Internet Privacy, or just privacy

[Desiremakesmeweak]

As someone who exploits the interesting side of sex, erotics, erotica, and sexuality - there is something inside me that says I ought to give some thought and express a view on what has been going on recently. Sure, I mean it isn't really new and all - the internet has created all kinds of problems, issues and releases monsters regularly.

If a thing like that happened to you or me, regardless of whether one is already in the public spotlight or not, but especially if you didn't control the release or were not responsible for actually releasing anything, or were taken by surprise by the hacking - then I'm sure you're entitled to feel angry or a range of other feelings about it all.

It is a Pandora's Box, though, and once out we are talking about primal drives, not just sexual or lurid ones but including just plain burning curiosity and these are all human things although not perhaps always welcome.

I have no idea about whether or not one can say right now, today - because of such enormous and rapid advances in technology and such massive changes in who things get known about - that one can REALLY claim a right to total protection and let's say legal or any other kind of invulnerability. It is already crystal clear that agencies in government already have been gaining access to everything you do on line without asking you or me or anyone.

I certainly have a certain sense of 'vulnerability' with regard to my own nostalgic feelings for privacy.

But what I can say with absolute certainty in my own mind is that nothing I have seen - and I have seen some of it - causes me to think less of any of the victims, or that it should make them less of a role model or alter their brand/image in any way. Sex is a part of our lives. It is also private in the sense that we all should have as much or as little control of its exposure as we choose.

I don't think any image has demeaned any of the people concerned.

I am going to have to think a very great deal more about what I think about the people who actually perpetrated the thing. I know some kids who are absolute idiots. And I know adults who are the same.

But these people are also part of life.

I have to think about this...

 

[StrangeLife]

Huh? What brought this up? Are you referring to any specific incident?

 

[Serafina1210]

Huh? What brought this up? Are you referring to any specific incident?

Sounds as if it may be about the recent hacking of nude celebrity images.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

An East European nutcase named Franz Boas got the PC ball rolling back in the 1920s, insisting all cultures and societies are equally valuable. No proposition is more untrue but his ideas impressed the hell outta stupid young girls like Margaret Mead the anthropologist. Contrast and compare a Nazi with an Amish farmer and the absurdity of Boas' idea is painfully obvious. Britain is discovering that no nation is wise to embrace vipers from other cultures.

A guy on tv said it best...if you invite an Italian to your nation he'll bring along his cuisine and arts and sports cars and fashions, invite a Muslim and he'll bring along his psychotic fanaticism. Go watch Lawrence of Arabia.

My point: Most people recoil in horror when we hang out our laundry for public inspection and scrutiny. What happens at home should stay at home.

 

[StrangeLife]

Sounds as if it may be about the recent hacking of nude celebrity images.

There was another one of those? Yawn. I bet they're doing it themselves for the PR. Like my dear departed dad used to say (before he departed): "First time is an accident - second time is either on purpose or because you're an idiot."

No, wake me up when there is a new sex-tape out.... featuring Kate Beckinsale.... and with me in it.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

God I wrote and posted that on the run and I've had to go back fix up all the bloody mistakes and typos. Jeesus.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

You and Kate Beckinsale - yeah there is one...

 

[StrangeLife]

You and Kate Beckinsale - yeah there is one...

If I ever made a sex-tape with Kate Beckinsale and have forgotten doing it, I'm fetching my tanto and committing seppuku on the spot!

 

[lovecraft68]

Forget the celebs. They make millions entertaining people and can get over it. That and somewhere all their agents are telling them "any publicity is good publicity" and I am always cynical enough to believe that most of what gets "leaked" was done intentionally.

On this matter what I feel for is the common person. The girl next door who's asshole boyfriend puts a home made sex tape of them on line because they broke up, or even just as a thrill posts pics of her on every porn site he can find etc... even embarrassing non sexual videos of men and women that people put all over the internet because they think its funny

the feds have made the sex tape going up without permission a prosecutable offense(something Laurel and anyone who owns a site like this should be concerned with considering all the pic threads here and who knows who is really posting these pics), but it should extend to other things as well and I think eventually will.

But no pity for me for the celebs. They get too much money and too much glory and adoration for me to feel bad in any way. This is a country that can no longer take care of its citizens (through choice in many cases) there are beggars on every corner in many areas and homeless shelters over flowing

record unemployment, etc....

Yet actors, athletes musicians make obscene amounts of money and whine it is not enough (locally John Lester was insulted by the red sox offer of a paltry 16 million a year to pitch once every five days for 6 months a year) they break the law with impunity and its always okay because they entertain us (charlie sheen....threatens his ex with a knife, but...he is so funny on two and a half men!) its disgusting

Everything going on in the word and four straight days the first thing that pops up on yahoo is Jolie's wedding dress.

I could care less about these people and I am sure Kate and others will some how "survive: this.

Fuck them all, I worry about the real people of the world.

 

[Hypoxia]

Whomever one is, if one assumes that one has ZERO privacy, one is probably correct. Assume constant surveillance. Assume that everything done in public (and much in ''private) is recorded. Ye shall not be disappointed.

 

[sr71plt]

Whomever one is, if one assumes that one has ZERO privacy, one is probably correct. Assume constant surveillance. Assume that everything done in public (and much in ''private) is recorded. Ye shall not be disappointed.

Not quite the case here. The celebs posted the nude photos in cyberspace themselves. I think they have to look at themselves as the "problem" in this case.

 

[StrangeLife]

Whomever one is, if one assumes that one has ZERO privacy, one is probably correct. Assume constant surveillance. Assume that everything done in public (and much in ''private) is recorded. Ye shall not be disappointed.

I share that sentiment, and I am amazed of how rare it is in the population as a whole.

For instance I purchased a NAS a while back and the sales-guy was showing me the various models they had in stock and went on a rave about a gazillion features they all seemed to have. But when I asked if any of them offered encryption, he suddenly ground to a halt. The poor man had no idea, because nobody had ever requested that feature before. He knew all about iTunes servers, printer servers, web servers, mail servers and what have you, but apparently no customer had ever worried about securing his data against prying eyes. I find this appalling.

I have a total of 10 Tbytes NAS capacity in my house, and 8 of those have strong encryption. Not that I have any sensitive secrets or anything - apart from my frisky writings and a few personal photo-albums - but as a matter of principle.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

There was another one of those? Yawn. I bet they're doing it themselves for the PR. Like my dear departed dad used to say (before he departed): "First time is an accident - second time is either on purpose or because you're an idiot."

No, wake me up when there is a new sex-tape out.... featuring Kate Beckinsale.... and with me in it.

This wasn't a leak. Here, a hacker apparently exploited vulnerabilities in the icloud and gained access to private pictures of dozens and dozens of celebrities. Most were female, but a few were males, also. He then posted them on a site that hosts such pics. It was a massive trove of pics.

Personally,while I can understand and appreciate the invasion of privacy that took place, I'm really sympathetic. I've told my teenage daughters not to take or share pictures on their phones. Why? Because once they're out there, they have no control over them. The number of people potentially targeting them is very small.

Celebrities know they are the targets of thousands and thousands of amateur pervs. They have to take the highest precautions. If they don't, then they just aren't using the common sense that I'm trying to teach my kids.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Not quite the case here. The celebs posted the nude photos in cyberspace themselves. I think they have to look at themselves as the "problem" in this case.

They didn't exactly post them. They saved them on their iphones. Apple backed up their data, and stored it on the icloud. The pictures were part of that data. That's where the pictures were stolen from.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised something like this hasn't happened already. The permissions that are given every time someone downloads an app or updates the app are mind boggling. Users are practically giving the vendors access to their entire phones, including call history, gps history, browsing history, contacts, etc. They know as much as the NSA does.

 

[sr71plt]

They didn't exactly post them. They saved them on their iphones. Apple backed up their data, and stored it on the icloud. The pictures were part of that data. That's where the pictures were stolen from.

In today's world that's a "duh" posting them.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

These responses here are the types of views I wanted to hear from others - I wanted to hear what other people think. And compare it with what was going through my mind. Originally, the first thing I thought was hey the publicist has done this themselves.

But I have since been told that 'not in this case.'

Oh there's no doubt that there are a lot of sports identities in particular, as well as entertainment people who have overblown egos. But then, there are also a substantial number of extremely talented and hard working individuals there - and believe it or not a lot of them have major anxiety to do with being in the spotlight; 'the sandbox at the side of the stage is there for a reason.'

I'm not going to be too critical of the particular celebrities in this incident because I would incline to the view that these are in the 'talented, hard working' bracket. And I am very sure their agents and producers and those in the industry who earn a living from their 'brand' and the entertainment products they carry, would be devastated if any of them decides basically to retire from the public altogether.

And I have heard rumours along those lines.

Some celebrities are 'ordinary people' too. Not a lot, I'll admit!! But some are.

In fact I'll tell you this is a really complicated issue because as technology moves even FURTHER forward, what about if I could tell you what you are thinking...? Not just what you have stuck up into cyber space believing it to be private cyber space...

Seriously, what if it were possible to tell what you were thinking? Because it actually is, of course, it's just not commercial available as a portable device today. But it will be tomorrow.

No, I've thought about it and this is not a legal question; not yet anyway. Settled law takes shape AFTER society has had a while to learn to come to terms with all of the implications.

It is a moral question but only in terms of intent. We drive cars and accidents happen - sometimes there is culpability assigned and sometimes not.

The values of succeeding generations change a little because of changing experiences; a hacker may be a very two-dimensionally clever individual - certainly cleverer than me, for example - and because of this they are tempted to break a vault, let's say. In the vault there is money, or sex, or somebody's secret. Does the NSA INTEND to harm the average, ordinary, 'common' individual when they look into 'my vault?' Does the hacker of someone's private cyber space intend to specifically harm that individual - or is it a non-malicious consequence, however expectable, of a new type of 'road traffic using horseless carriages?'

The consequences might be malific. But the intention might not have been.

It's the same as the moral question of rape. Inviting someone to participate in sex is not rape, neither is crudely inviting them; annoying them is harrassment, extended harrassment is stalking, and physical crossing boundaries can be rape or at least sexual assault.

Breaking into someone's cyber space is theft. But only inasmuch as taking fruit from a neighbour's tree which hangs over your own fence. It's not in my power to protect my 'private cyber space,' nor is it in my power to break into someone else's. That is not 'my fenced space.' But it is the hacker's.

The hacker needs to apologize with the mitigation that the fruit was tempting.

In terms of settled law, fifty years from now, I'm not sure this would be viewed as 'a crime.' And I don't think the FBI or anyone else should waste resources going into the matter.

Commercial encryption companies should be vending good systems for securing cyber space.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Now back to Kate Beckinsale and StrangeLife's video...

 

[Handley_Page]

They didn't exactly post them. They saved them on their iphones. Apple backed up their data, and stored it on the icloud. The pictures were part of that data. That's where the pictures were stolen from.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised something like this hasn't happened already.

Users are practically giving the vendors access to their entire phones, including call history, gps history, browsing history, contacts, etc. They know as much as the NSA does.

It makes me wonder about two things.
Why take pictures of yourself
and
why put them on the Cloud (Ye gods, is there anything less secure ?)
Bloody Idiots!

 

[Bramblethorn]

It makes me wonder about two things.
Why take pictures of yourself

To share with their partners, by my understanding.

and
why put them on the Cloud (Ye gods, is there anything less secure ?)
Bloody Idiots!

A lot of services store on the cloud by default; they probably weren't even aware of where the files were being stored. Not that offline storage is guaranteed safe either; phones and laptops get lost or stolen.

It's good to be security-savvy, but for me the bottom line is that sharing or looking at other people's nudes is a shitty thing to do. There are plenty of attractive people out there who are happy to share nudes for free, why does anybody feel it's OK to go creeping on people who don't want their nudes to be public consumption?

(And yes, NSA and GCHQ do this on an industrial scale, and that's also wrong.)

 

[PennLady]

It makes me wonder about two things.
Why take pictures of yourself
and
why put them on the Cloud (Ye gods, is there anything less secure ?)
Bloody Idiots!

For the first part, I don't know. This is a little slice of culture that some people do, but I have no interest in doing. But okay for them.

Second, a lot of devices are set to backup to the cloud by default, and I would imagine most people don't bother changing their defaults, if they even think about it in the first place. Plus I think it's been shown that people will trade a lot for convenience, in this case, the convenience of taking a pic and having it saved for you and then it's available on other devices without any work on your part.

 

[Serafina1210]

It makes me wonder about two things.
Why take pictures of yourself
and
why put them on the Cloud (Ye gods, is there anything less secure ?)
Bloody Idiots!

People can be very naive about their security (couldn't happen to me!). I doubt these people consulted their agents about it. Their phones were probably set to back up photos to the cloud automatically--convenient! and it never occurred to them how easily they could be hacked.

 

[StrangeLife]

It makes me wonder about two things.
Why take pictures of yourself
and
why put them on the Cloud (Ye gods, is there anything less secure ?)
Bloody Idiots!

Security and convenience are inversely proportional in many areas. And the cloud can be very convenient indeed. So even a paranoid person like me (se earlier post) cannot ignore it. For instance...

- I use Gmail as my main e-mail.
- I use Google Docs when collaborating with other people.
- I use DropBox to exchange files with friends and family. This is also where my phone uploads every picture I take.
- I have copies of all my personal papers in Evernote. It's my main repository for paperwork (replaces several shelves worth of binders).
- All my mobile devices have location services turned on (goes for the entire family).


On the other hand, there are cloud services that I absolutely don't trust. Facebook for instance. I have a profile, but I tell them nothing of consequence.

 

[Sammael Bard]

Taking nude selfies/pics, storing them on an electronic device connected to the internet 24/7 and then being 'shocked' over its leak is laughable.

Especially if you're a celeb.

These things have happened before, are happening and will happen again. There is no dearth of obsessive scumbags who find new ways to go around the security system. Nothing is private in today's world.

If they haven't learnt lessons from their peers, maybe this "disaster" will help them.

 

[stickygirl]

The cloud is to blame - even Apple started out by saying 'None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone.' ... then 'After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet.'
I think that's called corporate panic.
Unless you hand built the smart phone and wrote the software, you can assume nothing is private. Even an encrypted system like Tor is suspect because the US govt owns the internet.

Whatever your views on celebrities being overpaid, it has no bearing on their right to privacy. Yes, they are paid a lot of money if they are successful, but does it mean we own them? Have you even bought a Beyonce record? ( or did you download it free off torrent? )

And why should celebrities also be expected to be experts on cyber security? Or do you believe they have a NSA adviser following them 24/7 giving advice? JLaw is a lovely woman from what I can see: she's feisty, but charmingly dumb - just like a real person in fact. Yes, it was unwise to even take pics on a smart phone - she knows that now huh?

Why did all the papers call it a 'leak' instead of theft? It turns it into a victim-blame game "Well she had it coming" "She shouldn't have been so dumb" even "She's a celebrity, she can't expect privacy" wtf? What about the shitty little man with his left hand down his pants who obsessively spent weeks cracking into Apple's security? Is he a hero now? "Fair play mate, you managed to sneak into Kate Uptons album - pass me that one of her in the bedroom"

There's another train of thought doing the rounds 'We have safety/privacy in the sheer scale of information out there'. I'm sorry, I thought when you walked down the street, you could expect a level of anonymity, so why should the internet be any different? If it's ok for your most private pictures to be public via icloud 'leaks' we should accept the perv following you shopping, trying to create an opportunity to touch you or dip your pocket? Safety in scale is like saying give away all your possessions then you have no need for insurance.

What about 'I have no secrets - you can look all you want, but you'll find it terribly boring' pants-on-fire. No - you actually want someone to firtle through your stuff - that's passive perving

 

[StrangeLife]

And why should celebrities also be expected to be experts on cyber security? Or do you believe they have a NSA adviser following them 24/7 giving advice? JLaw is a lovely woman from what I can see: she's feisty, but charmingly dumb - just like a real person in fact. Yes, it was unwise to even take pics on a smart phone - she knows that now huh?

Why did all the papers call it a 'leak' instead of theft? It turns it into a victim-blame game....

There are two issues you overlook.

It is true - using the analog of a physical door - that you are committing breaking and entering whether the door is locked or unlocked. Just because somebody forgets to lock up his house doesn't mean that you are entitled to enter it uninvited. However being careless does transfer a certain amount of culpability onto the victim which will not only reduced the insurance pay-out but also provide extenuating circumstances for the perpetrator. If you view a hacking in the same way, the victim does share part of the blame if it happened due to neglect. And ignorance is not an excuse.

When pursuing a career as a public person you can't have the same expectation of privacy as a normal citizen. Of course nobody is allowed to harass you, but enjoying the life as a famous celebrity while whining about having no privacy is pathetic at best. It's like a pilot complaining about heights.