The Correct Response To Photo Hack Victim-Blamers 622
In a new Vanity Fair interview, Jennifer Lawrence calls the theft of her nude photos a "sex crime". Predictably, a good portion of the 300+ comments posted on TheVerge's article contained an element of victim-blaming -- "maybe people in her position should think twice about taking nude photos? I’m sure it could help" ; "She posted them online. Unless she is a complete rube, she should have known of the security risks" ; "Victims can be blamed for putting themselves into potentially exploitable situations. Something similar might be going to a rave without a friend." ; and more variations on things that had already been said many times ever since the original photo leak on August 31st.
These comments are mostly being met with angry backlash from other commenters, which is good. But the rebuttals themselves tend to violate the rules of logic and consistency, which is bad. And when victim-blamers can spot the flaws so easily in their opponents' logic, their own minds are unlikely to be changed.
A typical example of a weak "rebuttal" is this cartoon you may have seen shared on Facebook, in which an arrogant man lectures women, "Don't want your nude selfies to leak, ladies? Simple: don't take any! Bothered by street harassment? Don't be so eager to walk down streets." Sorry, but if the second piece of advice was meant to highlight the absurdity of the first, the analogy doesn't work -- because you kinda have to walk down streets, but nobody has to take a nude selfie.
This is a recurring theme in the "rebuttal" comments that I've seen, including those on TheVerge's article -- telling the victim-blamers that they might just as well blame themselves for the risks of walking down the street, or buying something from Home Depot ( burn! ), or having a credit card at all, or owning a valuable object that could be a target of theft. Sample comments: "by that standard... you shouldn’t have had something of value to begin with, or else you were just asking for it to be stolen" ; "Just like when you walk down the street you should be fully aware of the potential to be mugged" ; "So, we will hold you to the very same 'complete rube' test when you fall victim to identity theft or unauthorized charges to your credit cards" ; etc.
All of these "rebuttals" are committing the same logical error: they're drawing an analogy to things that you either have to do (walk down the street) or pretty-much-have to do (own a credit card, own at least one valuable object). This means the victim-blamers have such an easy response -- "Those are all things you have to do; but taking a nude selfie is different, because nobody has to do that!" So the victim-blamers are unlikely to have their minds changed by such an analogy, since their own central premise is so obvious to them: the victims chose to take the nude selfies, and the leak never would have happened if they hadn't.
So, let's respond to the victim-blamers on their own terms, by acknowledging first of all: Of course, they're right. Of course taking the selfies was an optional choice, and of course the only way to stop nude selfies from leaking, is not to take them. But this is ignoring (a) the benefits of taking nude selfies; and (b) the low risk of them getting leaked. (The fact that the pictures did get leaked, does not mean that the selfie-takers misjudged the risk of it happening; rather, it was very unlikely, but the victims got unlucky and it happened to them.)
To begin with the benefits: Jennifer Lawrence explained bluntly in her Vanity Fair interview why she took the photos: "I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he's going to look at you." (Considering how easily she could have gotten away with some platitudes about how "deeply hurt" she was, and how she "thanks all her fans for her support in this difficult period" -- doesn't a quote like that make you think she's decently cool?) OK, so that's the benefit. To her boyfriend at the time, a pretty big benefit.
As for the risks, whenever someone takes a risk of a bad outcome and the bad outcome does happen, it's tempting to think that they misjudged the risks. (I'll bet that a psychological experiment could demonstrate this easily -- have test subjects read stories of people who took a risk that was known to be small, but who got unlucky and fell victim to the bad outcome anyway, and see if the test subjects incorrectly judge the risk-takers to be foolish.) But out of the millions of nude photos that are probably sent between cell phone users every month, a vanishly small proportion of them get stolen in security breaches of cloud storage. (Usually the far greater risk is that the recipient will forward the image to other people until it gets out of control.) There's no reason to think that Jennifer Lawrence and other victims of the hacking scandal underestimated the risk of the photos being stolen from the cloud. If anything, most users are probably over-estimating the risk today, while the news of the breach is fresh in their minds.
In cases where the benefits of an action clearly don't outweigh the risks, that's when "victim-blaming" might be appropriate, even if we don't call it that. If someone leaves their car unlocked and leaves a valuable item in plain view in the front seat, we might feel less sorry for them if they return to their car to find it stolen. But it's a logical error to blame the victim just because they took a risk; the real reason to blame them is that there's no counterbalancing benefit to leaving the car door unlocked, or failing to move the valuable item into the trunk.
By contrast, when victim-blamers say that a woman is "bringing the risk upon herself" (of harassment, or even assault) by going out in a halter top, the logically correct response is not to say that victim-blamer is "clearly" wrong. Because, again, to the victim-blamer, their own premise is obviously true: wearing a sexy outfit in public does increase your risk of harassment, and probably even of being groped or worse. The fallacy is that the victim-blamer is ignoring the benefits of that choice. A woman never knows when she might meet a guy out in public that she's attracted to, and if they hit it off, it helps to have an outfit that says, "I'm a real woman, not a moron who thinks that if I engage in pre-marital kissing then Jesus will set me on fire with a blowtorch." Wearing a halter top has its benefits, which is why some women do it.
So that's it. The correct response to the victim-blamers is not to draw false analogies to "having a credit card" or "walking down the street". The correct response is that taking nude selfies is a perfectly rational choice when the probable benefits outweigh the probable risks. That is, in fact, the only rational defense of any action, ever. But it's not getting any play, because it doesn't fit in a tweet.
It does fit? (Score:5, Funny)
105 characters. Yes, it does fit in a tweet.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh my a new meme "Does it Fit" I can only imagine where it goes form here.
Re:It does fit? (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new "Does it Fit" meme.
Straw Man (Score:5, Insightful)
As commenters continue to blame Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities for allowing their nude photos to be stolen
No one is blaming them for "allowing their photos to be stolen" I didn't bother reading the rest if that's how you started.
Re:Straw Man (Score:5, Insightful)
Too much bullshit going on.
My advice to my son or daughter would be the same regarding photos of semen all over their faces: if you don't want people to see those photos, don't take those photos. Do not allow those photos to be taken. Do not allow them to exist.
I don't remember all this bullshit when it was Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, or even Kim Kardashian.
But that was not the same! (Score:5, Funny)
They were all sluts, and Jeniffer is a nice girl, she is.
Re:But that was not the same! (Score:4, Interesting)
Following societies unrealistic standards most of us too sexual for proper society. Most of us have our odd fetish and are turned on by some thing.
Sure taking pics and sending them on the internet isn't that good of an idea. However it shouldn't need to represent the overall character of the person. Unless say you want to expose to your boss and the general society things like your Google Searches, or your DNS logs, magazines, or surveillance camera of you taking a second glance at the one other person.
Re:But that was not the same! (Score:4, Interesting)
Her celebrity image (or personality) is a nice girl (she is one of those that really listens to her agents). No idea if she is really a nice girl or a slut in real life.
No it isn't. Her image is sex. She was only a "nice girl" when promoting the first Hunger Games movie to ensure the teens and tweens would see it.
She's been in other movies, you know. She's done plenty of magazine photo shoots. Her image is as much "nice girl" as Brittney Spears - it's a manufactured angle designed to hook a demo which is then leveraged for mass appeal.
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In 2009, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, quipped "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Back then, the geeks and nerds complained the loudest, while most everybody else shrugged and moved on. Now the geeks aren't even telling people "don't do that". They're only telling people "don't take pictures of you doing that", but do people shrug that off as well? No, when the geeks say it, they are misogynist pigs and victim-blamers.
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And geeks and nerds shouted about how we should all have an expectation of complete privacy and anonymity on the web, because freedom and stuff.
An expectation of privacy is healthy. Recognizing that there is no such thing, especially on the internet, is infinitely much healthier.
Analogy: one of my hobbies is motorcycling. It's great fun, but any sane biker recognizes this comes with an increased level of risk to their life and limb. Any sane rider therefore takes steps to mitigate those risks such as riding
Re:Straw Man (Score:5, Insightful)
if you don't want people to see those photos, don't take those photos.
They do want people to see those photos, it's just that they want to control which people and not have them published for all to see on the internet.
Sexuality is a big part of life, especially when you are young. Wanting to feel sexy, and to share your sexuality with others is natural. The mistake was to trust big companies like Snapchat and Apple when they said that the photos would be safe and only viewable by the people the creators selected. We are not that naive, but you have to appreciate that for most people they trust private companies to look after their private data every day, e.g. banks, health care providers, online shops, their employer etc.
Re:Straw Man (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is the key point. Except for the odd hermit, we all put our trust in private companies at some point. Do you trust your bank to watch your money for you? Do you expect that your cable company won't allow workers to look up addresses of good houses to break into? (Lots of premium channels probably means high likelihood of good stuff to steal.) Do you trust your doctor's office not to "leak" your embarrassing diagnosis to the community?
For the most part, these private companies do live up to our expectations - at least the base minimum. There are the odd stories of abuses, but these tend to be the exception, not the rule. Someone with less technological knowledge than we have could easily think that the nude photo that their iPhone uploaded to the Apple Cloud was secured because Apple said it would only be sent to the person they chose it to be sent to. In reality, though, the security wasn't absolute.
To make a "breaking into a house" analogy, this isn't not locking your house, but buying a lock from Home Depot without knowing that this particular lock is easily bypassed by thieves.
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Here is the crux of the issue. Secrets are only as good as those keeping them. If you take a picture to send to your "boyfriend", you have basically told him a secret. Your secret is only as good as your boyfriend is. And when you dump him (or otherwise), and you no longer trust him, he still has your pictures and posts them up on Girlfriend Revenge (or whatever).
In JLAW's case, her pictures were stored in the cloud. Guess what, the cloud isn't as secure as everyone is wanting. Be it bad protocols, bad pass
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what goes onto the Internet
How is talking about "the internet" here even relevant? There is a huge difference in the privacy and security of data transfers made through different web services alone, let alone all extant networking protocols.
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if you don't want people to see those photos, don't take those photos. Do not allow those photos to be taken. Do not allow them to exist.
I'd like to agree with you that it's that simple, I really would. But with the ubiquity of cellphone cameras, a lot of people find the thrill to be difficult to resist. Your advice would certainly be effective, but isn't it akin to telling teenagers to abstain from sex in order to protect themselves from STIs and pregnancy? What percentage of teens will follow this advice?
And your advice also relies on controlling the actions of others, which is notoriously difficult to accomplish with 100% effectiveness. U
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The thrill of eating too much candy, playing in the street, and sharing needles has always been there. There is nothing new here but the general laziness of the populace in enforcing standards or taking personal responsibility. Religion, social mores, and scare-the-kids cautionary tales may be entirely made up and arbitrary, but it got mankind all the way from cavemen to what we have today.
If you are fine with your kids doing crazy shit, sit back and sigh that you are powerless against the need to be a cool
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I've had unwanted nude photos taken of me in a hot tub by a drunken jackass (and he wouldn't dispute that characterization of himself). This shit happens sometimes. I don't really care that much about it, but given the choice, I'd rather that the photos not exist.
Right, but that's still not what happened here, and bringing it up in this case is both TMI and prevarication. What happened here is that people's pictures of themselves which they stored in a location which they had no good reason to believe was secure were compromised. These people will be punished enough by the fact of the data being distributed, as always. For some of them there will be little to no consequences, which is fine. What also happened is that some assholes took advantage of their ignorance,
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Right, but that's still not what happened here, and bringing it up in this case is both TMI and prevarication.
TMI? All I said was that I was present in a hot tub without the benefit of a swimsuit. If you imputed anything other than "he was relaxing, minding his own business" into my statement, then that is your own wild imagination getting carried away. Anyway, if the above was too much info about me for your liking, you have my express invitation to mentally substitute the words "someone who I know very well" in place of "I" in my example.
Also, your accusation of prevarication is unfounded. My having brought up th
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to make it clear that I was quoting the mindset of the victim-blamers, and not describing what I think.
Re:Straw Man (Score:5, Insightful)
If the initial premise is inaccurate why bother?
Re:Straw Man (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Straw Man (Score:4, Interesting)
There is so much coverage of this sort of thing the only way a person in a public position like Jennifer Lawrence couldn't know was serious stupidity, not ignorance.
If you look at the mental caliber of the other "victims" I'm sure you will agree.
It's been well publicized since the late 90's that putting things on the Internet is the same as shouting in a restaurant, and to top it all off they used Apple, a company notorious for lack of security to do that with.
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That's quite a closed-minded way to go about understanding someone else's point of view isn't it. The analogy I've used before is the criminal is guilty of committing a crime, but even so probably shouldn't have left your entire life savings on the coffee table of your ground floor flat with the windows wide open, whilst you went out to the shops to buy a spicy vegetable and quinoa laksa.
The problem is that thieves will be thieves. If your pile of cash is well hidden they will just keep looking until they find someone else's (maybe it's even yours, if your neighbors happen to be all better at securing their valuables than you are). Look at what's happened to the world of car theft (a very well studied phenomenon.) Cars for a decade have generally all come equipped with simple ignition lockouts that make hot-wiring impossible. Thieves now prowl exclusively for cars with keys in them. Wh
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False equivalence. The pictures were not left in plain view. The attackers were cracking the account in hopes of finding something, anything, and what they happened to find was the thing most valuable to them.
Re:Straw Man (Score:4, Insightful)
Victim Blaming vs Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like someone who has their digital media stolen from the cloud is not to blame and the law should back them up. However there are certain things you just do not do even if the law supports the activity. For example parking a Ferrari in a bad part of town with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. The law needs to track down that car if it is stolen but the person doing this is still an idiot.
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Also your car would be parked in a gated parking garage and the parking attendant was the guy who copied it and made his copy available in the public parking lot.
Of course if you left your car unlocked and it got stolen I would most likely blame you for being so irresponsible but the attendant had elevated privileges to your car and should be held to a higher standard since
But think of the Spin!?! (Score:2)
I'm with you, and figured I would add a bit to your points.
These comments are mostly being met with angry backlash from other commenters, which is good.
Ahh, nothing like open bias in an article. Down with anyone claiming personal responsibility is a factor! If you leave a 100dollar bill on your porch and a thief steals it, you were never in any way responsible for leaving the 100 dollar bill on your porch. Anyone claiming you were partially at fault should be chastised by the masses, obviously they are worthless slugs (hopefully the sarcasm is obvious).
A typical example of a weak "rebuttal" is this cartoon you may have seen shared on Facebook, in which an arrogant man lectures women, "Don't want your nude selfies to leak, ladies? Simple: don't take any! Bothered by street harassment? Don't be so eager to walk down streets."
Not only is walking down the street the sam
Re:Victim Blaming vs Common Sense (Score:4, Interesting)
In Japan people to leave their doors unlocked. In many places the normal way to visit someone's home is to just walk in the front door and then call out to get their attention. Delivery persons will often leave packages inside your front door. People have garages that are actually car ports without any kind of door, and store all sorts of expensive stuff on full display.
When someone does get robbed, blame goes firmly to the low life that robbed them. I asked some people about that, saying that in the UK the victim would be blamed for making their stuff easy to steal. Japanese people were shocked. They likened it to a recent incident where a blind girl was kicked and pushed over by a cowardly attacker in the street. Naturally you wouldn't blame her for being blind.
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No, but don't be surprised if people think you're none-too-bright for leaving your car unlocked.
Yes I would probably be banging my head on something hard until I could forget I did that.
Easter egg hunt (Score:2)
There is another response for people like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop telling children not to take candy from strangers, tell strangers not to give candy to children.
Don't tell children to be careful when crossing the street. Tell drivers not to run over children.
It's the same thing with these leaked images.
Sure the hacker is in the wrong and whatever, but it's still your responsibility to keep your data secure.
Saying "but there was a pedestrian crossing and I had the right of way" doesn't help you when you're lying in the hospital with broken bones.
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Sure, but the hack was more akin to picking the lock on the front door and kidnapping the children from their beds. So you would suggest not leaving the children unchained at night?
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No. The hack was more like guessing the combination of your school locker, which is in a fairly public place where people have access to it and you can't monitor it.
Additionally the combination was 1234 and your locker was full of pictures of you blowing some guy in the toilet.
So we can't call anyone stupid anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a cousin who used to wear a lot of gold jewelry. He also lived in a shitty neighborhood. Everyone used to call him crazy for it, but he ignored this, because he was fucking stupid. Of course, he got mugged, and lost all his jewelry one day (he's lucky that's all he lost).
He was the victim of a crime.
He was also fucking stupid.
Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, don't you think he SHOULD be able to wear his gold jewelry out in public? Why should he be afraid to so?
You're argument sounds rather similar to blaming a young woman out on the town for the night, wearing a short skirt and blaming her for getting sexually assaulted.
That said, I think your cousin was unwise, but I think calling him 'fucking stupid' puts the focus and blame on him, instead of the pieces of excrement who assaulted and robbed him -- because they couldn't bother to earn the money for themselves and would rather prey on people.
Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, you SHOULD be able to do a lot of things. And if we lived in an ideal world, we WOULD be able to do all those things.
You seen any ideal worlds lately?
Re: (Score:3)
No, people try very hard to make a better world. Simply admitting we're not in a perfect one isn't shrugging and doing nothing. We know there are bad people and sick people out there. Pretending otherwise is not a survival trait. Fear of everything is also not a great trait; there's a definite balance, and that's variable on location and company.
Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you think people SHOULD be able to walk around inside the lion exhibit at the zoo?
The blame for the crime is on the mugger, rapist, account cracker, etc.
The blame for being stupid, in some cases, is on the victim. Life is hard. It's harder if you're stupid.
I know we aren't supposed to talk about the girl in the skirt, but what would YOUR advice really be to YOUR daughter or son regarding sexual assault, mugging, or lion-exhibit safety?
Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
He made a poor choice, he ignored others' warnings, and he has to live with the repercussions of it.
He didn't commit the crime. He wasn't "asking for it". He isn't to blame for someone else's bad behavior.
But he's still stupid.
He should be able to walk through his neighborhood loaded with easily fenced jewelry. Young women should be able to go to parties without worrying about getting drugged. Investors should be able to give money to financial investors without getting suckered into losing it all.
But that's not the world we live in. And yeah, we continue to teach our kids to no steal, to not rape, to not con. But the world shapes them, and they will make poor decisions at some point in time. So we also teach them to think defensively, to keep their valuables locked up, to hang out with trusted friend, and to thoroughly investigate anyone who is advertising a 10% return in a down market.
Making my child wear a seatbelt is not blaming him for the drunk driver that hit the car.
-Rick
Re: (Score:2)
A young woman dressing provocative in a dangerous area where rapes are known to occur is stupid, and is partly at fault.
Just like if I wear expensive jewelery and flash it around a neighborhood known to have muggings.
Ideally the victim is never at fault. In reality, when there are multiple choices of what to wear and which neighborhoods to walk for, the victims are not always faultless.
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Yeah. So?
Clearly you've never experienced what it is to live in places like those. Flaunting wealth is a dangerous thing in places like those. Not keeping a low profile is a dangerous thing to do in places like those.
Doesn't matter if it's the cops or the neighbors.
You can either adapt to the situation or expect the whole world to change to suit you (like some idiot feminist).
You should really stick to the suburbs if your are totally unwilling to engage in any sort of situational awareness. You are likely t
Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also risk vs reward.
A guy wearing his jewelry in broad daylight in a good part of town going to a social event is not fucking stupid (well, except for questions of taste. Men and jewelry...), and if he gets mugged we should feel sorry for him. But if he's wearing his jewelry for no good reason in a shitty part of town, well...that's kind of stupid.
Same thing with the lady in the miniskirt. If she's going out with friends to a party or a club with a lot of people in a safe area and she wants to look good? Great, please do! I'd much rather look at her in that than a parka. But if she's walking through the ghetto alone at night for no good reason, well, that's pretty stupid.
As for the celebrities, I think it really sucks what happened to them. They should have been a little more careful, but it's not like they were indiscriminately mass emailing them around. For what it's worth, Ms. Lawrence, if you're reading this (just like all the other hot young women who read Slashdot), I didn't look at your pictures or any of the other girls. I don't want to look at pictures of somebody who doesn't want me looking at their pictures.
Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an important distinction to make.
Jennifer Lawrence is not at fault for her stuff being stolen. She's not a slut and she didn't deserve it. No one deserved to get her nude selfies. She has every right to get naked and nasty for her man and transmit that over the Interwebs.
However, at the same time, it was an action that was not without risk. We should feel sympathy for her for falling prey to that risk, but what we should not do is become outraged that it is possible for it to happen.
A lot of people are outraged that things like this can happen and want to nuke any possibility that it could ever possibly happen. This is where the line has to be drawn, both for this and for crimes like rape. We cannot have a risk-free society.
You need to protect yourself. There are hackers and crazy animals who are rapists out there. The people who will respond to your reasoned arguments about why you should be able to put your relationship porn on the Internet, or why you should have every right to walk down the street in spandex and pasties are the very people you didn't need to worry much about in the first place. By now, they know the arguments and are complying with the reasoning.
What I see happening is blaming all males or male hormones or the Patriarchy for women being unsafe to walk down the streets half-naked, when it isn't "males" at all, but rather people with psychological problems. I see people blaming Apple or hackers or society in general for the fact that a high value target got her nudes found and distributed, when it is actually people who get off on cracking sites and trading personal details like baseball cards on TOR who are the issue. They are the panty-sniffers of the Internet.
Victims of crimes like this are not at fault for getting raped, but when they don't protect themselves, we don't all suddenly become accountable as a society for a problem that we can't completely eradicate without turning ourselves into a thought-controlled police state.
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2,000 words, three weeks late (Score:4, Insightful)
On the one hand, we know why this guy took three weeks to weigh in: he wrote a f***ing essay no one will ever read.
On the other hand, it's being published three weeks after the last person cared, so length is irrelevant, I guess.
Reality? (Score:2)
that for the celebrities taking their nude selfies, the probable benefits of their actions outweighed the probable negatives
What the hell is wrong with the author, basing his proposition on a premise that was already proven to be wrong by reality? Wasn't the leak a probable negative? Didn't it outweigh the probable positives?
Re: (Score:2)
No, the leak was an *improbable* negative. Improbable doesn't mean impossible, but it also doesn't mean probable, or guaranteed.
Did anyone else think "Heart of Gold" while reading this?
Victim blaming? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it counts as victim blaming to say, "don't stick your finger in that light socket next time."
I don't think it counts as victim blaming to say, "don't put anything on the internet that you don't want to get spread around."
There's a difference between teaching someone to protect themselves, and blaming someone. If you can't tell the difference, please don't reply to my post.
Re:Victim blaming? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You go to a store to buy a storage for your valuables. You go to a big name - a national chain - because your not in the valuable storage industry. You pay your money, and your cash and affects are available to you based on the store's terms. That seems silly, right? Who stores their valuables in a business operation?
But lets give that place a name. Let's call it Bank of America. And lets call your storage space a safety deposit box. Now is your money and jewelry safer than in a box in your bureau? It's qu
Re:Victim blaming? (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not realize it, because you grew up around light sockets (check your privilege, man), but it's not intuitive. If you grew up in a place without electricity, upon seeing a light socket, you might be very tempted to stick your finger in it (my friend's dad did exactly that).
Sticking your finger in a light socket is extremely stupid, once you realize it's a bad idea.
Using a weak password is extremely stupid, once you realize it's a bad idea.
Putting things on the internet if you don't want them spread around is extremely stupid, once you realize it's a bad idea.
Telling someone it's a bad idea, in all of those cases, is not "victim blaming."
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is dumb on the level of 'blame the victim' dumb. Should everything online be a cost-benefit analysis now?
You know who should be in trouble? The person/people who stole the photos in the first place
If I have naked selfies printed out in my house[*] and someone comes in and steals them, I won't get "well you shouldn't have naked photos of yourself in the house". I get "hey, they stole items from you!". You don't blame the person that made the lock. You don't blame the person if they left the house unlocked. Breaking and entering is a crime. Full stop. There may be other issues if the criminal acquired a master key or picked the lock, or the lock was faulty to begin with, but the blame lies on the person that walked in without authorization and stole property.
What I do with my personal equipment and how I store it and how it can be accessed isn't your business nor do I have to justify myself to you about it.
[*] I do not. You are welcome.
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This is dumb on the level of 'blame the victim' dumb. Should everything online be a cost-benefit analysis now?
Yes.
Re:WTF? (Score:4)
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If you give nekkid pictures to a third party to keep for you and you don't even seal them in an envelope (encrypted?) is that a good idea?
If your security to retrieve your pictures back from the third party is a single passphrase, is that a good idea?
To some people, there is a big difference between a picture of a nekkid rear end and a full action shot. Are full detail graphic photos and movies a good idea?
Insurance vs. Wishy-Washy Platitudes (Score:2)
Lawrence should have used a service that allows her to pay e.g. $10/mo extra to insure against leakage. In aggregate, such funding can be used to improve security, and when the security eventually fails, provide restitution to the person who deserves damages under the terms of the policy.
Does such a service exist yet? If not, it probably needs to be started in a jurisdiction where States don't stack insurance regulations up the wazoo.
All this business about fault, implied contracts, what party A or B shou
Bennett Haselton (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A little more about the man before he is completely eviscerated online...
Cognitive Dissonance, Anyone? (Score:2)
You can sympathise and do all the wishful thinking you want.
Doesn't alter the fact that this was incredibly stupid and/or naïve.
I used to work in radio, and one thing I discovered very quickly is this: You don't let *anything* you wouldn't want to see in the papers out of your control. There is *always* someone ready to take advantage of an opportunity to embarrass a celebrity, just a local one.
Folks on the Hollywood TV/film circuit? By the time they've reached that level, they should just fucking know
Which actions to blame (Score:2)
There is no reason to use a cellphone camera.
Buy a POLAROID and use that.
Let there be nudity, but don't put it on a computer or the internet. Of course, I don't have a Facebook account because they are way too expensive (in terms of what they take from you for what they get).
Similarly, I don't walk through Harlem dressed like Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I have sex with a woman who lies to me and tells me she is on birth control and becomes pregnant, carrying the fetus to term, I am on the hook for birth control. She is allowed to do with the sperm what she wishes.
If I receive nude photos from a woman and I lie to her, telling her I will not upload these to the Internet and then I do, I am likely to get sued to even face jail time.
The law here is inconsistent. Nude photos sent to someone should constitute a gift and be treated accordingly. There shoul
Re:Which actions to blame (Score:4, Interesting)
But the law needs to be fixed the other way around. I.e. The woman should be held responsible for her actions with the sperm, not the guy.
Similarly, the man that receives the photos should not be allowed to do with them what he wants.
Is there some kind of sjw story quota now? (Score:3, Insightful)
To dismiss that statement outright with the phrase "victim blaming" is to throw away the ability to learn from their experiences. If what you hear is "no crime occurred" you're reading into it something that was not said.
soooo..?.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
...don't blame the victim (which is generally a good policy) because their benefit/risk estimation wasn't erroneous? I don't want to blame Jennifer Lawrence (as she seems to want to blame all those cursed with natural interests) but that she would've normally seen a benefit to her actions doesn't seem to directly address blame in any sense. Perhaps this ethical argument requires a simpler "ipso facto" tacked on the end for us stupid folks which are missing the connection between benefit and blame.
I don't think its so much about blame, thats something thats really being made up by the victims. Its not 'blame' to point out that what someone did was obviously dumb and risky behavior.
The problem there is theres this culture that says the world should be safe and people shouldn't have to take any precautions and just wander through life without having to be careful in any way, that people should have a right to be stupid and unobservant and careless.
Me, I take the opposite view; only danger can keep you
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because those who weren't interested in sexual relationships didn't go on to breed.
Whoever wrote this is retarded (Score:3, Insightful)
You can be a victim and still be an idiot.
Rebuttal to rebuttal (Score:4, Interesting)
"If someone leaves their car unlocked and leaves a valuable item in plain view in the front seat, we might feel less sorry for them if they return to their car to find it stolen. But it's a logical error to blame the victim just because they took a risk; the real reason to blame them is that there's no counterbalancing benefit to leaving the car door unlocked, or failing to move the valuable item into the trunk. "
The benifit of not puttin the thing in the trunk and not locking the car is it was less effort to do and will be less effort to open the car and get to the thing aftewards.
Much like the hacked accounts and the benefit of not using a more secure password.
I'm worried that "victim blaming" has been redefined. It seems it might once have been "the perpitrator is excused becuase of the victim", which is not what has been said.
I'm sure there are costs associated with banks building vaults, locking doors, hiring guards, having survellence: avoiding those costs would be a clear benefit. But if they fail at those (or if Home Depot fails to spend enough money wisely enough on securing their POS systems) we correctly fault the bank (or Home Depot) for their lack of care while still rightly villifying the person who broke in and stole the money.
These people took risks. Those risks included taking nude photos, uploading those photos to internet-attached servers, and failing to use good security. Those risks did not apy off. This does not excuse those who hacked the accounts. It is not "victim blaming" in the classic sense either. it is rightly pointing out a lack of due care.
don't let them control language (Score:2)
"victim blaming" is a straw-man term designed to make those so accused look foolish. Everyone understands that there are many links in the causal chain of an undesirable event. No one who points at a few ("X took nude selfie") excludes the existence of the other ("Y stole it") necessary links.
It's not "Vicitim Blaming".... (Score:2)
it's a long forgotten attribute called taking responsibility for your own actions. If someone wants to take nude photos of themselves then go for it. But don't go whining when the photos get leaked.
How stupid can these people be?
They take a nude photo and store it on a cellphone that can easily be compromised or stolen - mistake #1
Then then store the photo on some "cloud service", or email it, or otherwise create copies of the photo that they can no longer control - mistake #2
Choose weak passwords that can
How are they not a victim? (Score:3)
it's a long forgotten attribute called taking responsibility for your own actions. If someone wants to take nude photos of themselves then go for it. But don't go whining when the photos get leaked.
How stupid can these people be?
They take a nude photo and store it on a cellphone that can easily be compromised or stolen - mistake #1
Then then store the photo on some "cloud service", or email it, or otherwise create copies of the photo that they can no longer control - mistake #2
Choose weak passwords that can easily be guessed - mistake #3
These days it seems that everyone wants to be a victim. Why? Because it provides a built in excuse for fucking up. Cast the blame on someone else rather than own up to your own mistakes.
Actually, this is nothing new. In the days before digital cameras, the "thefts" occurred at the drug store or wherever the film was being processed. It was more difficult to disseminate the stolen pictures to millions of people, but they were stolen just the same.
As for being a victim, well, technically they are. In hind sight, was it foolish to store said photos on-line. Yes, it was, but that doesn't mean they weren't a victim. If your local bank gets robbed and you can't get accessed to your funds for a w
Celebrities are targeted more. (Score:2)
But out of the millions of nude photos that are probably sent between cell phone users every month, a vanishly small proportion of them get stolen in security breaches of cloud storage.
But J-Law is not an anonymous nobody that only a very small number of people want to see naked.
There's no reason to think that Jennifer Lawrence and other victims of the hacking scandal underestimated the risk of the photos being stolen from the cloud. If anything, most users are probably over-estimating the risk today
She is not most users, she's a special case. Her risk is not the same, she's much more visible, much more desired.
It's not just a sample of random numbers, there's value attached to these images, and the value of most user's images is much lower than the value of those who are professionally attractive. Something of greater value is obviously at a greater risk of unauthorized access than something of average value
Hey, hey, you got it all wrong (Score:3)
We don't call them stupid for getting their photos stolen. We call them stupid for
1) Taking them and
2) Putting them onto a medium that is accessible via internet.
Healthy relationship (Score:4, Insightful)
Jennifer Lawrence explained bluntly in her Vanity Fair interview why she took the photos: "I was in a loving, healthy, great relationship for four years. It was long distance, and either your boyfriend is going to look at porn or he's going to look at you."
Somehow that doesn't sound like a loving healthy relationship. It sounds like a relationship based on sex and mutual attraction.
Re: (Score:3)
Somehow that doesn't sound like a loving healthy relationship. It sounds like a relationship based on sex and mutual attraction.
By what corruption do you assume that those are mutually exclusive? It's perfectly normal to be in a loving, healthy relationship with someone you're attracted to and want to have sex with. If Ms. Lawrence wanted her boyfriend to think of her when the separation grew unbearable, then that's between her and her boyfriend. There's nothing remotely unhealthy or unusual about that.
Profoundly offensive (Score:5, Insightful)
A woman never knows when she might meet a guy out in public that she's attracted to, and if they hit it off, it helps to have an outfit that says, "I'm a real woman, not a moron who thinks that if I engage in pre-marital kissing then Jesus will set me on fire with a blowtorch."
My wife chooses to dress modestly in public, as do lots of women in my circles, both religious and non-religious. To me, none of their outfits communicate that they are "morons".
Feminism -- You're Doing it Wrong.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not about victim blaming. (Score:3)
It's not about victim blaming, but instead learning from their experience to keep it from happening to you. The discussion isn't about what kinds of pictures should I or should I not have the right to take of myself.
Coeds living in college dorms have the right to enjoy the fresh air by opening a window. But, if that same coed is on the ground floor, that probably isn't a wise thing to do. How do we know this -- because in the past, it has led to very negative consequences. Are they to blame, no. In an ideal world, nothing bad would happen if one lived on the ground floor and left the window open or saved nude pictures of yourself on an online service.
But we don't live in an ideal world. That's why we don't let children play in the playground without supervision. That's why our houses and cars have locks. It's why we use passwords and encryption on files. We are not in an ideal world and there are less than noble people who will take what they want and hurt others in the process.
As such, this isn't about blaming the victims whose pictures were hacked. It is a wake up call that the security needed to keep private things private isn't at a level to guarantee safety. As such, like the coed on the ground floor, it is better to voluntarily give up a small right to protect ones self from having somebody else harm you. For those who have already been harmed by this, maybe their story will keep somebody else from being harmed. It's not about blame -- it's about learning to protect yourself.
logical error (Score:3)
> and of course the only way to stop nude selfies from leaking, is not to take them.
Um, no. That's one way, but not the only way.
As to the benefit vs risk argument, I guess it depends how much it means to you to have your selfies made public. If you're a kardashian, it's a *feature*. If you're Jennifer Lawrence, perhaps it's an embarrassment, (until she does her first full frontal in a film, and then those frames will be all over the internet) but if she really feels that strongly about it (a "sex crime"? Seriously?) then she should think about (a) take your nudies, but NOT WITH A PHONE, you dope! It's not like you've NEVER HEARD of a celeb's phone getting hacked. Look we know you're smart enough to read a script. You should be able to figure out that phones are not secure. (b) The security of "the cloud" is inversely proportional to the value of the data. That your nudies (which were fairly tame, by the way. And a little grainy. Consider moving out to the patio.) would be a prime target for hackers pretty much goes without saying.
What it comes down to, is this: You don't secure the crown jewels with a $3 novelty lock. Depending on cell phone security to keep nekkid photos of Jennifer Lawrence private is exactly the electronic equivalent of a $3 novelty lock securing the pr0n equivalent of the crown jewels. You don't blame the victim for the crime, but you can point out that the victim did not use security appropriate for the value of the object.
Compared to most of us, Lawrence is loaded. She could afford to have a pr0n assistant (I can already see people lining up for that job) who's sole purpose is to distribute her nudies to whomever she's dating, with appropriate NDAs signed, in a secure fashion.
To wit: Take the photos with a real digital camera, not a phone. Put the physical media in a patched-up, antivirus-protected PC, encrypt the photo, send it via a secure, non-well-known email provider, then destroy the original. Educate the recipient on the value of security and the pain he will experience if he lets it get out.
If that's too much to do, then either don't take nude selfies, or lower your privacy expectations. Don't run around with your pants down and complain that everyone is screwing you.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't even get me started on the celebrity worship bullshit in your country.
What country doesn't have some form of 'celebrity worship?'
Re: If you don't want your nude photos on the inte (Score:3, Insightful)
What is your bank password, grandpa. You expect anything you sent on the internet to be publicly available, right?
Sexting is common in long distance relationships, whether you like it or not. These images were texted to a partner. The image app gladly backed-up the new images to apple cloud. They were not or they did intend to put it on the internet. Your argument is completely invalid
Re: (Score:3)
> What is your bank password, grandpa.
What kind of moron keeps a banking password in their dropbox?
That's the only thing that's comparable to this photo hack.
Banks (unlike Apple) are MUCH more diligent about your banking password. This is not something that is published in the clear ANYWHERE.
That information is not "in the cloud" really in any way that's comparable to Jennifer's nude photos.
Re: (Score:2)
Why is this so hard to grasp?
So you're saying there could be issues with uploading nude pics of yourself (that you don't want public) to a world encompassing network whose primary purpose is the free interchange of data? Amazing!
Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say. (Score:5, Insightful)
They were kind enough to put that "Read below to see what Bennett has to say" phrase before the fold, so at least I knew what I was getting into when I clicked the link in my RSS feed. I'm glad they're finally putting a warning label on his posts, since I'm tired of being ambushed by the "Bennett bait-and-switch", when we discover that there's an article where there's supposed to be a summary.
The appeal of Slashdot is its comments. Let Slashdot do what it does best: provide a quick summary, leave room for people to express their own thoughts, and provide a link to the article for people interested in reading more. Hosting the entirety of Bennett's post here subverts the comments by sucking all of the air out of the room and ensuring that whatever issue he's discussing will be ignored in favor of complaining about his post being here, as should be evident from every long-form Bennett post in the last few months.
If his goal is to communicate to us, then he really needs to consider his audience and rethink the methods he's employing. Maybe try speaking to us in the format we come here for?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
BH;DR
Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say. (Score:5, Interesting)
First - Bennett should have said the "probability of them being leaked," not the "risk." Risk has a specific meaning: it's the probability of something happening TIMES the damage that occurs if it does happen.
Celebrities taking nude photos is a HIGH risk. They have a moderate (not low) probability of leaking and a HIGH damage should they leak.
If you write your pin number on your ATM card are you not at least partially to blame when a thief finds the card and cleans out your account? Of course the thief is wrong, but wow you were stupid!
Sounds like a planned PR stunt to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please. I say this is a massive publicity stunt. How many celebs leaked "sex tapes" back in the day, expressing outrage right up until the months of careful planning and PR were revealed.
Secondly, "sex crime"? Good lord. Women today want everything to be classified as a sex crime. Give me a break.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The same reason it is important to call copyright infringement as it is instead of theft. Re-labeling hacking a server and unauthorized distribution of images as a sex crime is unnecessary, and the purpose of doing so is merely to illicit a greater emotional response. Many (most?) people conflate "sex crime" with pedophilia and rape.
None of this pedantry makes the affected individuals any less of a victim, mind you.
Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you write your pin number on your ATM card are you not at least partially to blame when a thief finds the card and cleans out your account? Of course the thief is wrong, but wow you were stupid!
Yes, that's called "negligence."
It's why, in that situation, the bank would refuse to reverse the charges, and probably get away with it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
False equivalence. They didn't leave their password out. Their accounts were cracked.
Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've alway said. If you don't want something leaked on the internet. Don't store it on the internet. Be it nude selfies or anything else.
Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say. (Score:5, Insightful)
Devices nowadays are designed to share. Let that sink in a minute. Devices nowadays are designed to share. Smartphones are cloud-connected, and every smartphone OS make at least offers some degree of automatic cloud storage, and there are lots of third-party applications that also offer automatic cloud storage. Smartphones also designed to easily interface with PCs to share content to where it can be used on a bigger display. PCs are designed to look for open shares on trusted networks to make use of the content on those shares. PCs can also share/save to the cloud.
Just about all of this software is closed-source. Even as computer professionals we don't know all that it's capble of doing, and we cannot review it for unadvertized capabilities either. We have to trust that it works as advertised and only as advertised, that there are no undocumented features that make it work otherwise, and that there are no expoitable bugs that were unintentionally introduced.
And all of this is just the end-user-device side. This doesn't even begin to address the cloud-side, the protocols, or other things.
End-users that aren't computer professionals have no chance. Even computer professionals really don't have a good shot either.
The only winning move is not to play.
Ms. Lawrence is on record saying that she supplied photos to a significant-other so he'd look at her instead of looking at other women. Good intentions perhaps, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. She did not understand the technology, and now she's paying the consequences of that ignorance.
Re: (Score:3)
Or, his settings were wrong, and inadvertently put the files that she sent him on the cloud somewhere, or his device was vulnerable and was broken into...
This shows that there were at least three points of failure. There was her point, his point, and the communications medium between them. That doesn't even factor into account possible cloud storage for her or him, or automatic s
Re: (Score:3)
That's what I mean by being designed to share. From the user's perspective, the photos were automagically copied on to a cloud-based service. The photos were not stored solely on the picture-taking device, ie the smartphone, and ended up in a place that has lots and lots of users connecting to it on a regular basis. The sheer number of connections alone helps obscure inappropriate use, and coupled with the particularly lax s
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I only came here for the "what a massive douche this guy is" comments....
Re: (Score:3)
Right. On FB, where I personally know most of the people I see commenting, it's pretty obvious that the victim blamers are invariably those of a conservative persuasion. As people of that ilk are often not persuadable by things like the science of evolution and AGW, it's hardly surprising they are illogical on this issue too.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't take naked pictures of yourself with an Internet-connected device. Don't transmit naked pictures of yourself through others' networks and store them on others' servers.
The victims did something stupid. Had they not done something stupid, they wouldn't be victims.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/... [cnn.com]