
Reaction to the Sony Hack Is 'Beyond the Realm of Stupid' - wglb
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/reaction-to-the-sony-hack-is-beyond-the-realm-of-stupid?utm_source=mbtwitter
======
downandout
This is pretty ridiculous. Want to clear out an entire NFL playoff game in a
few weeks? Tweet out a vague threat against the game about 24 hours prior.
Want several million dollars? Send emails to about 20,000 bars and restaurants
demanding $5K in Bitcoins or their business will be blown to bits.

The problem isn't that Sony capitulated to _a_ threat. It's that they
capitulated to a _nonsensical_ threat. They gave credence to _every_ threat.
Earlier in the day I was somewhat neutral on this, but now that I've had a
chance to consider it I think that Sony is actually endangering our national
security with this move. This is the first time in recent memory that America
has been seen as caving to terrorist demands, and it can only create more
disasters.

~~~
rjvir
It's not an empty threat. They completely compromised Sony's servers. Who
knows what they haven't leaked yet, or what they are capable of.

The movie theaters decided to not show the movie because they couldn't
implement a nationwide security system in every one of their theaters in 2
weeks. Since there is 0 security at movie theaters, I as a moviegoer would be
extremely scared to go to watch this movie in it's opening week.

~~~
michaelkeenan
I tried to roughly estimate the risk.

There are 18,000 theaters that could be targets. Let's say there are 10
showings over the opening weekend that might be bombed, so if you attend,
there's a 1 in 180,000 chance you'll be in the bombed theater (assuming
there's only one bombing). Let's say there's a 5% chance it's a real threat
(personally I'd estimate around 1%, but let's use 5% to be conservative). That
gives a 1 in 3.6 million chance of being in the bombed theater.

Compare to car accidents. There are 1.27 fatalities per 100 million miles
traveled in the USA. If the movie theater is five miles away, that gives you a
1 in 7.9 million chance of dying in a car accident on the way to or from the
movie.

If we stop calculating there, it looks like you'd be roughly twice as likely
to be in the bombed theater than to die in a car accident on the way to the
theater. (Note that this is the chance of _being in the bombed theater_ , not
of _dying in the bombing_. Presumably, most people in the theater would
survive.) To me, that seems like an acceptably negligible risk.

More detailed calculations could include the chance of dying conditional on
being in the bombed theater, and could include the chance of more than one
theater being bombed, and adjust for the chance of the bomber being foiled or
the bomb not working, and could adjust for which theater you're seeing it in
(theaters in major cities are more likely targets than small towns).

~~~
anigbrowl
Yawn...this sort of statistical analysis misses the point and demonstrates a
rank ignorance of human psychology. Run the same statistical analysis on the
possibility of getting killed at a school in Pakistan and then tell me how the
Taliban killing ~130 children and some teachers is just a statistical outlier
that people whouldn't pay any attention to.

I mention it because that incident wasn't expected either, but it's an
excellent demonstration of how much havoc a few bad actors can wreak. given
the huge number of movie theaters and the impossibility of predicting which
ones might be targeted, nobody wants to be left holding the bag in the
unlikely-but-nonetheless-possible scenario of a mini-massacre. On the scale of
things you would be willing to assume risk for, a tasteless comedy ranks
pretty low.

~~~
michaelkeenan
> tell me how the Taliban killing ~130 children and some teachers is just a
> statistical outlier that people whouldn't pay any attention to.

My comment didn't mention people not paying attention to a bombing. My comment
was about estimating the risk of dying in a bombing, not about people's
reactions to it.

> Yawn...

There are more civil ways to express that.

~~~
anigbrowl
Comments like this about the remoteness of the risk always carry the implicit
argument that one should not pay attention to it because of the low
probability. It's certainly irrational to think there's a high probability of
it happening to you, but it's eminently rational for stakeholders like movie
theater operators to minimize the risk - after all, to the extent that
customers consider the showing of the picture to be a risk factor, they're
going to stay away from the entire theater even if it is showing other
pictures they might want to see.

 _There are more civil ways to express that._

There are more civil ways to discuss risk than making statistical straw man
arguments too.

~~~
alexqgb
Actually, he was replying to a comment that centered on the specific threat
level that a particular individual thought he may be facing, so a calculation
like this is exactly on point.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, that's true. All the same, I think it's a hopelessly facile analysis -
the assumption that a bombing is the only possible risk scenario, for example
- that's not really responsive to the underlying issue.

------
waterlesscloud
Eh. This misses a couple of things.

One, the FBI told the theater chains that if they screen the movie, they could
be targets for the hackers. I'm pretty doubtful that theater chains have good
security, and they probably know it. They also don't want their internal
emails spread all over the media and their business disrupted. As no company
does. So I can't blame them once the FBI has scaremongered them.

Two, once the theaters said they won't screen it, Sony would lose money
releasing it. It's not free to send out prints and continue advertising. If
they have no hope to make money, why lose more money? And why piss off the
hackers further? Where's the win?

It's nice to sit back and say Sony should release it, but honestly, what's in
it for them at this point?

~~~
gojomo
This interviewee's criticism is not narrowly focused against Sony, but the
entire reaction: theater chains, Sony, media, the American psyche, a "lose our
shit" mentality.

It would take a wider cultural consensus to respond in solidarity: theaters
don't cave, studios don't cave, moviegoers don't cave, media doesn't feed
panics, the legal system doesn't require cowering as a liability issue. We're
not there yet... but maybe we can get there, with discussion and experience.

~~~
sosuke
The biggest issue to be addressed is the last one, how do you change the legal
liability. If I have a shop, that is receiving public threats, I choose to
remain open, you choose to visit even after hearing the threats. Something
happens to you, I'm not liable, you chose to visit. Forgive me, but I think
about the abortion clinics, the people working and volunteering go even in the
face of threats, even though people get shot by doing what they believe in.
The clinics aren't held liable for the attacks. The theaters should not be
held liable.

How should that work, how can we change it?

------
oplint
"Terrorist" is probably the most destructive word in modern American
vernacular. It means both anything and nothing; its only purpose is to
(ironically) evoke fear in the listener and handwave away people and ideas you
don't like with no evidence and no grounds for further discussion.

Forget motives and social constructs. Forget thinking about real solutions.
Are they "cyberterrorists"? Are we being "terrorized"?

The answer to the latter question is of course yes, but not by the
"terrorists" but by sensationalist articles like this.

~~~
Dylan16807
A terrorist is someone who threatens/harms bystanders for a political goal,
more or less.

Hacking Sony is not an act of terrorism, threatening theaters with violence
is.

~~~
nishonia
That is far too broad a definition - and still not completely correct.
Terrorism falls within the spectrum of warfare, it isn't as simple as "Well I
feel terrorized, so my tormentor must be a terrorist!" Also, the emotional
state of terror - the word has been severely corrupted. The British were
unquestionably terrorized by the German dive bombers, fitted with signature
sirens, in WWII. That was clearly a terror campaign, because intent was
expressed and capability demonstrated. This whole movie thing, not so much.

~~~
Dylan16807
Depends on what exactly the threats were here. If you make a credible bomb
threat against taking particular actions that can be terrorism.

Yes the definition is a bit broad. I thought about excluding nation states but
that's not quite right either. Perhaps I could argue that the British were not
_bystanders_ in your example.

~~~
nishonia
Ok, so what makes a threat credible enough to instill terror? Seriously,
terror. I'm not talking about a level of concern that causes people to modify
their behavior around media consumption, I'm talking about the level of terror
that breaks your enemy's will to fight. Again, terrorism falls within the
spectrum of warfare - not criminal behavior. I'd argue that the identity and
reputation of the aggressor needs to be established for a bomb threat to be
considered terroristic. Even the CIA, an entity that would benefit from a
loose definition of terrorist, refuses to classify a group as "terrorist"
unless they have expressed intent _and_ demonstrated capability.

It wouldn't make any sense to exempt states from the list of potential
terrorist actors - because the state invented terrorism. As I said, spectrum
of warfare. Now intelligent people can disagree about the ability of
individuals to declare war... but then terrorism is restricted to the state. I
hope you've misunderstood my WWII example, because otherwise you've just
argued that civilian children, elderly and infirm were somehow not bystanders
while huddled in bomb shelters. My history isn't super strong, but I don't
think anybody has ever argued that the British engaged in total war - which
would be necessary for children to be classified as anything but bystanders.

~~~
Dylan16807
I guess you and I have completely different definitions of terrorism. I
wouldn't say that actual terror is necessary. Just fear. And I have exactly
the opposite reaction about warfare. I think that the terror of proper war is
on an entirely different level, in most ways worse, in fewer ways not as bad.
Someone being attacked in a war can't give in to a political threat and make
the danger go away. It's entirely different. A state can perform terrorism but
it's not by dropping bombs on every city they can reach.

Civilians in a time of war aren't exactly targets but they're not 100%
innocent either. It's complicated. Children don't make choices but they are
affected by the choices of their guardians. It would be nice to say that any
civilian casualties in war are unacceptable but that's clearly not how humans
work.

~~~
nishonia
Terrorism is pretty well defined, only recently has the the term been
corrupted. If you were to do a survey of material on the subject you'd find
that the vast majority of literature is related to state military action,
written decades before CNN splashed the word all over the little crawler at
the bottom of your television set.

As far as war: fear is nowhere near the emotional response needed to end
hostilities. Everybody is afraid in war. There are only two ways to end a war
(in victory): attrition or subjugation. Look at the failed wars of the last
century, see what they're missing? Actually, I can't really think of a war
that was won through attrition... the western front of WWII maybe. Anyway, war
is politics - when one side surrenders they have given into political threats
to make the danger go away.

I'm a little surprised that I have to break it down this way, but try this:
you are an Iraqi in occupied Fallujah. In one scenario the Americans only
intentionally kill military aged males who openly engage them in firefights.
You're afraid but you know the rules to the game and your will remains
unbroken. In the second scenario the Americans publicly execute every military
aged male they come across and rape every woman in your family, repeatedly on
a random schedule. They capture you and torture you for days, then finally
release you after they cut off your right arm. Also, they threaten to bury
every Muslim killed in combat inside a dead pig - preventing them from
entering heaven (as the British threatened back in the day in India). Also,
piles of dead children are stacked and set fire on every street corner. This
goes on for months. I'd argue that in the second scenario the population would
effectively be terrorized, and your will to fight would be broken.

That is the original meaning of terrorism. What is called terrorism today is
pretty much criminal activity, rebranded to justify feeding the military
industrial complex. War isn't complicated by the way, it is just wrong. There
is no need to tie your brain in knots trying to explain how children aren't
100% innocent in war :)

------
skuhn
It continues to baffle me that so many people are assigning substantial blame
to Sony.

Yes, their executives were uncouth in their private e-mails. However, these
e-mails were literally stolen from them and made available publicly in a
campaign designed to embarrass them after they refused to cave to initial
blackmail demands. There is no Pentagon Papers conspiracy here that the press
needed to expose for the public good -- they're just airing dirty laundry and
furthering the ends of criminals.

Yes, Sony had lax computer security and they made it a lot easier than it
should have been to abscond with internal data. However, it is so much harder
to protect against a targeted attack and (I don't believe) the method of the
attack has been disclosed, if it is even completely understood yet. They
should be ashamed and apologetic about their security practices, but that
doesn't mean they as much as published this information themselves.

Yes, _The Interview_ doesn't look particularly great, and I didn't plan to see
it. Yet it should absolutely be allowed to exist and to be publicly released.
It is a comedy. It is not "an act of war" as Sony's attackers claim. The
existence of this film did not harm real people, that is entirely a result of
the extreme overreaction by the people behind these attacks.

I absolutely think that Sony is being blamed for their victimization, and I
don't agree with it. It would be terrible to be in their position, and I don't
think any company who operates within the laws of their country should be
subject to any of:

    
    
      1. A loss of over $40 million
      2. A smear campaign using their own stolen, private correspondence
      3. Release or misuse of all manner of employee personal information, SSNs, etc.
      4. And all of the other things they're dealing with right now
    

If you place value in free speech, privacy rights and the arts I don't see how
you can side against Sony here. I don't care if it's "terrorism" or not, the
people involved in these attacks are certainly criminals.

~~~
paulhauggis
Nobody cares about privacy anymore. The mainstream media spreads around
private conversations and emails..and people are getting fired over it. I can
bet if I got the private emails from some key CNN reporters and spread it
around on social media, their tune would change. I would actually like to see
this.

I laugh when people in the mainstream media talk about how bad it is that the
government is spying on us. Why does it even matter anymore? 1984 is here. It
has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with social media.

It's so easy to spread lies around as fact on social media...and people
believe it. Just look at all of the false information spread around during the
Ferguson protests..which people still believe to this day.

Even Obama admit to swaying public opinion using social media and data mining.

~~~
skuhn
Gawker in particular has really turned my stomach with their extreme
dedication to exploring every possible facet of the leaked e-mails. Yes,
they're a tabloid, but rumors and tips are one thing and stolen, personal
communication is another.

I don't know how they would react if every e-mail sent or received by their
mail server was made public and dissected. Maybe they would just laugh it off,
but I'm sure there are a few they might prefer to hold on to.

~~~
girvo
Were you truly surprised? Gawker and its affiliated publications are
disgusting.

~~~
skuhn
Kind of. They periodically do despicable things (buying a stolen iPhone comes
to mind), but there's enough of a lull inbetween that I sort of forget their
true nature.

I have to keep reading it for gems like this one:
[http://gawker.com/my-14-hour-search-for-the-end-of-tgi-
frida...](http://gawker.com/my-14-hour-search-for-the-end-of-tgi-fridays-
endless-ap-1606122925)

I don't really think their other sites are disgusting; gizmodo, io9, jalopnik
and kotaku are pretty straightforward bloggy-newsy sites.

~~~
girvo
In my personal opinion, only io9 and Jalopnik aren't tarnished by the Gawker
Media tabloid brush. Truly, I despise Gawker; ethics are just not a part of
their corporate ethos, and for any company that purports to be made up of
"journalists" that's just crap. That said, now places I used to rely on for
news have fallen to the same level, so I suppose I'm just a bit bitter at this
point.

------
pdkl95
[http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html](http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html)

    
    
        It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
          To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
        "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
          Unless you pay us cash to go away."
    

[...]

    
    
        "We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
          No matter how trifling the cost;
        For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
          And the nation that pays it is lost!"

~~~
afarrell
Kipling may be an imperialist, but he is an honest one, and certainly correct
about some fundamental ugly truths of international relations.

------
Animats
Bruce Schneier: "Someone killed 12 people and shot another 70 people at the
opening night of Batman: The Dark Knight [Rises]. They kept that movie in the
theaters."

But that Batman movie was a good movie. (OK, not the best of the franchise,
but still OK). The plot of The Interview is "a celebrity journalist and his
producer land an interview with Kim Jong-un and are instructed by the CIA to
assassinate him." That sounds like a good action-adventure movie. But it was
made as a _comedy_. Dumb. Then the plan was to release it on Christmas Day,
usually a day for take-the-kids movies. Dumber.

Sony may be using this as an excuse to escape from a turkey of a movie. Of
course, now we all have to see it. Probably on Netflix; it's not worth a trip
to a theater.

This whole affair is in the realm of stupid, on all sides.

~~~
btbuildem
Yeah pretty much the only way for Sony to salvage the situation is to release
this p.o.s. as a torrent..

------
gojomo
I've not yet seen any clear, convincing reporting of why anyone would believe
that the theater-threat comes from the same person/persons who compromised
Sony's servers/network.

The NYT mentioned an email sent to multiple media outlets – but did that email
somehow prove inside knowledge of the hacks? Perhaps, by revealing fresh info
or using a cryptographic signature associated with earlier releases or
messages left behind on Sony's machine's? If so, no reports have said so.

Another site mentioned a Pastebin source for the threat, which was accompanied
with links to other Sony emails. But were those new, unique emails that could
have only come from the hacker(s)? And which was the first threat source – an
email or a Pastebin?

These are basic questions of apparent provenance that should be answered in
any coverage of internet-delivered threats.

------
pakled_engineer
India and Pakistan when various groups threaten to bomb theatres they delay
the film release a few months then show it anyway. Sony is going to do the
same, then shill it as a must watch in order thwart glorious victory of
comrade jong-un.

------
zaroth
I wonder if in refusing to show the movie, are the theaters really concerned
about the physical threat, or the cyber threat? The physical threat is
certainly the headline, and provides an easy out for theaters who might
actually be more concerned about their networks.

The cyber threat is certainly the more credible of the two. Hackers who owned
Sony so completely could now turn their focus to AMC, Regal, Cinemark, and
Carmike. Aside from looting data stores, they could potentially shutdown
ticketing systems, hack customer databases, steal credit cards...

We know a well-funded persistent targeted attack is guaranteed to succeed
against these kinds of targets. I'm not really sure what's even holding back
the tides of cyber-warfare beyond perhaps governments' inefficiency at
organizing the necessary task forces. Fear of enforcement or retaliation
certainly isn't the gating factor on the teams who are perpetrating these
hacks.

The whole thing seems beyond absurd from one angle, and at the same time
portends an escalating cyberwar which will not be nearly as fun to watch as
The Interview.

~~~
marcosdumay
> I wonder if in refusing to show the movie, are the theaters really concerned
> about the physical threat, or the cyber threat?

More likely, they are concerned about the economic threat. It's a great excuse
to not lose exibition rooms empty with a bad movie, and yet evade any kind
punishment by Sony.

------
joshstrange
Please remind me again why we spend BILLIONS on Intel, let them trample our
rights, and operate in complete darkness? Oh yeah it's to prevent... Oh, well,
uh....

What use is the FBI/CIA/NSA/etc good for if the same attacks happen regardless
of how much money we funnel their way? I couldn't care less about this movie,
I might have watched it when it came out on DVD but pulling it from theatres
because of threats from an unknown entity? Even if it's from NK that's an even
bigger reason to ignore it.

This is a dangerous precedent we are setting when a threat can stop a movie
from getting released. We are caving to terrorism (this is probably one of the
first times ever "we are letting the terrorists win" actually fits the
situation) of an unknown entity.

------
leeoniya
As noted elsewhere, Sony is a Japanese corp. The release - in any country -
under their watch can cause retaliation against Japan and sour already touchy
relations between them and North Korea, not to mention the physical proximity,
smaller country size, etc.

------
S_A_P
The terrorists(or fake terrorists) won here, plain and simple. I honestly cant
believe we are even having this conversation, or that pulling the plug was
even an option here. However, to play devils advocate, I wonder what would
happen if say, China were to make a movie about assassinating the president of
the US, what sort of reaction our government would have. Just because North
Korea is a small country with few means to really get at us doesn't make it a
good idea to write a film with a plot about killing their leader.

That said knowing Seth Rogen movies, Im sure it ended up with them smoking
weed with KJU and having a party out of it, so he shouldn't be that upset...

~~~
talmand
If China made such a movie, I would expect the government reaction to be a
sternly written statement saying something.

"Death of a President" is movie about solving the assassination of George W.
Bush with British production companies, so it's been done. I don't recall
going to war over it or anything.

Personally, if I were President and a foreign country made a raunchy comedy
about assassinating me, I'd give it a try before condemning it with a low
review score.

------
byerley
The North Korea link really confuses me.

How is a small country like North Korea capable of mounting such a
sophisticated attack when they aren't even teaching their computer students
about the Internet? - [http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2014/12/07/suki-kims-
exper...](http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2014/12/07/suki-kims-experience-
in-north-korea-its-the-most-horrific-place-to-me-in-the-world/)

Even if they specifically trained a hacking group, the talent pool would be
tiny.

~~~
rjvir
They could have massively funded a group of hackers in China to carry out the
attack.

~~~
chrischen
Or massively funded a group of hackers in the USA.

------
justanother
The situation as analyzed in this article highlights the misgivings I have
always harbored about the term 'terrorism'. Once we classify a particular set
of criminal behavior as being so much more heinous than ordinary crime, we
pretty much invite everything, over a long enough time scale, to slide down
the slippery slope into this new classification. When I was much younger, this
word referred to organized groups whose sole aim was murder and destruction.
Now it is applied to children who point fingers at each other and say "bang!"
as well as whistleblowers and (apparently) people who hack movie studios. Is
it time to retire 'terrorism' yet?

------
sandstrom
Now and then I discover apparently longer-running threads in the news that
I've completely missed.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed that I've missed them, but mostly I'm just happy
that I have. This one seems like the latter.

This essay is good (although I don't feel as strongly about it as the author).

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

(I still like journalists and news, I just wish it would be more long-term,
less 'real-time')

------
connie_lingus
sony should just release the damned thing on christmas day on netflix and let
the whole world deal with it at the same time.

------
scelerat
Sony hasn't capitulated. This is PR gold. Just wait for them to change their
minds on down the line. The pent-up demand will drive sales far beyond
anything that would have happened had they ignored the "threat."

------
efnx
I want to watch this movie more now so I hope I can at least find the version
that these hackers have released. I'd rather pay and sit in th theater but one
way or another.

------
personZ
This is a pandering article where someone acts outraged to pander to an
audience.

Firstly, "cyberterrorism" has forever been defined as attacks on computer
resources, _not_ attacks on people. If a nation state crippled a business to
coerce their actions, that is pretty much spot on with the definition of
cyberterrorism.

Secondly, who ever said that such a theater attack would have to
simultaneously hit 18,000 theaters? The threat seemed to be that any theater
could be at risk. I mean, is ten theater attacks okay? Five? Two? One? Sony
and theaters are not the US military or the government. They're a risk
abatement private enterprise.

This is a terribly weak article. He redefines existing terminology and then
strikes down absurd strawmen to get the cheering crowd to nod along.

------
nemothekid
Not sure I take the reductionist view point of calling the hacking "just a
Bond script release". Allegedly the hackers stole over 300TB of data, and we
have already seen them mountains of private information such as SSNs. If those
SSNs were then sold/used for fraud (causing even more damage), and that
revenue used to by weapons, could we call it a terrorist act then?

~~~
arghnoname
No.

If I rob a bank it is not a terrorist act. If I use the money to make a dirty
bomb and commit a terrorist act with said bomb, that's a terrorist act, not
the initial robbery.

~~~
paulhauggis
It's a terrorist act to threaten movie theaters with 9/11 style attacks for
showing a movie and this is exactly what the hackers are doing.

~~~
yourad_io
A terrorist threat and a terrorist act are easily distinguished:

"Did shit blow up? Then It was an act."

Threats are not acts, despite what any legal framework may say.

