The Correct Response To Photo Hack Victim-Blamers

Bennett Haselton writes As commenters continue to blame Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities for allowing their nude photos to be stolen, there is only one rebuttal to the victim-blaming which actually makes sense: that for the celebrities taking their nude selfies, the probable benefits of their actions outweighed the probable negatives. Most of the other rebuttals being offered, are logically incoherent, and, as such, are not likely to change the minds of the victim-blamers. Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

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.

Comments

Straw Man

[koan]

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

[gandhi_2]

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.

Re:Straw Man

[koan]

If the initial premise is inaccurate why bother?

Re:Straw Man

[Pino Grigio]

I see your point and I suspect the complexities of internet security, like those of bike locks for the uninitiated, are somewhat perplexing. People need to realise that putting pictures onto the internet is more like sending a postcard than a wax sealed envelope. Of course cloud and social media companies definitely don't want their customers to realise this too soon.

Re:Straw Man

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Straw Man

[Skarjak]

I agree, I'm an atheist but I thought that anti-Christian comment at the end was totally out of place and painted the writer of the article as an intolerant bigot. It was totally out of place in the article and really undermines his point.

Re:Straw Man

[AmiMoJo]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

And around the same time, The Zuck went on record saying that the age of privacy is dead.

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.

But now, apparently, when you're a celebrity, and you do something risque, and it ends up splashed all over the web by a bunch of geeks and nerds, it's YOUR FAULT for expecting privacy on the web.

Hey nerds, guess what? When the government starts cracking down on all your TOR sites and other "supar sekrit" clubs, you'll hear the same fucking response: It's YOUR FAULT for expecting anything you do on the web to remain private. What? You were behind nine proxies? LOL, still your fault.

Victim Blaming is bullshit - always has been, always will be. For all the people arguing that it's like "leaving something expensive in an unlocked car," that's also bullshit - these photos WERE secured behind passwords and encryption, but some criminal went to the time and effort of figuring out how to bypass it. If your house and your car is locked up, and your shit is still stolen, then what other precautions, other than living in a completely sealed environment, can you take?

You people will bitch about privacy whenever your taste for tranny porn might get exposed, but the moment some celebrity's tits are possibly photographed, you seem to think no activity is UN-justifiable. Shame on you. Shame on all of you. Fuck Slashdot. Fuck nerds. Fuck Bennett for making an argument that even REMOTELY suggests that victim blamers "kind of have a point."

Re:Straw Man

[Jason Levine]

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.

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.

Re:Straw Man

[Slashdot Parent]

But haven't you noticed that cheap thrills are fun? And in the end, aren't most of them pretty harmless? Or shouldn't they be?

I've done "soft" drugs, drank to excess, gone skydiving, bungee jumping, and things like that. All of these carry a small risk of a large disaster. Was I stupid to have done those? Or, like OP said, did I make a calculated risk, that the Thrill of jumping out of a plane would exceed Potential Disaster x Likelihood Of Disaster? Lawrence made that same calculation and came up on the losing end, but does that make her decision unwise, just because she was unlucky?

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.

Re:Straw Man

[Anonymous Coward]

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 at a reasonable speed, increasing training, wearing adequate protective equipment, etc. I might have the idealistic expectation that I should be able to ride around town without fear of bodily harm from stupid, distracted and negligent drivers. However, when you see bikers that have lost their lives in a collision on the TV, one must admit that expectation is demonstrably not grounded in reality. So, I understand that I can do everything perfectly, with the mastery of a professional rider and still wind up dead.

Does that stop me as a fellow biker from criticizing a species of biker known as the SQUID, (Stupid, Quick, Underdressed, Imminently Dead) even when they get turned into road pizza and lose their lives? Hell no. Should it stop me, as a fellow human being from criticizing vapid actresses who share their nudies over a medium that has been repeatedly and continuously demonstrated to be as private as yelling at the top of your lungs in the middle of Times Square? Hell no. If they want to take nude selfies and share them with their mates, it's not unreasonable to expect them to take precautions; like wearing a helmet whilst motorcycling.

Victim blaming is not always appropriate, especially when there's nothing the victim could have done to prevent the outcome, but you know, sometimes it's educational. Chimpanzees can learn through watching the downfalls and pains of their peers. Maybe humans can one day overthrow the political correctness police and reacquire this skill.

Victim Blaming vs Common Sense

[Drethon]

I live in a fairly good town but still don't leave my doors unlocked, EVER. I still don't expect to get blamed should I forget one day and my car gets stolen.

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.

There is another response for people like this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:There is another response for people like this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

2,000 words, three weeks late

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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.

Victim blaming?

[phantomfive]

I don't think it counts as victim blaming to say, "use a stronger password next time (non-dictionary)."
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?

[scubamage]

Pretty much this exactly. People need to understand that online storage is essentially like having a stranger drive up to you in their windowless van, and offering to store stuff for you that you can get back anytime you want. You don't really know him. He promises "industry grade security!" on his van, and sleek curved corners on the van and maybe a recognizable fruit logo. You are taken in, and start storing your photos, your essays, your financial information, etc on his van. Except, what is industry grade security? What industry? How do you know he isn't looking at your stuff? How do you know he isn't parsing your stuff and selling that information? If you started reading warnings about this guy and his storage van on the news and online, would you still use his service? Because guess what - almost every single cloud storage company has had those warnings posted about them. It's not your fault if you fail to vet a service out, and give this guy $50 and he drives away and starts selling your stuff, you're right. But you're a dumbass for trusting someone you don't know blindly with things you don't want out in the public.

Re:Victim blaming?

[phantomfive]

Well you're a pleasant chap, aren't you?

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."

Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

[buck-yar]

TLDR if there ever was one

who is Bennett Haselton

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is Bennett Haselton?

Who cares.

WTF?

[Enry]

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.

Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore

[Morpeth]

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.

Is there some kind of sjw story quota now?

[Iamthecheese]

It's stupid and counterproductive to blame the victims of a crime. That said, it's very useful to turn this into a fable to teach people how to prevent future occurrences. And the simplest way to explain it is to say something like, "They should have secured their data"

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.

Re: If you don't want your nude photos on the inte

[ThatsMyNick]

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:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore

[NotDrWho]

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?

Whoever wrote this is retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be a victim and still be an idiot.

Re:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore

[gandhi_2]

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

[RingDev]

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:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore

[tnk1]

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.

Healthy relationship

[phantomfive]

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.

Sounds like a planned PR stunt to me.

[popo]

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:Sounds like a planned PR stunt to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nudity is not sex. Photographs are not sex. If you aren't sure what "sex" is, try an internet search.

Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

[Anubis IV]

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:So we can't call anyone stupid anymore

[meta-monkey]

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.

Profoundly offensive

[sideslash]

At the end of his wall of wordiness, Bennett writes:

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:Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

[CanHasDIY]

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:Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

[CanHasDIY]

I only came here for the "what a massive douche this guy is" comments....

Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

[theNetImp]

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:But that was not the same!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you could just respect the idea that if something doesn't belong to you, you shouldn't fuck with it without the owner's permission? Is there a tech news site out there that doesn't have a bunch of privileged man-children who weren't raised on it in the comments?

Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

[preaction]

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!

False equivalence. They didn't leave their password out. Their accounts were cracked.

Re:Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

[TWX]

As I've maintained since this scandal broke, if one doesn't fully understand all of the technologies and their implications when creating the content in the first place, one simply cannot control that content.

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.