The August 2014 Celebrity Nude Photo Leaks

[Kreekakon]

This is a little event that has been causing quite a bit of stir on the internet the past couple days, so I thought I'd make a thread to see what everyone thinks about it.

For those who don't know here is a quick summary of what has happened in a nutshell taken from Wikipedia:

On August 31, 2014, almost 200 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly females and with many containing nudity, were posted to the image board website 4chan.

Many people have since then viewed the pictures, and the affected celebrities have also responded their disgust to what has been happening.

It seems that the pictures were taken from cloud storage on Apple. Many people have stated that the celebrities partially brought this onto themselves by leaving the photos in cloud storage, giving way to the hacker being able to acquire them.

---------------------------------

First off, regarding the fact that some people are putting blame on the celebrities for bringing this onto themselves...I think it is not without merit, but is still ridiculous all the same.

It is definitely true that celebrities should be more careful with such photos, but to say that the ordeal is partially their fault is outrageous. That is like saying that girls are partially at fault for being raped because they wore skimpy clothing.

I thin it is a case of the victims should have taken more caution, BUT it is not their fault at all.

Next regarding the actual photos which have been leaked, and those who decide to view them this is what I have to say:

Not looking at the leaked celebrity nude is the small act of showing sympathy to the celebrities affected, and respecting their wishes that they do not wish for these pictures to be seen...even if it is just by you. Looking at the pictures shows a lack of respect for what they would've wanted.

There is no one stopping you from looking at the pictures, nothing can stop you if you wanted. It is just that one should bear in mind that the celebrities who didn't want this whole ordeal to happen wishes the fewer people who look at the pictures the better. There's no doubt that they made a mistake, and are suffering for it. But it would greatly help that we helped them suffer less by doing what they wished...even if it is in secret, and no one will realize what we are doing.

To decide not to look at the pictures is as whole nothing more than an act of personal conscience. It will not do anything for the real world at all. The only thing it will do is let yourself know that you are doing the right thing in respecting the wishes of the celebrities.

But....this is probably asking for too much from the majority of people these days.

These are basically my thoughts on the matter. I'd love to hear yours (And I hope I don't regret making this thread)!

[VaeVictis]

I think that this is exposing the victim blaming nature of our society. To be honest, I'm very disappointed in people's attitudes towards this, but not surprised. People don't seem to take the time to think about the person on the other side of the screen (at least insofar as it benefits them).
Reddit was freaking out about SOPA and stuff, but then turns around and praises the person responsible for this despicable breach of privacy. Hypocrisy at its finest.

[Kreekakon]

Reddit was freaking out about SOPA and stuff, but then turns around and praises the person responsible for this despicable breach of privacy. Hypocrisy at its finest.

That's even more insane than victim blaming. I could understand maybe just a very tiny bit if it was just blaming the victims for not being careful enough along with the actual hacker being the main perpetrator.

But actually PRAISING the hacker? That's nuts.

[Prelauncher]

I also find the whole blamming the victim attitude we're seing now to be absolutely disgusting. It's very easy to be Captain Hindsight, and it's true: They shouldn't have uploaded the photos to the cloud, nothing is safe or sacred on the internet and since they're famous they're more likely to be targeted. But you simply cannot blame them for it. People upload photos thinking thery're safe everyday! It's not weird for someone to have images, documents etc on coludservices. It's a prefectly normal thing to do and in no way were they asking for trouble since noone except themselves and a selected few knew about the existence of these pictures.
Like you said Kreekakon; They should have been more cautious, but they cannot be blamed.
And about that hacker, he's no hero in any way. He is a thief and should be punished for this.

[Mudbill]

No, it's not really the victims' fault here, however the way I'd best describe it is lack of precaution. There are always gonna be bad people in this world, and the best we can do is take precautions and try to deal with it. Being a famous celebrity will just increase the chance of any of these things being targeted towards you.

I was going through some Youtube stuffs and found this comment by Trevour Reis which I share views with.

Spoiler below!

You guys don't get it.

Fault and responsibility are not the same thing, it is not the young ladies' fault that their pictures were gathered and leaked. But they bare some of the responsibility for putting them in a position where they could be in danger.

Does this lessen the fault of the hackers who leaked these? No.

Just like if you had a few naked photos (physical photos) and you accidentally left them at your best friend's house in the envelope with some other vacation photos or something. And your best friend's brother found them and gave copies to all his friends. Do you have a right to be mad? Yes. Is your friend's brother a dirt bag? Yes! But ultimately it was your responsibility to safeguard your private photos. And you're the one who forgot them and left them to be found.

Just like abstinence...
Abstinence IS the ONLY way to 100% eliminate the possibility of unwanted pregnancies and STDs. But if you are going to have sex use a condom to mitigate the risk, iCloud and cloud in general are like the pull out method of secure storage...

If you want to keep your private pictures private, either buy a real camera and save the pics on a USB or SD memory card. Or at least keep them on your personal computers. Or keep it to Polaroids.

Storing this sensitive information in the cloud is risky enough as it is. Just keeping a file on Dropbox gives anyone access to it if they would be sneaky enough to get ahold of the "share" link. Doing so will probably never happen to 99.9% of anyone, but the possibility is there so don't forget it.
Once it's online, it's never offline.

If you want something to remain private, at least put some effort into it. I'm not blaming the victims for doing anything wrong, but they could have prevented this themselves if they were more careful. Use encryption ESPECIALLY if it's stored online.

And when it comes to Reddit, I don't think anyone should put the blame on them. I mean that as in Reddit itself. There are bad people on Reddit just like there are bad people on Facebook. You don't blame all of Facebook for letting these people online though. What the people on Reddit did (regarding the prasing of the hacker) is obviously very wrong, but don't generalize.

Apparently people on Reddit felt bad for Jennifer Lawrence and decided to put up a donation towards JL's favorite charity (Prostate Cancer Foundation). I think the donation pool was around 25k dollars, but the charity turned them down because of what they did. I can understand why, in a sense, but I still don't agree with them. Many of the redditors donating had nothing to do with it and did not support what happened in the first place.

Lastly I just want to mention that in the aftermath of all this, I honestly don't think it makes you a horrible person if you are curious and look it up. It's human nature to be curious about things, and the damage is already done. Doing so or not, as you said, won't make a difference aside from personal respect to the victims. I can respect those who choose to never see it because that's what the victims would want, but I wouldn't tag those who do see it as perverts or inhumane or as if they're contributing to the damage.

[MrWhitticus]

I've seen a lot of:
Don't want nude photos released? Don't take them!

This is really good advice, along with:
Don't want to be robbed? Don't own things!
Don't want to get low grades? Don't go to school in the first place!
Don't want to be stabbed and killed? Don't be born!

[Mudbill]

Ha! Joke's on you! You can't kill me if I'm already dead

[Wooderson]

I think the real question here is this...

[Kreekakon]

Lastly I just want to mention that in the aftermath of all this, I honestly don't think it makes you a horrible person if you are curious and look it up. It's human nature to be curious about things, and the damage is already done. Doing so or not, as you said, won't make a difference aside from personal respect to the victims. I can respect those who choose to never see it because that's what the victims would want, but I wouldn't tag those who do see it as perverts or inhumane or as if they're contributing to the damage.

I'd say that it's not really that bad if one looks at the pictures at all.

It's less a case of "you are evil if you look", and more of "It would greatly appreciated if you didn't".

A somewhat similar example that popped into my head is the decision to use AdBlock, or not.

I've seen a lot of:
Don't want nude photos released? Don't take them!

This is really good advice, along with:
Don't want to be robbed? Don't own things!
Don't want to get low grades? Don't go to school in the first place!
Don't want to be stabbed and killed? Don't be born!

Actually it should be more like:

Don't want nude photos released? Don't put them on easily hacked places!

This is really good advice, along with:
Don't want to be robbed? Don't put them in easily stolen locations!
Don't want to get low grades? Don't neglect your studies!
Don't want to be stabbed and killed? Don't go to dangerous places!

[VaeVictis]

Reddit was freaking out about SOPA and stuff, but then turns around and praises the person responsible for this despicable breach of privacy. Hypocrisy at its finest.

That's even more insane than victim blaming. I could understand maybe just a very tiny bit if it was just blaming the victims for not being careful enough along with the actual hacker being the main perpetrator.

But actually PRAISING the hacker? That's nuts.

Yeah. That filthy underside of the internet had, yet again, reared its ugly head.

Precautionary measures are one thing, but that just makes the perpetrator look for some other poor soul to humiliate.