. Apple, for not ensuring their cloud is more secure – requiring secure passwords if necessary.
2. The hacker(s), for being obnoxious perverts.
3. Anyone searching this stuff out and creating a market for this stuff.
Exactly. The problem here is not everyone actually understands what “the cloud” is, other than it’s a fantastic new invention that everything is involved in now. They take photos that automatically reappear when their device is wiped or when they upgrade their phone. It’s magic, and quite useful too. What they don’t realise is that it’s really just an internet file server pretty much like any other, with similar risks. Perhaps if they did, more care would have been taken.
I do feel for these girls, because it’s so much more of an invasion since the photos weren’t leaked by a disgruntled lover for example, someone they gave the photos to. They were taken from somewhere these people thought was 100% private. They may have even believed that the photos only existed on the devices in their own home.
If you think not taking revealing photos of your self or your loved ones = not having a private life, then yeah… I guess.
Of course you can. But just like you should keep your curtains closed, you probably shouldn’t automatically upload your risque photos to “someone else’s computer”.
It’s not the first time this has happened, it’s not the last– yes, it’s incredibly annoying, frustrating, and totally tasteless– but it does happen. Some basic precautions (like turning off auto-sync) would be a good idea.
NEVER try to hack a private account, respect privacy, be a man.
Kochise
NEVER forget to sue people who provide insecure storage into bankruptcy when their security failures enable your privacy to be violated.
– Brendan
Brilliant strategy. Maybe you should try applying that to physical security/privacy as well: switch all your doors to skeleton key locks, and then ask all of the would-be thieves of the world to pretty-please not break into your home & rob you. If you throw in an appeal to their sense of masculinity as well, then I’m sure that will be totally effective.
Since they are dicks already…
Kochise
That’s basically how Japan works.
It’s easy to blame the people involved but I blame the companies that make these ‘smart’phones.
Auto backup to iCloud is easy to turn on but it’s not really transparent what gets backed up.
My wife has an iPhone, all here photos go to iCloud (luckily she only makes photos of food) and we can see them back in the screensaver of AppleTV. Everything, including photos that she receives in WhatsApp, Line, Kakao, etc.
Some people call me crazy, but I prefer having seperate gadgets for everything: My phone is for calling, my tablet is for the internet/games, my camera is for making photos, my e-reader is for reading books and my MP3 player is for listening to music.
Most people don’t the tiniest clue of what their smart gadget can do. So to make your point, educate people.
We all get smartphones that phone home constantly, take pictures which get uploaded automatically (if configured to do so) to servers outside of your reach, you can even get smart cameras which do exactly the same, smart webcam which broadcast your life to a supposedly secure place, and so on…
We have to educate people and explain why it does matter where their private stuff get shipped. I mean, would you leave nude pictures of you in a lightly secure (with a generic key), in a box in front of your house or at your workplace? The cloud is exactly the same, only that you cannot know if it is secure, while you may know that your box is not. People have to learn that while these modern devices are marvellous, they can lead to bad things.
Considering the state of technology today and the lack of security when using technology, people should understand the risk involved when doing anything meant to be solely private. It’s not asking much that they be aware of the fact their privacy could easily be violated at any time. So yes, the people are a part of the problem. But so are the companies as you’ve pointed out.
I think companies should be liable for data theft. If companies had to pay hefty amounts to the victims every time a theft occurs, maybe they would be more inclined to take the security or peoples data more seriously and actually address the issue proactively instead of after the fact.
What do you want to bet the NSA gave these photos to some prominent hackers to post to divert attention?
Doubtful, this is nothing more then someone using ye olde Wifi/Bluetooth sniper attack that was demonstrated by attacking “Red Carpet” events years ago.
There where youtube vids and everything where the guys made a high gain directional antenna and mounted it on a rifle stock an sat on a roof with this thing hooked up to a laptop and pointed it at celebrities pockets and purses at a red carpet event, cracked the passwords and downloaded the contents while they stood there getting their photos taken.
Unlike this one though, those guys didn’t post what they found.
Never trust your wireless devices people, wireless encryption security is a really bad joke.
The agency you’re referring to doesn’t give two flips what you or anyone else thinks. They’re not concerned with diverting attention — they’re too busy ignoring what people think and going about business as usual.
Clearly the actions of whoever took the pictures are unacceptable, and the people who are taunting the actors who had their pictures leaked are being assholes.
But I don’t think peoples views on privacy is so boolean so as for that to necessarily show hypocrisy. People can have significantly different views on separate scenarios such as the NSA monitoring calls, Google checking emails for ads, private drones flying over public property, and CCTV cameras in major cities. You can cry hypocrisy if someone is fine with the same NSA spying on Americans under the Bush administration but not under Obama. I’d be fine with CCTV cameras if it was publicly accessible so it could benefit everyone, but the current system has the benefits skewed towards the government and ignores regular crimes that it could easily help solve (such as seeing where and who pick pocketed one’s cellphone, or who’s dog it was that pooped on the sidewalk), but someone else can believe strongly in privacy and not share that specific view without being a hypocrite.
I dislike trying to create a single front for “privacy” in the same way as has been done with “intellectual property”, where all nuance is stripped from the conversation in an attempt to put everyone into one of two boxes. People have different opinions on patents, trademarks, plagiarism, personal vs business use, and EULAs. If someone has a different opinion on one aspect of it it doesn’t automatically make them a hypocrite because you’ve put them lazily into one box.
Edited 2014-09-01 22:48 UTC
I think you make an excellent point. The way I see it, the US government (and by proxy any three letter agency of that government) is entrusted with keeping the people safe and secure from threats both foreign and domestic, yet they betray that trust by spying on their own people with no defensible reason.
In contrast, the people who crack cloud storage accounts and distribute the pictures they find were never in a position to defend the people against anything, and are not acting under color of law, rather they are overt criminals breaking the law for money, fame, both or who knows why.
In my mind, either level of privacy violation is unacceptable and should never happen. But I think it’s perfectly normal for certain types of people to still hate what their government is doing (again, under color of law) while simultaneously cheering on the perpetrators of the overt criminal act.
Honestly, I think most Americans see the headlines about leaked celebrity pictures and process it the same way they process the latest celebrity anything, whether it’s actors getting married/divorced, going bankrupt, winning an award, retiring, or what have you. It’s all lumped together into a big celebrity gossip soup in their minds, the only difference being that this particular type of scandal brings in the federal police to investigate.
Unfortunately, the same apathy and disinterest is leveled at the ever increasing violations perpetrated by the government itself, and there is no federal agency willing to investigate those violations.
Information uploaded from a cell phone to the cloud should be encrypted by default, Apple should consider it.
They did, and they implemented it for email several weeks ago:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/07/16/apple-implements-transit-…
I bet they’re going to step up efforts to apply this to other file types now.
Edited 2014-09-02 02:11 UTC
I perhaps think a distinction needs to be drawn here between assigning blame and taking responsibility. I don’t think the victims “got what they deserved”, but on the other hand, I think the only way to prevent this sort of thing continuing to happen is if people take more responsibility for keeping their data secure.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/09/what-jennifer-lawrence-can-…
Without the jab at Reddit. And PATRIARCHY!
Dead editor and chief, I think we all agree with your sentiment, but I for one would rather OSnews not get swept up in the celebrity gossip that this is. Clearly these hackers have been naughty boys and girls, but I would rather not read about it on OSnews, ostensibly a computing news web site.
Cheers,
Your readership
Wish I could edit that typo
Please don’t speak for me. You are not the entirety of OSNew’s readership, and do not represent me, or anyone else here in any way.
Edited 2014-09-02 14:59 UTC
Don’t worry I am not, I know some people like this kind of story. I do though consider myself to be part of the OSnews readership.
This whole story looks like an attempt to discredit criticism of government spying by inciting moral panic using the red herring of some random guy’s comments on Twitter. Thom’s insinuation that those who criticize government spying are hypocritical voyeurs doesn’t help.
A group of hackers obtaining and sharing intimate pictures without consent is certainly reprehensible. However, it has nothing to do with governments collecting all available data for all persons on Earth. You don’t have to be a voyeur to feel concerned about the amount of data governments are collecting and its potential for abuse. There is valid criticism of the actions of the NSA, and the comments of some silly random guy on Twitter have nothing to with them.
But they clicked the “I give up all my rights to Apple to store my personal data and they aren’t responsible for any mistakes or hacks” box.
I don’t see the problem. They put up their pix (or automatically) on iCloud, and iCloud simply regurgitated them.
I can’t think of a proper meatspace analogy. OK, maybe they mailed pics and negatives to a vacant lot with an unlocked mailbox and hoped no one would open it other than them.
Exposure is a problem, both for Bradley/Chelsea Manning, Wikileakage, etc.
Putting anything on Google Drive, iCloud, Skydrive, Dropbox, Box.net, or anything else without pre-net encryption independent of the account password is stupid.
Or we need to completely change the law so that if my password is “monkey”, the cloud services are still liable for breaches.
The root problem here is: the average non-IT person don’t know how internet works even at the most basic notion. If they did, they would be far more careful with their own sensitive data, and i would really doubt that anyone would be so comfortable to have 7 years of mails stored on Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail, use virtual drives or even giving any kind of sensitive data like credit card number on any e-commerce site.
And with most cloud services working “like magic” these days, this lack of understanding can be fatal.
They don’t have a clue that everything that is on the “cloud” is actually on a physical server operated by real people somewhere in world. And between this server and his computer/smartphone, there is a buck load of data transport infrastructure operated by dozens of different companies and even governments, manufactured by thousands of different entities, all following hundreds of standards and agreements, and all meshed up in a very opaque combination forming a massive distributed computer network.
I hope Jennifer and other celebs learned their lesson about NOT taking pictures of their vaginas and uploading them to a “secure” cloud. Who am I kidding…
Let’s not! I’m not complaining. There’s more beautiful pics for us to see this way. 😉
Are you sure they even knew they were being uploaded anywhere? You know how iCloud works, you’re probably quite a technical person being on this site. But the average Joe doesn’t really understand all these new technologies (new as in only recently taken advantage of by regular users). It’s magic for most people, and they’re happy that way.
Perhaps this will educate a lot more people out there as to what’s actually happening, but I don’t think the blame can be put 100% on people if they didn’t realise what exactly they were doing.
Ok buy why take nude photos of yourself? What if the phone gets stolen or your friend or relative asks to borrow it and then see it by accident?
How are you sure these are not the people who help NSA too. As long as I feel I think these are psychopaths who don’t have the sense of right and wrong. Fits NSA peeps with high correlation ratio.
As I posted above, doubtful, some doucebag kid or paparazzi finally came across the Wifi/bluetooth sniper attack vids from about 7 years ago and with a modern GPGPU capable laptop made even shorter work or cracking and downloading celebrity mobile device data as those old hacks demonstrated all those years ago.
Reads like some feminist went on a tirade about “teh evil internet menz” again *yawn*.
At least NSA will not divulge your personal info in facebook or in the public domain. But these men will _not_ regard the privacy of individuals.
Edited 2014-09-02 08:01 UTC
You seem to be completely sure that no one from NSA was source of this leak. Even though they had easiest access to them and probably half of agency was “enjoying” the pics.
While nobody deserves their personal pics to be leaked, the whole case is strangely positive.
Because when a whistle-blower saids the cloud is evil, that you are sharing your life with who knows what, nobody listens but here, you get gossip everywhere about it, and a mainstream French newspaper website has even written an article about how to secure your intimate stuff (http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2014/09/01/star-ou-pas-comment… sorry, it’s obviously in French).
So while it is not morally acceptable to share nude pics without consent, in the end it seems to be doing more good than bad in the present case.
What do all these companies have in common besides the fact they are American based? They are ALL part of the ongoing PRISM project which has allowed the NSA to put in ‘back doors’ which allows them a way in. The problem is that it also allows hackers and cyber criminals a way in as well. There is a mass exodus of companies leaving American based cloud providers as they are moving their data over to Switzerland.If you continue to use American based Cloud companies and/or email providers.
Consider yourself warned. This will only get worse as the NSA and the PRISM project to which APPLE is part of has weakened the internet. This is EXACTLY why people should use private Swiss cloud services like
DigitalSafe. No leaks, no hacking, 100% Swiss Privacy and Military Grade encryption. Contact me for details
Yeah, but which military?
That’s a nice ad. Has scares, buzz-words and the perfect solution. This service wouldn’t happen to be something you’re connected with, would it?
How do you guarantee security and privacy, where everyone else seems to fail?
It would seem most companies are only interested in selling the illusion of security & privacy. And really that’s all anyone should expect. Surveillance is here to stay. It’s a reality of the world we live in, and there’s no turning back. That’s not to say we should happily accept the fact, but let’s not be naive enough to think we can prevent it. A number of people in positions to know have said what the public is aware of is only the tip of the ice berg. I’m inclined to believe that.
If the people responsible are currently anonymous, how do we know they’re men?
Certainly, given the normal male to female ratio of “advanced users” on the internet, the odds are in favor of the culprits all being male, but I find it odd that a site that recently ran an article complaining about the sexist attitudes in computer games would also jump to what appears to be a sexist conclusion.
Equality, by definition, has to work in both directions.
I think you have hit the nail on the head regarding this article.
I often criticize the NSA for violating privacy.
Just as I would criticize any person who has stolen a person’s nude photo’s – it’s a serious violation of privacy.
And I certainly do not download those photo’s.
But facts have no importance, to a childish person who has invented a straw man enemy in his prejudiced mind.
I criticize people for the things they actually do – such as writing divisive and offensive posts.
I don’t lump people together in big buckets and make them guilty by a forced association.
If some people are downloading those photo’s – shame on them. But they aren’t me – and I will continue to criticize the NSA, because the NSA has engaged in incredible overreach.
Edited 2014-09-02 19:38 UTC
So you either can’t read, can’t comprehend what you read or can’t think at all. What does that say about you?
… that there are a lot of dudes looking for Jude Law nude pics.
Has anyone here considered that the photos may have been deliberately leaked to drum up some publicity.
B Grade starlets and minor celebrities seem much more likely to have nudes and sex tapes ‘stolen’ than major stars do.
That perhaps also display their respective intelligence ?
Kochise
I think the Verge article sucks. Tom gives them props, but I say “no way!” The article puts waaay to much emphasis on “why are these bad guys victimizing women” and waaay too little emphasis on the basic issues, which are cloud-storage security and personal responsibility.
First lesson: When it comes to cloud-based security, there isn’t any. Period. Get over it. Those of us who work in the industry mostly get it. Maybe the laymen out there will now start to get it as well.
There’s another lesson: If you’re a famous person, and you take pictures of your junk, you’re stupid. Sorry… but that’s just the case. You’ve GOT to know people — good people, bad people, sickos, perverts… who cares, but LOTS of people — will pay real money for these pictures. But you take them ANYway? Anyone ever heard of common sense? Self control? Duh!?
The Ars Technical article previously cited (http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/09/what-jennifer-lawrence-can-… is MUCH more even handed and intelligent, in my view. It makes some EXCELLENT points about this whole escapade.
The cloud is not secure.
Don’t put your stuff out there.
It’s also possible that this is another political stunt to strip freedom. The need for more security and all that.
You may want to contact a shrink about your paranoid delusions…
Nice try NSA!
This happens every. single. day. That’s how revenge porn sites and “see celebs nude” sites operate. The only difference was the number of celebrities in one single disclosure, and now the same sites that showed Vanessa Hudgeons nude at the age of 17 are pretending to have a sense of ethics by not showing this latest round of photos.
In fact, has it even been established that all these photos haven’t already come out previously?