Apple investigating iCloud "hack"

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Store your documents on some corporation’s servers. What could possibly go wrong?

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Sure, ostensibly-private stuff on the internet always stands a chance of being made public, but that smacks of victim-blaming a bit in this context. Pundits have been saying they were asking for it (taking their cues from Fox) or that we need tougher punishments for e-thievery/hacking/whatever.

Both of those ideas seem dumb. The troubling issue here, to my mind, is that many people apparently find it acceptable—a moral imperative, even—to make arbitrary proclamations about how other adults should appear in their own photographs.

… eff that noise.

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Not at all. Post your dick pix wherever you like. Then complain when the wrong person sees them. And I shall feel outraged on your behalf. Honest.

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I’ve been trusting the security of my documents (and other things) to a corporation’s products for quite some time, well before cloud-based storage became common. They’re called “locks” and they’re on my “door” and if someone “picks” the “locks”, it’s called a “crime” and I’m commonly understood not to be at fault.

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But first, you probably should polish your skills.

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I don’t know what you’re trying to communicate.

You think an otherwise-alright person commits an immoral act by privately sharing nude/carefree/sexual imagery of themselves with the recipients’ permission?

I dislike puritanical body-aversion (i.e. the social norms which make “it threatens their careers” and “they’d be out of work if they weren’t celebrities” truthful statements).

I’m not even a naturist! It’s simply ridiculously-haughty and juvenile to be bothered by other people’s records of their own bodies and sexuality, especially if said records were reasonably private.

And yeah, I think there is a reasonable expectation that certain stuff on servers is private (whether they’re deemed “cloudy” or not). At the very least it’s not public in the sense that, say, a sidewalk or public square is. To make this explicit: a couple trading/storing sexual images of themselves in private only to have those images later made public against their will != a couple screwing on a public bench or streaking through town or whatever.

I’m fine with people distributing their nudity/sexiness/etc over the internet. It doesn’t strike me as within the proper realm of concern assuming the parties involved are consenting and not doing criminal stuff.

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Apple is also blaming the victims for not using the doubled security feature.

The victim blaming is interesting in this example. At what point does the responsibility fall back onto the uploader? With this latest attack, is it now safe to say one shouldnt upload anything that is private and people should know this? Or do we have to continue to hear celebrities and whoever else cry foul every time this happens? So for example if I buy some mcdonalds and get fat, is that not my fault?

But it is misunderstanding the technology and that misunderstanding was bought and paid for by Apple’s PR arm. They may not have shared the media openly, but they did put their trust in other people to keep it safe.

Honestly, the best comparison I can think of is getting your photos developed by another person and trusting they won’t see them or make copies.

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How you got there, from what he said, is not something i comprehend.

Did you bring something in with you, perhaps?

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Yeah, they misunderstood the fact that any files on a networked device are vulnerable.

As to the comparison: yes, that makes sense as the pessimist’s view. The optimist’s view might be to compare it to say, sending your dick pix (or whatever) back and forth in the mail or to a PO box or similar.

That might actually be the deluded utopianist’s view given the current state of networking. As I understand it, though (probably wrongly), encryption between two trusted parties should work… so the optimist/utopianist’s comparison could be the reality if the necessary tech and norms were in place.

But again, beyond all this, it’s important to stress that they weren’t wittingly exposing their nudity, they just didn’t know any better.

It’s the validity of those last six words that really bothers me, for all the puritanical body- and sexuality-shaming it entails. I think we ought to get past that shit.

Am I making that clear? I’m not trying to be pedantic, just trying to be understood.

The reason “they just didn’t know any better” is bad is because it means that the root of the story is an actual issue, namely that the act of recording oneself in a nude or sexual situation is widely considered immoral/bad/negative. It shouldn’t be considered that way, though, and that’s the shitty takeaway from this story. If the photos were of clothed people the story would (presumably) have made much less impact.

I really don’t know what the person was trying to say; maybe you could reword their post or give your take.

Did I bring something in? Preconceptions, you mean? Biases? Well sure.

I don’t care if consenting adults privately exchange sexual data.

I don’t think other people should care about that, either.

I don’t think the insecurity of networking means people should get ostracized when their sexual data is publicized.

… I don’t know what other baggage is pertinent.

Uh… I think norms about our bodies matter?

I consider myself sex-positive? I haven’t put much thought into that, though.

I try to take other words at face value and give the benefit of the doubt, but often fail?

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I have no idea why you think that. Maybe you’re confusing me with somebody else. I said go ahead if you want. I have no interest in controlling your behavior. Who knows, maybe it will work out just great for you.

What the Norwegian Maple said.

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Why do people have “safes” in their “house” which is notionally already “protected” by “locks”?

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself with the snark… but the point is this: The security of your stuff is most important to you, so rather than deal with the potential fallout from theft of important stuff - which we all accept is a thing that will forever happen - you should do things to protect yourself since no one else will.

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So you don’t feel outrage at the fact that these photos were stolen and reposted all across the Internet without consent? I have to wonder at what point you would feel outrage.

But, you’re not a victim blamer, I get it, I get it.

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photos were stolen. how much outrage is due? Was anyone killed? Waterboarded? arrested for resisting arrest? Oh, private property rights were violated. Well sure, that sucks. But really, meh.

I think it’s my own job not to get too attatched to ‘things’ in this impermanent universe. Attachment creates misery. Not theft or loss, attachment. Om, or something like that.

So you wouldn’t be bothered if your computer was hacked and photos of you and a partner or spouse were stolen and posted online with identifying information*?

* Note: answer this as if the photos existed, since that is the question at hand. If you don’t have photos like that, then pretend that you do.

I still don’t see what you’re trying to say. I mean, I think I see what you’re trying to say, and I also think I don’t like it, which is why I continue trying to clarify.

All I see is you blaming the victims in your first post. I see “they should know better” aka “everyone should understand digital security at least as well as I do when it comes to cloud storage”.

Is that an incorrect interpretation?

And in your second post you double down on that by suggesting I engineer a similar situation for myself so that, presumably, naive Jamjam can experience firsthand the sting and resentment of joblessness attendant my employer’s descrying m’peepee.

Also incorrect?

Or am I in the ballpark? I am ludicrously sleep deprived and, as I’ve said elsewhere, also an ass, so it’s entirely plausible that I’m wrong.

I may well have made a mountain of a molehill here, but just to be absolutely clear: I think buying into the puritanism in a defensive posture is a symptom of a chilling affect (snrk) and the best antidote to that kind of deeply-ingrained cultural bullshit is engaging deliberately with the reasonable prudes, censure of the unreasonable ones, establishment of appropriate laws and norms, and social rejection of the just-plain-crazies.

Luckily for me, my employer wouldn’t fire me if she saw my junk or images of me nude with a romantic interest, so I am kin with the celebs here in that I don’t have to worry about it.

… but that doesn’t mean I’ll point fingers at the victims and give tacit support to a rigged fuckin’ game. Say the images were of non-celebs, and say one was fired because they were leaked. Seems to me that kinda shit’s what the ACLU exists for.

Apple designed and is designing its products to work seamlessly together-- you, can, for instance, browse a webpage on a iPad because it’s more comfortable, and then move to an mac because it’s got a keyboard, and then move to an iPhone because it’s very portable-- multiple views on the same set of data. The problem, of course, is none of this is peer to peer, probably because the internet, as constituted today, discourages running servers on a domestic-use ISP. It’s all done through iCloud. And so, to encourage device interoperability (as well as the purchase of premium iCloud storage plans), quite a lot of stuff finds its way into a ostensibly private cloud.

The Internet Graybeard in me just can’t help but sigh over all this. We used to tell people that email was like a postcard that anyone could read. We used to tell people that strong encryption™ was The Answer. We chanted “something you have, something you know, something you are” like a mantra. As some encryption technologies caught on for data in transit, some of us dared to hope but there were still Jeremiads amongst us who compared the situation to using an armored car to transport messages between two cardboard shacks.

Networks have gotten a lot easier to use since then but at the end of the day, nothing has changed. A computer still isn’t your domicile and the nature of keeping records of things others might object to hasn’t changed either. People have taken naked pictures of themselves or others for a long time but in the days of physical only media there was at least an understanding that you had to take lots of care with developing and storing these pictures.

Maybe if us graybeards go back to chanting our matras again but this time chant louder and harder, the world will listen…

Who am I kidding?

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All right, let’s see if I can make this as clear as possible, though it seems more and more like you’re interested in arguing against something you heard somewhere else.

Speaking for myself, I enjoy my privacy. It’s important to me. Not because I have anything to hide, but just because I don’t care to install my toilet on the front porch. I am for the most part self-employed, and indiscreet photos would only get me in trouble if they showed me committing fraud or bank robbery. My naked parts are of no consequence.

If I want something to stay private, I do not broadcast it on the internet. Not my photos, not my diary, not even my name. I’m sure Anonymous could dox me if they felt like it, but there’s really nothing at stake. I might lose a client or two if my lefty views became public, but that’s a very small risk.

I am not an exhibitionist, and frankly, I don’t understand people who are. Even if I had a spectacularly unusual penis, I would choose to share it only with a very small number of close friends. I don’t get a thrill thinking that some woman somewhere might be impressed. I know women well enough to know that very few of them are thrilled by even the most magnificent penis, photographed under soft lighting against a bed of lettuce.

The part that never ceases to amuse me if that exhibitionistic people will post photos of their dinner or their bling or their mating rituals… and then act all surprised when somebody sees them. As if the internet was the world’s most secure safe and only the most desperate villain could somehow access their goddam Facebook.

You feel you have a sacred right to have it both ways? To publish your private stuff, and also have nobody see it? Go ahead, feel that way. Throw a huge temper tantrum when it goes wrong. I don’t care, and I will laugh at you. I’m not offended because you’ve done something horribly immoral - although God knows I don’t want to see your junk.

I know you’re going to get furious because I’m not furious. And I’m okay with that; I don’t care about your feelings. How insane would I be if I got outraged every time the internet told me to?

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