A Rare Piece Of Wisdom From An Eu Commissioner.....

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29443022
Not often I agree with an EU official but this one is bang on!

[Old_Geezer]

Undeniably true but not very sympathetic. (It's still nosing into folks' private things, grabbing the copies and putting them up for general view.)

No doubt controversial of him to point it out.

[ToraToraTora]

they must be monumentally thick, take intimate pictures and store them publicly, protected only by a password that a 10 year old trainee hacker could probably guess! YCMIU!

[Old_Geezer]

IMO I hold that to be true of any "cloud" use to store data that is sensitive. But I seem to be in the minority, most folk are a very trusting lot. Even commercial management.

[youngmafbog]

YEp, he has got it right.

Won't go down well with the luvvies though.

[Gromit]

Cloud storage is not public. It is locked. The problem was, burglars picked the lock.

The celebs didn't really do anything wrong other than have a very poor lock. They either used the same password on less secure sites, or had an easily guessable password.

But in the end, they were burled by criminals, and we shouldn't blame the victims

[Gromit]

*burgled*

[jim360]

"...publicly, protected only by a password..."

That's called storing privately.

[jomifl]

Ms. Reda is the stupid one. Some people don't like to hear the truth.

[andy-hughes]

jomifl - "Ms. Reda is the stupid one. Some people don't like to hear the truth."

What truth are they hearing?

That the fact that their private images were stolen and exposed is their fault?

Using that logic, anyone who is burgled is at fault for having nice things that make burglars want to break into their houses!

It doesn't hold water as an argument - it didn;t when the story broke, and it doesn't now this Commissioner has singularly failed to grasp the facts and got hold of the wrong end of the stick and beaten about the bush with it.

[ToraToraTora]

of course it's not their fault but they can take better precautions. It's like storing valuables in a small locked shed in the middle of the local park, yes it locked but how long before someone gets the lock off?

[ludwig]

Ultimately crime is always the criminal's fault not the victim's, so Gromit's analogy is pretty good.

However, I'd extend it to say that wandering around a high crime area late at night with an expensive phone and laptop, rolex or whatever on display, is an arguably 'dumb' thing to do.

Personally I wouldn't say they were dumb, just a bit naive.

[jim360]

Perhaps they should have, but then to some extent this is a wider issue than taking the photographs -- the time is ripe for a second layer of security along with a password, for example, although what form this should take I'm not really in a position to be sure. For online banking my account uses a form of one-time pad security to log-in, which is a promising start, although this is instead of rather than as well as a password/ secret question.

At any rate, the issue is that security on the internet is not as high as some people think.* And it's this aspect of security that should be tackled, rather than the decision to take and store such photographs. They were clearly intended to be private, since there was a password to protect them. Criticising these people for taking the photographs is missing the point. And, anyway, wrong, because such photographs are just the latest form of celebrating/ enjoying sexual/ nude bodies and there's nothing wrong in taking or enjoying pictures like that.

As a second point I believe the iCloud is automated so it's possible that there was never even a conscious intention to have them online in the first place. Again, any and all criticism should be focused at the service and its level of security. Not the people taking photos.


*And sometimes we trust passwords too much. But then, even the experts get it wrong. Apparently Bradley Manning (as she then was) of the wikileaks documents leak in 2010 and an intelligence analyst, posted the information under the alias "bradass87". It didn't take too long to guess that the source of the leaks was someone named Brad, born in 1987...

[Old_Geezer]

It is akin to leaving valuables in the car and then complaining when someone saw them, smashed their way in, and grabbed what they wanted. For sure the criminal is to blame for the act but the victim had not acted sensibly and had put themselves at unnecessary risk.

[jim360]

Again, it's not akin to that since the picture weren't even on display until the account was hacked. It's closer to leaving something in the glove compartment, or under the chairs out of sight. Then someone has to decide to break in and just see what they will find anyway.

[jomifl]

AH, we have been here before, in fact just a few weeks ago. You have to be stupid not to realise that not all people are honest.You have to be stupid not to realise that thieves prefer easy risk free thievery. That is why I keep my money in a bank rather than give it to my local scumbag to look after. Is it really that difficult to understand?

[jim360]

Is it so hard for you to understand, jomifl, that this wasn't leaving money with "your local scumbag"? This was (apparently) Apple, a world-leader in technology. Trusting them with my files is far close to trusting a bank with my money than entrusting it to a local scumbag.

There is no case for calling the victims stupid at any level. Especially when, as here, you're the one who's charged with trying to sort this out.

[ludwig]

// That is why I keep my money in a bank rather than give it to my local scumbag to look after. //

Is there a difference?

[Orderlimit]

Mr Oettinger, is right but some people willl earn the hard way and so on.

[New Judge]

"There is no case for calling the victims stupid at any level."

Sorry jim but I disagree. Anybody who allows compromising photographs of themselves to be taken in the first place is taking a risk but to allow them into the possession of a Third Party (however trusted) is stupid.

[anotheoldgit]

/// Ms Reda - who represents the Pirate Party - said: "The person applying to be in charge of shoring up trust in the internet so that Europeans do more business online, just blamed people whose personal data was accessed and spread without authorisation. ///

That's rich coming from a member of the Pirate Party, isn't that what pirates do best? 'Hijacking' that is.