> " In Rwanda, nude photos of 2017 presidential candidate, Diane Rwigara, surfaced on the internet. She said the images had been doctored and were intended to discredit her."
This is the crazy part. Why bother "hacking" when deep-faking is such an easy option? At the same time, this allows for plausible deniability even if the photos are real.
One difference is that with a deep-fake the target knows it's not real, and is easier to shrug off, at least for themselves. If the target knows it is real then the feeling of shame and embarrassment would be a lot greater for many people (depending on personality and cultural attitudes).
But it's impossible to tell if that shame is because the photo is fake or real because people have a range of natural reactions to something like that.
We should thank hackers in a way for exposing what the world is becoming in terms of mass surveillance.
If they did not pull stunts like these we would be much more trusting of our devices. Governments and shadier entities would access our data at their will and wouldn't stupidly publicize what they are doing when they don't have to.
Of course a presidential candidate has powerful enemies who may be themselves part of the state establishment. So in this case I believe the situations are intertwined
“But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our
bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable, let's
drink their health, then meet with them no more.”
There was a time when you could root an Android phone to install a custom OS by visiting a website that exploited a vulnerability. It's reasonable to assume that's not the only vulnerability of its kind.
You probably still can, unless the Android phone was made in the last 2-3 years. Android manufacturers are absolutely dismal when it comes to security updates, few devices get good support for the 5+ years a smartphone is actually used
Probably classic phishing attack of pretending to be Google/Apple and asking her for the username/password, with some blah blah like "Welcome to the UN website, please link your Google/Apple/Instagram account by entering your username and password here:".
IIRC Facebook and LinkedIn did this in the past, they would say "Welcome to Facebook/LinkedIn! Let us go through your inbox to harvest email addresses so you can find your friends, we already have your email address, just enter your password here:".
Most African and Asian countries have laws against the production or distribution of pornography.
Unless you're talking to Church members, it's not really seen as a moral concern but a simple procedural problem: we can't easily be sure if pornography was produced with willing knowing participants and the economic benefits are not worth the bureaucracy to make sure.
The whole article is an odd scattershot approach of criticizing many different countries without naming specifics of the law and only interviewing the 'victims' without getting any insight into the actual governments---who are democratically elected and literally pay people to respond to these questions.
For example, the Uganda law was dropped[1] and the arrested model never faced any jail time or fines. In the Uganda case, the law went further than any others by criminalizing nudity and 'indecent' clothing regardless of context, which is insane considering nudity is not naturally taboo in our culture (nudity taboos were imported from Christian missionaries). It even criminalized 'indecent' language like songs about sex. It was light-years past a 'anti-pornography' law but it's being lumped in under the same banner because the article is in my opinion lazily written.
The Rwanda case was a politician being shamed---not an example of a law being used against anyone.
Lydia's case has no country attached but she used the anti-pornography laws to get her ex-boyfriend to stop posting her pictures on social media. That's a case of the law being used for good, right?
In the Tanzania case, the woman herself is urging the government to take action against the people who illegally posted her pictures [2]. Why is this article using that example as support for the anti-pornography camp?
Thanks for adding some interesting info around these things.
I can see how it's easy to feel this:
"she used the anti-pornography laws to get her ex-boyfriend to stop posting her pictures on social media. That's a case of the law being used for good, right?"
but I'm not in agreement for a few reasons...
first let me say I m 100% against people sharing intimate photos of others without permission.
Things get a little different in my opinion when people become high level public figures for some reasons .. for example sharing the pics of mr wiener with hookers was not cool.. but considering he became a public figure trying to climb the political ladders and especially because part of that process was him prosecuting hookers and making PR stunts out of it.. well then sharing the pics became a slightly different thing.
Anyhow I hate that anti-porn laws are used for her censoring public discourse - and if the pics were otherwise noteworthy (like they included bisexual whatever and she had voted against lgb or something) - then the photos could be censored in some type of way and published in newspapers for legit public discussion.
I believe she should be able to use copyright laws alone to stop publication / sharing of her pics, and perhaps a lawsuit for defamation (not a great recourse vs poor people) - or other means. But I don't think anti-porn laws should be a thing and they should not be weaponized by the political class to hide things they don't like.
(even though yes, I agree this one appears to be used "good" - I don't have enough info to be 100 on that)
> Unless you're talking to Church members, it's not really seen as a moral concern but a simple procedural problem: we can't easily be sure if pornography was produced with willing knowing participants and the economic benefits are not worth the bureaucracy to make sure.
I'm not sure I buy that it is purely a procedural problem. There is no way to know anyone in any industry is a willing participant in the production of anything. It is already against the law to enslave or coerce people, so you already have a bureaucracy to handle it. You just need a way to report unlawful activity and a bureaucracy that considers sex workers on equal footing to other professions. IMO it is that last point that is the problem and it basically swings back around to people making a moral judgement about sex and sex workers.
On a total tangent, in my opinion many countries in Africa would benefit from a benevolent dictator like Paul. Unfortunately getting a truly benevolent dictator seems to be a one in a million possibility.
Maybe you should also stop being nude at home since an image of you could be captured by a satellite or a drone. It's also probably better to use aluminum shower curtain as those cameras could be equipped with thermal imaging.
Your phone is your home. We tech savvy people know it's unfortunately not really the case so we act defensively, but it doesn't mean that we should tolerate this state of affair.
Looking past the moral question of whether people should police their own private behaviour like this, there are reasons you might need to take a nude/intimate photo. If you're ill, if you've found a lump, etc., and you can't get a face-to-face appointment with a doctor, taking a photo is probably the best way to illustrate what's wrong.
Indeed, I don't care much for the tone of the previous post at all.
That said, I do think it would be wise to have a good think about what would happen if these photos were distributed – either maliciously or accidentally – and if you're prepared to take this risk. Unfortunately too many people somewhat naïvely don't think about this.
"wise to have a good think" is a good discussion to have BEFORE and for LATER.
AFTER, it is simply victim shaming.
"wise to have a good think" is something we do for ourselves.
Hacking a person's phone is a violation that one person perpetrates upon another.
The first is a personal mental activity. The second is a physical crime.
The first is irrelevant now. Now, something real happened. Reality always takes precedence.
That said, how many times did she get her phone hacked and have her photos leaked?
Tricky thing, that...when do we switch to "having been a victim, it's time to have a good think."?
From the article, "she said. “I am losing my mind. I think this is the same person that hacked me before and nothing is being done. I can’t take this anymore.”"
It's always worth thinking about what could have been done better by everyone involved, including victims.
I don't get this insatiable drive some people have for passing judgement. God forbid if we try to actually understand situations, how they happen, how they could be prevented, etc. instead of merely angrily shouting "IT'S BAD!"
9 times out of 10 I see "victim blaming" being used it's some holier-than-thou moral superiority stuff. I'm not interested in moral judgements, I'm interested in understanding problems and seeing how we can prevent them from happening again. I don't care about any moral judgement good or bad in these types of discussions; that doesn't mean I don't have one, but I see no value in sharing it here.
Yeah. Many crimes can be prevented by avoiding high risk behavior and learning to recognize the signs of a developing violent situation. It doesn't excuse the criminal's actions but it can give us a chance to escape unharmed.
The onus is somewhat shared. In recent times there has been a massive over correction leading to something akin to the position that the woman can never be wrong. Getting assaulted is bad but if that was preceded by taunting and instigation by the “victim” they share some segment of the blame.
If you challenge a violent criminal like this, you leave him no choice but to shoot you. That goes double if you do it in front of his peers. Either he rises up to your challenge or he loses respect. He's dead if people don't respect him.
People do all sorts of things when they're placed in stressful situations. It's easy to end up making this sort of challenge when trying to drive away an aggressor. Insults, challenges, threatening violence, threatening to call the cops. Sometimes a violent person starts to back down and leave but the victim just has to get that last insult in to teach him a lesson.
Like all people, women are prone to this. Verbal violence can and will escalate a dangerous situation. Sometimes women initiate physical violence against much stronger men: they slap him.
Having worked in the nightclub biz for ~20 years - I have seen situations like these occur many times.
It truly amazes me how much people will push others to commit violence - often doing X or Y multiple times - even when others are trying to quash it - and sometimes it seemed that it just intensified when people were stopped / held back, or the initial situation was otherwise 'stopped'.
Yeah, I keep thinking I should write a book on it - especially now that many of the places have been gentrified out of existence - which could also be an interesting part of the book.
If the Oprah show was still a thing it would make for a couple of good segments for sure.
Technically, no. This is someone who engaged in criminal activity and got caught. That her being caught was only possible because of another criminal activity is irrelevant.
This is a lot like a politician being corrupt, but proof of corruption was only distributed after someone broke into his house and stole some files. We would not say that "don't engage in criminal corruption" would be victim blaming, would we?
We can argue about if it is fair to have a law against making nude photos of yourself. We can argue whether we need to prosecute the hacker community more. But we also need to acknowledge that if you don't want to have legal trouble, do not do potentially criminal activities.
As a citizen, it is reasonable to expect from government to provide you the ability to drive through any part of the country without risking getting robbed.
If the government does not meet that expectation, it is time to hold politicians (and, where applicable, the police administration) accountable by voting them out.
Is it really reasonable? I struggle to think of any actual examples of a country where you could travel anywhere without risking getting robbed. "Most of the country's territory": sure, but "any part" whatsoever?
It's a noble ideal but we're still not there yet so you can either shout at the Universe demanding it to be fair, or you can to try and live with what we have right now.
I do expect the roads to have no potholes, and car drivers vigilant but I still look where I put my feet when I walk and look the street both ways before crossing it. When I trip on something because I was distracted I first think "Who the hell put that there?", then "Probably should have watched where I was going" second. Am I subconsciously trained to victim-blame myself?
> I struggle to think of any actual examples of a country where you could travel anywhere without risking getting robbed. "Most of the country's territory": sure, but "any part" whatsoever?
In modern, civilized democracies, citizens delegate their right to use vigilante justice and violence in general to the state (in form of police), in exchange for the state's guarantee to uphold the law on its territory.
Well, go and take a stroll at 3am in certain parts of Paris where police almost never manifests and when it does, it's in groups of 10 at least — the results may upset you.
This is an underrated comment. Many who believe we have a right to be safe don't understand that it's impossible to achieve without sacrificing other fundamental rights (i.e. privacy, liberty).
One way would be to ensure everyone has their right to a decent life fulfilled (aka, get everyone housed, fed and employed in decent conditions), to reduce the incentives and motivation for people to rob and assault other people.
One of the reason for "criminal careers" is that convictions - especially those for small scale shit like fare dodging or marijuana smoking - follow people around and make it impossible for them to obtain housing and employment. Break that cycle and help people who are in prison to live a crime-free life after release, and crime numbers will drop.
Education is key here - we the tech-savvy, need to make more of an effort to educate those less so, on how to remove files from their devices that could prove compromising in the future.
Naturally, I understand that what I've just said isn't the whole answer, but I really do think it's a good place to start.
> Despite this, Tanzania’s cybercrime unit said that NCII cases are few and far between, with the head of the Cybercrime Unit, Joshua Mwangaza insisting it is not in the country’s culture to send “porn pictures.”
What does "hacking of secure devices" even mean? A device that can be successfully hacked is by definition not secure.
If you want to tackle this issue, get the pornography legislation done with, prosecute distribution of images without consent (with safeguards not to stifle legitimate journalism) and educate people not to create their own kompromat - a nude picture that has not been made cannot be leaked.
Indeed, but I'm not really holding my breath that Uganda is going to change its laws any time soon. Not much you or I can do about this, so education is the next best thing that can make a meaningful difference.
Both of these are true of course. People need to be aware of the dangers online, and learn how to protect themselves from scammers and other predators. But punishing the victim is utterly ridiculous.
1. A gentleman retires and starts a bar
2. Stock it with liquor
3. One night a kid breaks in and gets drunk
4. Cops show up.
5. Bar owner gets prosecuted for supplying alcohol to minors.
Generally we shouldn't be glad when inhumane laws are enforced, yes?
Even if you supported anti-pornogrophy laws (I know you aren't saying that), another reason why this should be challenged is because it's going to be enforced in gender-biased ways. Primarily women will share a disproportionate burden of scrutiny for this law, particularly so in the case of revenge porn or deepfake.
It's important to advocate for treating women fairly, even when that comes at the cost of cultural insensitivity.
That there seems to be much of sexual frustration in the men of that culture. Hard to say about the women's sexual frustration because it manifests differently.
The issue is that this local law Is flawed, and this flawed law double tapped with criminal activities to hurt female citizens. That is why most of us emphasize with the victim here, but concern less about an underage getting beer from some barman exposed.
If HN had to discuss every daft, wrong rule in every country that offended our progressive, post-national sentiments, we would never have time to discuss compilers.
I don’t think it would be a crime, but definitely boring.
In this situation I think it’s more newsworthy because of the nature of the violation is more unusual since a law against pornography seems to be intended to punish producers but this person isn’t a producer.
Also, it’s an attractive lady, so that usually makes more people want to discuss.
And Uganda has some other particularly bad laws related to sexuality.
> punish producers but this person isn’t a producer.
Er, then who made it?
Hint, when a common law document says "…the production of…" it means exactly that; they use "… and/or distribution of…" to capture the derived crime of, well, distributing it.
Like kiddie porn, DIY nuclear weapons, and counterfeit money, some things are a crime to simply make - even in the basement their mother's house.
Adults need to be careful in life.
> Also, it’s an attractive lady
Bingo. A ton of karma later, we finally get somewhere.
HackerNews - always about the consistent application of principles without favour or exception.
Proponents of such world view are those who feel that they cannot compete with regards to merit and talent, so they hope to do so via their "superior morality".
Bill Clinton did such an amazing job that he could have had orgies with Victoria Secret models in the WH every night for all I care.
Same with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Eric Shmidt, Angela Merkel (Armani male models maybe?).
Mary Barra? With that mid-engine Corvette at 59k MSRP she can "dance with mr. Brownstone" every day for all I care, as long as they keep pumping them out in Dearborn.
Atheists like me can go to Saudi Arabia (or Uganda) and say and do as we like without pause for the consequences (unreasonable as they may be) to myself and the people that dependent on me?
This is the crazy part. Why bother "hacking" when deep-faking is such an easy option? At the same time, this allows for plausible deniability even if the photos are real.