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No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

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Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#341
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…

House of Saud, maybe, they are dumb enough to think this would work. Given their inept handling of the Khashoggi I wouldn't be surprised. I doubt anyone in the US intelligence profession would think Bezos would call off the WaPo because of some scandalous photos. "Just blackmail the richest man on the planet, that will totally work!"

Check out the book The Billionaire's Vinegar. Plenty of rich people are willing to stay silent to avoid embarrassment.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#342
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure if you are joking, but that's exactly what they should not be doing. They also can't just go poke around their customer's data. That would be very unwise...

Blackmail and extortion is 100% against AWS terms of service, so they would be within their rights to discontinue service. I do agree that they gain nothing by doing so.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#343
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.

He would probably file this under "culture wars" and move on to something else.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#344
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you are joking, but that's exactly what they should not be doing. They also can't just go poke around their customer's data. That would be very unwise...

Unwise and unnecessary. It's high-enough profile that the DoJ might obtain a warrant for their data, and Bezos would be chuffed to comply.

It would actually be fantastic PR for AWS if the DoJ obtained a warrant and then they fought the warrant to protect their customer, showing just how far they'll go to protect their customers, even the ones they hate.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything particularly embarrassing about them? All sounds pretty vanilla to me?

If they have no value in causing embarrassment, what value would they have as blackmail material? There's nothing embarrassing about being naked but I'm sure most people wouldn't want naked photos of themselves made public.

Sure, I don’t want pictures of my dick poking out my trousers on general release. But as evidenced by the fact that these apparently _were not_ good blackmail material, I can think of considerably more embarrassing situation someone could find themselves in.

The only salacious angle here — and the letter he got really tries to drive this home — was that he was conducting an affair.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#346
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.

It's worth noting that Jeff Bezos has a lot to gain from publishing these threats. While publishing the descriptions of the photographs may sting, publishing the photos themselves would hurt a lot more. Now that he's made the accusations public, AMI could not plausibly publish the actual photos.

They won't publish them. But I'll guarantee you they will anonymously leak out on the internet. There is no way to prove they are the only people with these photos. (and they of course aren't the only ones)

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#347
post #334

This is literally the best thing he could have done. Would love to hear more about other people who have been black-mailed too - perhaps there is something much larger afoot. Hell, if they are this bold about taking on Bezos, potentially the other black-mail-ees are some very influential big hitters (billionaires, politicians, etc). As others have pointed out, the big story is that he's directly accusing them of poli…

I don't agree.

He's taking an ostensibly 'strong stand' - but he's also furthering the public furor.

Before he was a 'somewhat well known person' but now he's really, really going to be famous, and probably not for the right reasons. And by the way, most people probably don't know how he is yet. That's hard to grasp because we certainly do - but if you walk out your door right now, take a stroll and ask people if they know how 'Jeff Bezos' is, surprisingly fewer people will know who is is than you'd imagine.

You know Maroon 5? They were a 'famous' band with hit albums and singles. But since the lead singers role on 'the Voice' - their popularity has skyrocketed into mainstream. Listen to Zuck's sister Randy talk about the history of 'The Social Network' film - apparently the film caused a huge upsurge in FB accounts so it was a blessing. But who among us hadn't heard of Maroon 5 before 'The Voice'? Or Facebook before 'The Social Network'. 'We' are not normal folks. Normal folks have a variety of interests that may not include hearing about Maroon 5, or Facebook in it's early years, or Jeff Bezos.

Bezos is entering a new realm of pop culture, the news cycle in a very ugly landscape, and he's opening himself up for trouble.

'The truth' is the first thing lost in the fog of war, and certainly in pop culture war as well.

It might have been a better move to simply shut up about it, or at least be low key. Newsrooms work on the fuel of tidbits of facts, actions, and create narratives - without fuel, these issues just fade in the background because other , more clickworthy stuff is always happening.

Personally, I would have made a public statement through a rep. which possibly included the extortion notes, just for public record, but I wouldn't for a second make it personal or do things in my name, give interviews etc. etc..

Finally, and something that people have not denoted - but this 'scandal' has it's essence partly in sneaky photos - but mostly in the notion that 'Bezos, supposedly family man, was caught cheating on his wife'. I don't know the details of what happened, but this perception can actually be damaging. Even among those who are more liberal on such issues ... the idea of a rich billionaire guy, philandering around with some woman while his wife and kids are at home ... this is a bad image irrespective of what reality is.

The only winners in media storms are those for whom it's a way of life, i.e. 'their only value' - like newsrooms and media creations like Donald Trump.

I feel Bezos might be getting sucked into a storm he may not be able to get out of.

There are very few things that could risk his tenure as CEO of Amazon, but a wrong turn in the public eye is surprisingly easy, and it could cause trouble. People lose their CEO jobs often not because the board things some real wrongdoing has happened, but because public opinion is just up in a fuss about something.

Edit: If he is making ostensible claims that the US or Saudi's are actively spying on him, this could hurt him. True or not, it just sounds wildly conspicuous and conspiratorial, and it could easily turn into fodder for those who might not want to treat him well. It could also hurt his position among regular business people who might see it as a wild claim, irrespective of what the truth is.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#348
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).

Just last week you could group facetime someone and get a audio feed without consent. Their security is not infallible.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#349
post #334

This is literally the best thing he could have done. Would love to hear more about other people who have been black-mailed too - perhaps there is something much larger afoot. Hell, if they are this bold about taking on Bezos, potentially the other black-mail-ees are some very influential big hitters (billionaires, politicians, etc). As others have pointed out, the big story is that he's directly accusing them of poli…

I don't agree. He's taking an ostensibly 'strong stand' - but he's also furthering the public furor. Before he was a 'somewhat well known person' but now he's really, really going to be famous, and probably not for the right reasons. And by the way, most people probably don't know how he is yet. That's hard to grasp because we certainly do - but if you walk out your door right now, take a stroll and ask people if the…

I am curious, if you were in Jeff Bezos place what would you do? I mean, what would you do after you get that email from NE lawyer?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#350
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).

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.

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