Walking around and possessing a wallet are basic neccessities in life, while having nude selfies on your unprotected harddrive isn´t. Comparing that to rape is rather polemic i.m.o.
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They are both sex crimes, albeit of different types. Victim blaming victims of sex crimes is a persistent thing, and it is consistent between the two instances.
If by polemic, you mean “an argument for a particular understanding of a controversial topic, and against the contrary position” then, yes, I am arguing that the parallel is a real one, symptomatic of the same strain of thinking, and does not spring from two totally independent sources.
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So, are you implying that because I don´t think it´s terribly smart to leave your nude selfies unprotected, I am the sort of person that would blame a rape victim?
No. I’m implying that because you are blaming the victims of sex crimes for doing something you consider not terribly smart, as though that made it their fault that someone committed crimes against them, that your behaviour - not the core of your being, not “the kind of person you are”, you specific behaviour in this instance - actually has a lot in common a with blaming rape victims.
Further, I’d suggest you may wish to consider whether that behaviour actually stands up to your own standards in related but somewhat different areas, given that you obviously think blaming rape victims is inappropriate.
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Well, I masturbate more than I drive.
The state encouraged (or at least tolerated) driving for at least 20 years before it introduced licensing requirements. Licensing rules and rules of the road are designed to protect others from negative consequences of the driver’s actions, and not to protect the driver from malicious acts by others, which makes the intent of these rules very different from any rules that would require selfie makers to protect themselves from random assholes who intentionally target them.
And it’s not like there are no rules that already exist with regards to selfies: child pornography rules exist, and serve many of the same interests as driving regulations.
No, I’m talking about socially efficient behaviors, which include driving cars, taking selfies, owning pets, playing golf, wearing miniskirts, and just about everything else in the world that is legal to do. This doesn’t make them equivalent, it just makes them efficient.
But would you like to equate unintentional, negligent car accidents with the intentional invasion of privacy for the purpose of obtaining and leaking images that are likely to embarrass the victims?
I can assure you that there are societies where it isn’t seen as necessary for women to walk around in public, and others where carrying wallets is also not a necessity. And even in our society it’s certainly not a necessity to walk around in skimpy, tight, or revealing clothing, or to flaunt wealth. I guess these folks have it coming to them.
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I hear what you’re saying, but it’s a matter of balancing idealism with realism. The driving analogy is a poor metaphor with which to compare anyhow, so I’ll park it.
Vehicles are left at owner’s risk.
You must admit cars are more useful than naked selfies.
Oh I don’t know about that. I don’t have a license, so the usefulness of a car is rather limited. As for the usefulness of a nude selfie-- as with all facets of my private life, that’s for me to judge.
I suppose that your comment implies that you don’t find naked selfies to be very useful, or conversely, you find cars to be most useful, and naked selfies to be useful, but ordinarily so. But to speculate further would mean an intrusion on your private life, and well, I’ll leave you to it.
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People should get their heads out of the clouds. (Or at least stop putting photos of giving head on the cloud)
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The key point here is that I´m blaming them for being careless, not for being victims (just as you actually wrote yourself). The blame for being careless is entirely theirs, while the blame for becoming victims of a crime is entirely the perpetrators.
Two posts up, pixieshifter said it better than I did
If you think I´m morally dubious for wanting people to act responsibly in the face of reality, then so be it. I, as well as you, would prefer to live in a world where everyone is trustworthy, but I know I´m not and act accordingly.
I also think that the comparison to rape is ridiculous and trivialises the gravity of rape.
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Does it come as any surprise that this has happened? When you take a photo and it is stored somewhere else? Zapped along a number of networks, routers and locations we most likely know nothing about? If people don`t assume their data is accessible by more than just them with such a mechanism, or that other people may attempt to retrieve this data by any possible means then they are plain naive. This is not a comparison to cars, rape or muggings. It is simply our stupidity in assuming we can trust it.
But we still criminalize car thieves, and generally don’t blame people who have had their cars stolen.
They aren’t being careless. They’re simply using the amount of care a reasonable person does. This may be insufficient care, but the average lock on a house is also insufficient to actually prevent burglary. Is 95% of the population careless for leaving their houses under-protected and/or storing sensitive personal information in the cloud (or shopping at Home Depot or Target)?
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If your house could be downloaded I would agree (although 3D printing tech is improving)
What if they left the car unlocked, with keys in ignition, in a known high-crime area?
Not relevant, since that’s not what happened.
If, on the other hand, you have any evidence that the leak victims used any less security than most people do—let alone uploaded their pictures to a completely unsecure account on a known system with high rates of hacking—feel free to let us know.
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How else would you classify using cloud-based services? It is a disaster waiting to happen and it is happening again and again and nobody seems to learn. At least to not have them enabled by default…
Disaster waiting to happen?
Like driving in a car? A greater percentage of drivers have been in an accident than cloud-storage users have been hacked (and it’s not even close).
Or maybe like using a credit card at a POS terminal? A greater percentage of Americans have been compromised by shopping at Target and Home Depot than have had their cloud accounts compromised (and again it’s not even close).
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Yes, we are careless.
Everytime I use my plastic I know it could result in a problem. I choose to live with that risk because of convinience, and also because I havent had to suffer severe consequences (yet).
Surely these celebs have seen when other celebs have had their private pictures stolen. And in turn, they are knowingly accepting a risk every time they snap a nudie of themselves.
But here’s the actual argument… so what if they did know the risk? It doesn’t mean that they deserve what happened, it just makes them a target of the petty “I told you so’ers”.
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One point that I read that makes the issue a bit easier to understand than “gosh darn idiot celebs putting nudes in supposedly secure (but not really) places, why don’t they just stop doing that!” is the idea that pretty much all of these people are often away from their loved ones for extended periods on set filming somewhere. The nude selfie has taken the place of the sexy phone call, and prior to that the steamy love letter, as a means of having some degree of intimacy when you can’t actually be in the same place as your loved one. Photos and movies of intimate times have to serve as a substitute for the actual thing when career demands keep partners apart. One could argue that “being stupid” in this fashion is actually an attempt to maintain and strengthen a relationship in otherwise abnormal and difficult circumstances.
And yes, people can’t steal what doesn’t exist, but there may be some very good reasons for these things existing. And, even if there wasn’t, and it was just vain celebs being stupid, there’s still no excuse for people invading their privacy and stealing their personal photos/data/whatthefuckever.
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Celebrities must be aware though, that they are a high-profile target for this kind of crime. I bet their hollywood residences are protected by sophisticated security systems, yet their computing devices often don´t seem to be.
It may not be an excuse but that does not mean it will not happen. Some people will rape, murder, steal, scam cheat, lie off anything and anyone (in no particular order), particularly people who are vulnerable (including gulliable / naive / vain). This has happened recently to a colleague. As the balance of society becomes more widely ‘seen’ as unbalanced in this shrinking world, people will move from stealing your car or your jewellery to your data for money, political advantage or amusement. Plus they can do it 12,000 miles away or a a country that doesnt have an interest in personal freedom or privacy. The world has shifted but the behaviour hasn’t changed, its just now a million times more convenient.
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