Jennifer Lawrence has become the face of this recent celebrity-hack. And for the first time, authorities seem to be taking it very, very seriously.
The FBI, Apple, even some White Hat hackers from the Reddit online community are all working on the common goal of finding out who did it. And along with that new-found gravitas, comes a move to classify the hack as a sex crime.
Maybe it’s because Jennifer Lawrence has such a reputation as a genuinely nice person, or maybe it’s because she’s still so young. Whatever it is, she’s the person most of the headlines have focused on. But in fact, there were over a hundred celebrities whose private, online picture accounts were compromised. Some stars claimed they were fakes, but many others have confirmed that they are real, but never intended to be public.
Lawyers who deal with technology will tell you: the law is woefully behind the times when it comes to cyber crime. According to a posting by Mark Ishman at Ishmanlaw.com, the law sees this kind of hacking simply as theft. There may be some damage to reputation involved, but that would be a civil issue.
But as more and more celebs are getting their private pictures hacked, there’s a movement to re-define it as a sex crime. Van Badham at the Guardian posts a piece that describes the hack as a “sexual violation”. She even argues that people who look at the pictures are also guilty of it.
But others point out: the Cloud isn’t “magically secure.” And the stars weren’t forced into the pictures; they took them on their own. It’s not like somebody was peeping on them in their bathroom. But then again, it kinda is.
And so we asked Robert Wilder, our Man on the Edge, to get your opinion. Should people who hack or look at celebrity nude pictures be guilty of a sex crime?
