
Bezos Selfie Controversy Triggers Alarm for Billionaires Worldwide - glassworm
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/bezos-selfie-leak-triggers-an-alarm-for-billionaires-everywhere
======
krn
If I had to guess, the reason why David Pecker got worried about the Bezos
investigation, is that the NSO Group's Pegasus Spyware[1] might have been used
to hack into his mistres iPhone.

It's the same spyware, which Saudi Arabia used to break into Khashoggi's
friend's iPhone[2], leading to his killing:

"Abdulaziz first spoke publicly about his contact with Khashoggi last month
after researchers at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab reported his
phone had been hacked by military-grade spyware. According to Bill Marczak, a
research fellow at the Citizen Lab, the software was the invention of an
Israeli firm named NSO Group, and deployed at the behest of the Saudi Arabian
government."

I think Jeff Bezos mentioned Saudi Arabia in his post so many times not
accidentally.

And nobody should be surprised, if the 33 year-old crown prince made such an
order after The Washington Post led the most negative coverage of his country
in decades following the assassination of its contributor.

[1] [https://citizenlab.ca/2018/10/the-kingdom-came-to-canada-
how...](https://citizenlab.ca/2018/10/the-kingdom-came-to-canada-how-saudi-
linked-digital-espionage-reached-canadian-soil/)

[2] [https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/12/middleeast/khashoggi-phone-
ma...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/12/middleeast/khashoggi-phone-malware-
intl/index.html)

~~~
dhimes
I suspect her brother got them. She probably wasn't en guard when she was
around family, because why would she be?

------
msantos
There are a few companies out there catering for the wealthy when it comes to
privacy and/or blackmail.

While on a trip to Monaco in 2017 I picked up a local magazine and found this
ad in it: [https://imgur.com/a/kB5veJO](https://imgur.com/a/kB5veJO)

Quite amusing.

~~~
x15
Good money can buy a good chunk of 0-day exploits from black hats.

I wonder how many companies rely on in-house exploit research and what would
be the turnaround related to buying from 3rd parties.

------
noir_lord
It's a bold move to take on Jeff Bezos whatever you think about the guy you
have to admit when it comes will and willpower the man is tough.

That and he owns a newspaper.

Mark Twain said "never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel"
(might have butchered that quote).

~~~
arbuge
And this man also sells it by the barrel, along with the barrels...

------
ken
I'm surprised they're taking the billionaire angle. The more significant one
to me is the _technologist_ angle.

I like to think I'm not a complete idiot around computers. I know a bit about
networks and security and risk management -- probably well above the average
person on this planet. Yet I'm realistic enough to realize that Bezos likely
knows a lot more than me in these areas. And even _he_ can slip up, or get
taken, apparently.

I used to think that being knowledgeable about technology and careful in how I
use it was enough. I'm gradually coming around to realize that it's more like
radiation: there is no completely safe level of exposure.

The story is not that a rich person was gotten -- all else being equal, that's
bound to happen just by pure chance. The story is that Bezos understands
computer/network security as well as we should expect from anyone on the
planet, and he was still gotten.

~~~
ekovarski
Love makes us all do crazy things, regardless of how well we may understand a
subject or the possible implications.

------
zwaps
I still dont understand why there is basically no service today who protecta
my privacy, even if I am willing to pay.

Like facebook or whatsapp. I would pay monthly if they would stop aggregating
and analyzing my every move. Hell, even for amazon, i know that if I buy
anything, even look at anything, it gets thrown into my profile and
aggregated. I dont even dare to use anything by Google... It may be paranoid,
but all these models and their fitting of conditional expectations will force
me to conform eventually.

For me, machine learning, especually with these data, in health, insurance,
credit and career are seriously scary prospects. Maybe because i am a
statistician...

I have money, but there is just no way to escape the profiling. My hope is
that when the consequences hit the billionaires, perhaps there will be market
for privacy concious services.

I used to be so positive about technology. Now i feel like tech companies and
start ups just try to bs and deceive us. Almost no one is honest about what is
collected, and privacy statements have become meaningless catch all
allowences...

If it ever backfires, like here, lets be clear that amazon, facebook, google
and co have only themselves to blame for their despicable and exploitative
behavior

~~~
thecleaner
For messaging use Signal. For email use Proton Mail. For dumbass social media
use one of the scuttlebutt apps or that decentralized twitter clone -
Mastodon. For useful social media subscribe to good subreds on reddit or HN or
just grab a book from the bookstore. I think we may even come up with
different stacks of apps just as we have stacks for web dev. Like this one
could be called PBRS - protonmail, books, reddit, scuttlebutt. Would be
awesome if we could propose a few more.

------
sys_64738
Whatever happened to if you don’t want it published on a billboard then don’t
publish it to the internet? If you gotta do strange things like photographs
like that then use a dumb camera and don’t send them online. Nothing is
secure!

~~~
thecleaner
Maybe a secure camera app. With end to end encryption. As long as we can
download the photos in encrypted form this should be usable.

~~~
sopooneo
There would be another crack in that system. Social engineering, shoulder
watching, or an "ohhh crud right", aspect of the operating system, something.
The only security is knowing you are not secure.

------
smsm42
Not sure what this has to do with billionaires. I am assuming that if somebody
takes naked selfies, and sends them to other people (which I assume is the
point of taking them?), there's a chance they'd leak out. We've already
witnessed such events in the past. Not sure how specific person whose image
leaked this time being billionaire changes anything.

------
chatmasta
Maybe it's a good opportunity for security consultancies to reach out to
physical security companies and integrate their services.

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aprdm
I am so intrigued how a naked picture can cause so much fuss in our society.
We were born naked and everyone has likely seen other naked bodies.

I am oversimplifying a bit, but, maybe, some years from now, it simply
wouldn't matter if people saw you naked online. Wonder if in Europe cultures
where is common to have naked scenes in TV all the time it matter as much.

------
mc32
There is a difference between trusting SaaS providers (which has its problems
with insiders, despite robust internal audits) and essentially “publishing”
your secrets by emailing or texting sensitive information knowing its
forwardable or copiable.

------
maxxxxx
Why are there so many headlines about billionaires? Yesterday there was one
about China having more billionaires. These guys can do whatever they want and
I really don't care.

We should be more concerned about the lives of average people.

~~~
krapp
This is Hacker News, a forum run by a Silicon Valley venture capital company.
A higher than average number of posters here either are wealthy, are trying to
win the startup lotto, or just want to virtue signal as being worthy of elite
capitalist status.

------
chkaloon
Not sure I would hire as a security chief someone with a fairly detailed
LinkedIn profile

------
radicalbyte
I can understand why. Most billionaires don't have a microphone recording 24-7
in millions of homes like Bezos does. So it's much harder for them to gain
leverage over their potential blackmailers.

~~~
dhimes
My understanding is that these devices (Siri, Echo) do their speech processing
online, so by design everything gets uploaded in order to be interpreted. How
hard would it be to have a device like echo that _didn 't_ do its speech
processing locally and only went online to get data it didn't have? So if I
ask for an alarm in an hour, or to play a song I own, or something else that
doesn't require data from the "cloud" the command never leaves the house- and,
in fact, all conversations stay private and only the "fetch" is external to
the system.

~~~
greenmountin
There is an early-stage community-sourced device which does processing
offline: mycroft.ai

~~~
dhimes
cool-thanks.

------
shard972
Not as alarming as these auto play videos...

------
lawnchair_larry
I assumed most adults know better than to take nude selfies to begin with. I
was quite surprised Bezos would do this.

Aside from being this being foolish, realize that women don’t want dick pics.

~~~
tantalor
That's the type of shaming attitude required for National Enquirer to think
their coercion will work.

A better reaction is, who cares about nudes shared discretely between
consenting adults? Leaking them will accomplish nothing.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I don’t think the two are related. I think the Enquirer was banking on him
being ashamed of showing his dick pics to the world. If I’m shaming him, it’s
for making a dumb decision. Phones get hacked and pics leak, and he should
know this.

But let’s look at this for what it is. It isn’t Jeff’s position that he
doesn’t care if they are leaked, or that leaking them will accomplish nothing.
He very much wants them to stay private and he’s doubling down on legal
efforts to try and ensure that outcome. It’s just that his ego is larger than
his shame, and he’s damn near biologically incapable of rolling over when
another powerful man is attacking him, and that’s his best play given the
cards on the table. My take is that having his dick pick posted online would
be moderately shameful, but losing to Mr. Pecker, particularly in front of his
new love interest, _especially_ when the subject matter being used against him
is essentially peacocking for said love interest, would be the ultimate shame.

Make no mistake - these calm, collected responses are purely strategic, and
not at all reflective of the full scope of his true demeanor.

It’s the same thing with Thiel taking down Gawker. Whether you think Gawker
was in the wrong or not, Thiel wasn’t motivated by charity or righteousness.
He simply wanted to bury his enemy and spit on his grave.

~~~
smsm42
> Thiel wasn’t motivated by charity or righteousness. He simply wanted to bury
> his enemy and spit on his grave.

That said, reading about Gawker conduct over the years, if somebody's grave
deserved to be spit on, its theirs. They operated for years under the model
"we can do anything we want and you don't have enough money to sue us". Until
Thiel did.

------
gmuslera
"It's only wrong when its done to me. I am the one who have rights, not the
rest of the world, so I'm perfectly justified to keep doing, or helping to do,
exactly that to everyone else."

------
fma
Billionaires think they are untouchable? Give me a break. Did Bloomberg go
around interviewing people to find the most absurd quote.

The poorer you are the more untouchable you are. Who's going to blackmail the
bum around the corner.

~~~
bbddg
Ah yes Jeff Bezos really has it tough compared to... a homeless person.

~~~
mruts
Not having empathy for Bezos because he's a billionaire and then mentioning a
homeless person is just whatabout-ism. And you can really use whatabout-ism on
anything.

There's always going to be someone who has an objectively worse life than
someone else, so maybe we shouldn't have sympathy for anyone?

"You got raped? Stop complaining, there's a lot worse stuff happening in Yemen
you insensitive clod!"

