Maybe you saw the recently leaked iCloud naked pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and quite a few more that showed up on the Internet. Maybe you thought the women should just be cool with it because they look good and aren’t celebrities’ bodies basically for public consumption? Well, you’d be wrong. It has been confirmed that the FBI and Apple are investigating what is believed to be the biggest celebrity photo leak in history and is looking at it as a sex crime:
[Jennifer Lawrence is] the cool chick, the fun one, the girl who’s so confident she waves her bingo wings for a laugh on the Oscar carpet. But here’s the thing: While she might own her own fame, we (the public) don’t own her body just because she’s famous. If she chooses to show it to us (as she did under blue body paint in the X-Men movies), then that’s her choice – in the same way it’s a woman’s choice to walk out of the house wearing whatever she pleases. To say that Lawrence ought to “own” the digital sex crime against her just because she’s a hot movie star is like telling a rape victim to own her assault because she put on a cute dress and went to a party.
It’s enough to make you want to go back to just using stone tablets.
Team Blackness also discussed a NYC human rights lawyer who was arrested while waiting for her kids; more racism, this time in Kentucky; and the passing of Joan Rivers.
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YellowJournalism
The comments I’ve seen about Jill Scott are disgusting. I made the mistake of clicking on her name to see why she was trending without thinking of the possibility of leaked pics.
Thank god Joan Rivers is just dead.
Mnemosyne
@YellowJournalism:
I had a link yesterday to a story about Scott’s response. My shorter and more vulgar version of what she said on Twitter: all of you losers can go fuck yourselves.
Paul in KY
I guess it’s about the cracker who spray painted the vile epithets, etc. IMO, he’s lucky he’s not dead. You point a shotgun at me & I will try my best to kill you.
I certainly hope they throw the book at him.
YellowJournalism
@Mnemosyne: I read that. She gave the perfect response!
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
Thank you Elon (and Imani), thank you.
This whole thing is deeply creepy. Last night on a site I regularly lurk on some guy was basically making jokes about fapping to J Law’s pictures (at first I thought that meant Jude Law b/c I happen to live with part of his estrogen brigade but then I realized current events, etc) and nobody was making any pushback and I really felt sad. The guy was even blaming the victim. “The iCloud isn’t a cloud, kids!”
No, bullshit! She paid Apple for a fucking service. That’s like taunting someone whose important documents in a safe deposit box get stolen by a bank robber, and just as violating. Why do these assholes think they’re entitled to look at someone naked if they don’t want you to?
I think Aimai is right, it’s the whole notion that you are violating someone’s boundaries that is the appeal, and that’s the grossest part of all.
Maybe time to seriously rethink the American style of treating young children: Instead of kisses, we get kicked. It’s the hard knock life!
http://www.livestrong.com/article/186495-importance-of-human-touch/
(I know, livestrong, but scroll down to the “Aggression” paragraph, that’s what I’m referring to.)
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Mnemosyne: Maybe something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw3Z8Oa7E3Y
I like when she said “I earned every inch of my life.”
Penus
I don’t think people who looked at the pictures are horrible people. I just want them to take a second and realize what it means. If Justin Verlander was showing naked pictures of Kate Upton around the Tigers’ clubhouse, and I were somehow a member of the Tigers, I would look. But I’d feel really gross about it afterward. I’d think Verlander was a creep, and that he treated Upton like a piece of property and not a person. Basically, this is the same situation, except we’ve removed Verlander’s consent, too.
YellowJournalism
@Penus: People who accidentally saw them, I sympathize. (This is why pictures are not shown on my Twitter feed until I click a post.) Little boys who haven’t been taught better can be taught better. People who actively sought the pictures out, knowing they were stolen, knowing the parties involved were upset and violated, posting about their “excitement” with nasty pics and lame justifications…those are horrible people.
YellowJournalism
@Penus: People who accidentally saw them, I sympathize. (This is why pictures are not shown on my Twitter feed until I click a post.) Little boys who haven’t been taught better can be taught better. People who actively sought the pictures out, knowing they were stolen, knowing the parties involved were upset and violated, posting about their “excitement” with nasty pics and lame justifications…those are horrible people.
Penus
@YellowJournalism: As with everything, there are degrees of wrongness. (Anyone who posted and shared the pictures is a piece of shit, for instance.) I don’t think someone is automatically an awful person for thinking “Jennifer Lawrence naked? Hell yeah!” and looking at the pictures. My hope is that some of those people had an epiphany about what, exactly, they were looking at. As people, we don’t often arrive at the correct point of view right away. We evolve and question ourselves and think about stuff and then, hopefully, come to the right conclusion. I hope that this incident led to that kind of moment for some folks.
Penus
And the victim-blaming going on is absurd. Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton and everyone else should be able to sleep with whomever they choose and get off however they choose, and the fact that we value privacy so little that we blame the victim is awful.
Even leaving out the glaringly obvious consent issues, who gives a fuck about sexting in 2014? Britney Spears is the same age as me, and I remember what a ridiculous uproar it was when she might have lied about losing her virginity. Who in the world expects, say, Demi Lovato to be a virgin now? “You shouldn’t take naked pictures if you don’t want people you didn’t consent to seeing them masturbating to them” is the attitude of a scold with antiquated morals.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
Man, good for her.
kc
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Sounds like some of the commenters on this here blog.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Penus: Your excuses just show you’ve never felt endangered by someone else’s boundary violations of your person. I guess be grateful for that life experience but I would challenge you to think twice. These kinds of things can be deeply painful for the victim whether it’s street harassment, revenge porn, or as in my case where I had a parent try to rub out my agency and personality and graft her own. Just because the victims in this care are at a(n easily pierced) physical remove doesn’t lessen the emotional harm being done here.
This is NOT the same as going to a movie because so-and-so is in the altogether, or buying Esquire because your celeb crush did a photo shoot.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Penus: The victim blaming I’m seeing is going hand in hand with the sharing and viewing (and even selling) of the pix, it’s like a rapist’s self justification. She shouldn’t have worn those clothes, she shouldn’t have taken those pics with her iPhone which she should have known used un-opt-out-able network backups which Apple failed to sufficiently protect against brute force attacks.
I guess buying mass market electronics is the 21st century equivalent of the 20th century rapey fashion police.
Psychology like that is going down a very, very scary alley. It’s no different that the bully who “punishes” the other schoolboys he torments for their failure to conform to his own brutal parents’ social prejudices. There’s a rumor I recall about a GOP presidential candidate and a pair of scissors, in fact. It’s a way for the perp to style her anti-social behavior as somehow justified and pro-social.
It’s like Darren Wilson’s friends trying to cast the murder of Mike Brown as the justified killing of a dangerous sociopath engaged in the commission of a felony. DARVO.
Penus
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer): What excuses? I’m saying that I hope this whole story gets some people to think about where pictures like this come from and what has to happen. I’m very aware that people were horribly violated here, and I said as much in the post that you responded to.
Betty Cracker
Here’s a particularly precious Salon column on the topic that perfectly encapsulates why that site is so often a waste of pixels:
It’s just not all about you, dear. It really, really isn’t.
MBunge
\@Penus: “If Justin Verlander was showing naked pictures of Kate Upton around the Tigers’ clubhouse, and I were somehow a member of the Tigers, I would look. But I’d feel really gross about it afterward. I’d think Verlander was a creep, and that he treated Upton like a piece of property and not a person. Basically, this is the same situation, except we’ve removed Verlander’s consent, too.”
I’d probably look at them too but I haven’t and wouldn’t look at any of these latest hacked photos and that’s because of that last sentence. As long as someone with some legitimate ownership/authority of the photos is granting you permission to look at them, there’s nothing ethically wrong with doing so. It may be quite scummy but it isn’t wrong.
No such permission has been granted with these photos, making it very wrong indeed for anyone to look at them. It’s like the difference between a woman selling the stuff her ex-boyfriend left at her place and someone breaking into the ex-boyfriend’s home and stealing it.
Mike
rea
@MBunge: I’m not sure why people seem to want to blame Verlander for this–he was a victim, too.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I think Jennifer Lawrence is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and if she ever wants to pose nude I am first in line (I have permission from my wife for this, even!) But this isn’t her posing, it’s not done with her consent, and I will be damned if I go hunting down those pictures because they’re not mine to view. They are her property.
There’s a secondary lesson here, one that cuts to the core of my work as a network security professional, and I’m glad that it’s being taught although I am horrified at the cost: nothing you have ever done or will ever do on the internet is secure or private. And it cannot be made so. No caveats, no exceptions.
The Other Bob
It seems to me that virtually no one is taking aim at the incompetence of Apple. It seems to me like they are enjoying the controversy so nobody points the finger at them.
Mnemosyne
@The Other Bob:
Apple claimed their Get Out of Jail Free card by saying that the users didn’t have sufficiently secure passwords. I’m not sure how EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of the affected users could have had inadequate passwords, but that’s Apple’s story and they’re sticking to it.
JR in WV
Hi Elon,
I read your posts, and the stuff you write about them, and it is obvious that you rock! You should be so proud of your perspective and ability to display the correctness of your beliefs and opinions.
I have one small gripe, which I will expound upon briefly and then go on about my business of reading blogs and working for change (and HOPE too! (take that Palin!!)).
Your best work seems to be in these interviews, oral discussions published much like Fresh Air or the Diane Rehm show. both on NPR. And I mean that a as a complement, as both women are real journalists who try not to impose their ideas on their interviews.
The problem is that I have trouble listening to your shows, partly because I have an internet connection from the stone age, with the most modern parts consisting of string and tin-cans. Slow is what I mean, and it means that audio streaming is not smooth at all.
Secondly, I have lived a full life, with many different experiences, many of which involved loud noises, first in the USN where incredibly loud power tools and and weapons were the normal part of a work day, pre mouse ear headset hearing protectors, and then many other experiences that involved really loud experiences. Iron Butterfly, Spirit, Chambers Brothers, Carlos Cantana, Janis (dog bless her!) and Big Bogther, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa…etc, etc. Loud, one and all.
So I don’t hear as well as some people your age do. Is there any way transcripts of these valuable cultural icons could be part of the blogosphere? I do better reading my political diatribes, anyway. I learned to learn in the reading world, and I can’t really get over it now. Too late.
Not that I don’t like listening to something while I read B-J etc. But not people talking, no, I listen to people making a joyous noise which doesn’t distract me from one thought with another competing thought at the same time.
Can we has readable texts, plszse? ThnksKbye!
Carry on your Noble charge into history as you best can!
rikyrah
Elon,
folks were so mean to Jill Scott, but she brushed off the ‘haters’.
LAC
Good! I guess, contrary to some of the assertions made here previously, a fuck was given. Sorry Keith G…