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No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

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Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#381

Post by fauigerzigerk »

thecatspaw wrote: post #350
toephu2 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"hacked" by either the US or Saudi government You think the U.S./Saudi government can remotely grab pics from an iPhone? Apple has disclosed lots of security info saying even they cannot do this. The iPhone/iOS wasn't built in that way. I think the leak likely comes from someone close to Ms. Sanchez, or she fell victim to a phishing attack (or account recovery hack).

Remember the fappening? It doesnt need to be remote grabbing, people just upload their nudes to the icloud. Maybe jeff did as well. While apple says they are end to end encrypted, I also assume they work with the FBI/whoever to catch owners of illegal content, so they probably would have a way to get the unencrypted content.

Photos and files stored in iCloud are not end to end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#382

Post by sajohn6 »

toephu2 wrote: post #335
slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

>"hacked" by either the US or Saudi government You think the U.S./Saudi government can remotely grab pics from an iPhone? Apple has disclosed lots of security info saying even they cannot do this. The iPhone/iOS wasn't built in that way. I think the leak likely comes from someone close to Ms. Sanchez, or she fell victim to a phishing attack (or account recovery hack).

Have you read the latest Apple iO2 12.1.4 security updates? There are 3 escalation exploits, and at least one of them remote.

Don't think for a second that major players can't dial in whenever they want.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#383

Post by tomp »

bitexploder wrote: post #273
rhizome wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I read Bezos's post, I noticed that at the section where he describes the photographs, I found myself simply scrolling past them to get to the next part of the story.

100% — Let’s be realistic. Between two consenting adults is there anything non-violent that is truly that weird? We have a few pleasure bits attached to our bodies. Some people get excited by objects (fetishes). When you step back a level, the window dressing becomes laughably irrelevant. You’ve seen my dick? Oh no. You saw me courting another female? Private, but oh, the horror.... it’s just so silly in the scheme o…

Even violent consenting things shouldn’t be weird.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#384

Post by ck425 »

optimiz3 wrote: post #239
Balgair wrote: post #15

Whatever you think about Jeff, this is the correct way to handle such things. We should all have the same character in such a situation (despite how the situation arose; in this case via an affair). Jeff has MANY other issues of moral disfortitude (we all do to some degree, though not at these scales). However, this particular event is to be applauded and emulated.

Amazon could pull a CloudFlare and knock them off the internet as nationalenquirer.com seems to be hosted on AWS. My guess is Amazon/Bezos already has multiple backups of the Enquirer's digital assets for forensic purposes. https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680

That would be a terrible idea.

We're at a point in time where the public, politicians and the tech community itself are becoming wary of tech monopolies. Currently Amazon has avoided the brunt of it (mostly due to being consumer friendly unlike Facebook) and the scrutiny it has had, has been focused on it's retail business.

Bezos booting someone off AWS would bring a ton of public scrutiny to an even more powerful monopoly, one that the public and politicians are by and large ignorant of. Plus it would (rightly) shake the tech community out of its complacency around cloud lock in and encourage us to explore solutions. (I realise there's already a lot of good work happening around this, but it's not an issue I've seen the wider industry talking about much)

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#385

Post by cromwellian »

dang wrote: post #358
dmode wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think it's that people are allergic to partisan flamebait, with good reason. Also, these comments usually break the site guidelines. So do comments alleging astroturfing and related things (bottage, shillage) without evidence, so could you guys please not post those? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Except that it is factual that AMI is involved in a criminal enterprise, since they plead guilty to crimes involving improper attempts to influence the 2016 election.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#386

Post by iknownothing52 »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #253
notatoad wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"blackmail is legal" is a pretty depressing take, but it does seem plausible.

Blackmail is a law which forbids the possessor of some information from offering to sell it to the subject of the information. The possessor can sell it to anyone else in the world, but cannot offer to the subject. If I had an affair with a celebrity, I can start a bidding war for my story between all the movies studios, television studios, and publishing houses. That's legal. If I invite the celebrity to bid, then I…

Weird, i always found it hard to justify the legality of either that type of bidding war or the operations and structure of an organisation that would participate it one.

I think blackmail is obviously wrong as is sensationalism and appealing to base desires over informing people. i am not sure where laws should apply, but these appear to be important levers in the control of our society we should pay special attention to due to their ability to enable and empower the unscrupulous. If we dont have laws to govern these thing we must accept the responsibility of society to educate everyone to a high standard (as an independent thinker, more than a rule follower) to mitigate the severe risk in this area.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#387

Post by rjf72 »

toephu2 wrote: post #335
slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

>"hacked" by either the US or Saudi government You think the U.S./Saudi government can remotely grab pics from an iPhone? Apple has disclosed lots of security info saying even they cannot do this. The iPhone/iOS wasn't built in that way. I think the leak likely comes from someone close to Ms. Sanchez, or she fell victim to a phishing attack (or account recovery hack).

Apple is part of the PRISM surveillance program [1] operated by the NSA. Internal slides from the NSA indicate that said program is capable of providing "extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information" including email, video, voice chat, photos, and more.

When Apple was first approached about their role in PRISM they, unlike other companies, chose to outright lie stating that, "We have never heard of PRISM." along with the typical boilerplate about not allowing any government agency direct access to their servers. NSA access is presumably 'facilitated' indirect, explaining why most of all claims specifically state 'direct access' in their releases.

Other companies, for contrast, chose to offer misleading but technically honest responses. For instance Facebook said, "We do not provide any government organization with ~direct~ access to Facebook servers. When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law.".

The point of this is that what companies say, especially as it relates to their involvement in government surveillance programs is pretty much meaningless. We live in a world where their lying about participation is not illegal, but telling the truth would be. Quite a dystopic reality in many ways. As an aside this is not to say that leaks came from the government, but rather that it's extremely likely that the government could trivially obtain access to Bezos' online devices if desired. And given his position in the national economy (let alone media and space industries), I would expect such desires have long since existed even if only for 'national security', which in today's world of wide net surveillance happens to overlap with dick pics. And from there all it takes is one bad actor who gets tempted by the potential value of direct evidence showing the world's wealthiest man cheating on his wife.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%...

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#388

Post by kkarakk »

scarmig wrote: post #312
slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

I wonder how Thiel will react if it turned out Trump directed national spy agencies to attempt to blackmail a rival oligarch to force him to provide favorable political coverage to their ruling coalition. Being the committed anti-tabloid blackmailer he is.

? Thiel targetted only one tabloid(a tabloid that previously openly outed him as gay with who knows what moral authority) by funding a case that another wronged individual cast against that tabloid.

gawker was crazy stupid during that timeframe for whatever reason. you can't apply anonymous social media rules to your online publishing business and expect not to be punished.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#389

Post by skookumchuck »

techntoke wrote: post #288
optimiz3 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well come on - don't host your business on a company you plan on antagonizing. Pretty sure AWS has contract clauses that allow them to deny service or perform forensics when criminal activity is suspected, and blackmail would certainly qualify.

Pretty sure that AWS doesn't have permission to conduct criminal investigations. Those would need to be turned over to a criminal prosecutor. It would be a pretty scary world if corporations were able to police consumer and business data whenever they "suspected" something. Talk about political hit jobs.

Don't we have that now? People expect universities, for example, to have some sort of shadow legal system to investigate crimes that occur on campus (such as sexual assault).

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#390

Post by thecatspaw »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #381
thecatspaw wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the fappening? It doesnt need to be remote grabbing, people just upload their nudes to the icloud. Maybe jeff did as well. While apple says they are end to end encrypted, I also assume they work with the FBI/whoever to catch owners of illegal content, so they probably would have a way to get the unencrypted content.

Photos and files stored in iCloud are not end to end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303

Oops, I actually looked at that page, but misinterpreted it
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