No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
medium.com
medium.com
EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' camp believes this is a politically motivated attack and the data was acquired by a "government entity" (logically the US or Saudis).
[1] - https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/109371533307931853...
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mby7kq/malware-to...
> Saudi Arabia paid $55 million to purchase iPhone malware made by NSO Group, according to a recent report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz
The Saudis really disliked the Washington Post digging into their murder of Khashoggi, it doesn't seem too crazy that they set their sights on the boss and ended up stumbling upon some juicy texts and pics. The really interesting part is how they got to AMI. I have to imagine there is a Trump connection somewhere along the way.
... I'll show myself out.
I heard "amazon Machine Image" and thought WTF - are the AMIs compromised....
"Just blackmail the richest man on the planet, that will totally work!"
Given the number of people and media who seem to be convinced without a doubt that Trump is being blackmailed by Russia...
Even the left used to like him until he ran for president.
It's a fact that Mr Trump has been bankrupt six times. It's a fact that he has not shown his tax returns. His business dealing with Russia are under investigation.
He has never been bankrupt himself. There's a significant difference.
> Trump has never filed for personal bankruptcy, although in 1990 he came within one missed bank loan payment of doing so, agreeing to a deal that temporarily ceded management control of his company to his banks and put him on a spending allowance.
Personal bankruptcy in all but name.
It is not a leap to suspect Russian banks (that are on record as loaning him money) have financial leverage over him.
I wonder what happens to the supporters of the president once the walls come crashing in. The man is a criminal many times over, proven in court many times over. Why is it a surprise that his current endeavor is just another grift?
That we know of. The money coffers owned by the house of Saud run way deeper than many realize.
Individuals that are now or have been heads of state may have had opportunities to seize or otherwise employ state-owned property for their personal enrichment. Dictators over petroleum exporting nations are all likely richer than Bezos, in ways that we could never expect Forbes magazine to be able to verify, or even begin to investigate.
People whose wealth came mostly from publicly-traded stocks and real estate in nations with public records of title transfers can be more easily tracked and verified.
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.
Over the last six-months-to-a-year, ruling prince MBS has followed the program of whipping the Saudi Ruling class into submission (metaphorically and literally, with electrical chords). Part of the problem is the princes were stealing so much money that the state of this incredibly wealthy, absolutist theocracy was approaching bankruptcy. Khashoggi left the country at that point and was acting as something like external opposition to MBS, clearly something the prince would not brook.
None of this is to lessen the final brutal act but rather to explain it. If anything, the Saudis are probably extra pissed at the Post for "harboring" Khashoggi.
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).
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.
they don't just give the fbi data access without a court order
Don't think for a second that major players can't dial in whenever they want.
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%...
I'm really wondering what's the cognitive mechanism that allows people to just discard enormous informations like this one.
I think the analogy is even more appropriate, because the general attitude to pollution (especially Climate Metldown) seems to display that same cognitive mechanism you mention. There are the small cumulative effects, the ways in which taking any meaningful measure would uncomfortably interfere with our habits. The social fabric has just molded itself to the absurd reality, and our comfort and complicity is what makes the absurdity inspire oblivion and indifference instead of alarm and indignation. And then one day, unbreathable air, food insecurity, and nominal democracy become facts of life, and the dogma of progress (rather than progress itself) is what remains a constant.
Spooks like dirt and compromising materiel exactly because it is useful for blackmail.
So it may have been his mistress' phone that was compromised.
Government entity accessed them? I'd say it is much more likely that someone got the texts off his mistresses phone (whether willingly or not).
Why would a Government agency risk burning a zero day if they can just pay that lady or blackmail her with something else?
Hacking implies a sophisticated attack.
Not saying either government didn't do it. Following paxys line of thought I would however agree that hacking is not the most likely explanation in how the private data was taken.
Social engineering is sometimes also described as an "hack" but I doubt that is what Bezos implies with the word.
to you and me, yes. probably also to Jeff Bezos. but to the general public (arguably the real audience here), hacking is anything between guessing someones weak password and sophisticated attacks like stuxnet.
Depends on the audience I guess. The big majority of hacks are not sophisticated at all. There's also so many people that use it without an implication on the grade of sophistication.
But one thing is true, we can't possibly know for certain his intentions by using that word :-) so these are just our opinions for now :-)
As an example: consider the FBI pushing Apple to help them decrypt a terrorists phone from several years ago. They finally got in because the phone was a particularly old model without a secure enclave and (from memory) they ended up buying a 0day for a considerable sum to do it.
It could be a government, it it could be Bezos' wife, Sanchez's brother or ex husband, or just someone with a knack for social engineering who thought there was a lot of money to be made.
If you want exotic explanations, the images could have been recovered by Van Eck phreaking too, I suppose.
More likely explanation is something like the geek squad scandal where someone with physical access to the device (e.g. cell phone repairman, personal assistant, hotel maid) copied the photos.
1. Government hacked
2. Not government hacked
I'd wager that count(2) is by far the largest. Sure governments do it, but they literally don't have nearly as much human-attention and interest available as the rest of the entire human race.
People like sharing salacious things with their besties, man or woman.
"So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post. Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!"
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/10846274519830732...
Strange times we're living in.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/jul/27/donald...
Pundits understood him literally, so they failed to understand him at all. His nomination competitors also saw him in this light and ultimately failed. Mostly, J think they failed to understand his communication style1[1]. Occasio on the Dem side uses some of this same comms style for the left and it works to a degree, but the left is more uptight about being PC in comms so cant go as far afield with it.
Kerry undermining foreign policy is closer to treason but no one bothers cuz he’s an old hand. Let’s say the Dems win the next cycle, but then as they try working with Russia or Iran on things, Bolton struts in on visits to give his two cents...
Basically, I think many people try using a standard/traditional comms framework to parse his comms, but he uses a different more blue collar style[2]. Not frat style of a GWB, or the ancient oratorical style of Obama.
Obviously people are disagreeing with me, but I'd suggest reading what some linguists and political theorists have to say.
[1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188691...
[2]https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.14318/hau6.2.00...
This argument was always embarrassingly stupid, but anyone still making it after Trump shut down the government for a month over literal wall construction has forfeited their right to be taken seriously at all.
Can you back up that most independents want a wall? The polling I've seen says otherwise.
"CBS News polling from mid-November found that a majority -- 59 percent of Americans -- oppose building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a partisan issue, though. A large majority of Republicans support the wall -- 79 percent. A majority of independents -- 66 percent -- oppose the wall, and 84 percent of Democrats are also against it."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-americans-dont-su...
So then if _The Wall_ was figurative, why did he shut down the government over its funding?
"No he meant that one literally."
Okay... So what about the fact that the wall would be funded by Mexico? He claimed that he would literally make them write a check.
"That was obviously figurative."
An exhausting stretch of logic by those who can't burden themselves with introspection.
It's like when Dems say they want to abolish ICE. That's what their base want to hear. Do they really think ICE is going to be abolished? No, do they like hearing that because it rings nicely in their ears. yes!
Let's abolish ICE is the lefts version of "Mexico will pay for the wall". When they say Abolish ICE, they mean we'll (try to) do the dreamer things and we'll be less literal on refugee interpretation (and include economic migrants as definition of a refugee) for example. And, if it doesn't happen (not enough internal support) we'll blame the Repubs, no loss on their side. This is how political comms works.
Don't try and hang them on each and every word. You'll miss what they are saying.
You're right about Occasio-Cortez: she is shaping up to be about as bad as Trump in this respect. I'm not quite sure which of them is worse, but I know the prospect of her someday getting to the White House is a chilling prospect, even though my political leanings are in that direction. She appears to be about as dangerously ignorant (and perhaps callous) of facts of situations. The only mitigating factor for her is that perhaps experience will temper this, and maybe she is just uninformed but not unwilling to learn.
Citation needed.
AOC is not eligible to run for president until she is 35. These facts might calm your fears.
Yes, they do.
They may not think the functions are going to be eliminated, or most of the rank and file staff removed from government service, any more than when the predecessors of various parts of ICE, like the INS, were abolished before it.
Whether his statements during the campaign were taken literally or not it appears he was taken seriously by enough people to win him the nomination and the election. I think more than anything they bought into his intent. And his values however we may choose to the define them resonated with them.
It's also a bit of a problem for a representative government, since it means you cannot take any of Trump's statements as a forecast of his policies.
Like I said elsewhere, it's akin to the Dems "We'll abolish ICE". Some people will believe that literally, but it's not meant to be taken that way. They mean some reform and some policy changes. A redressing, but that's not what the base hears.
The only confusion I’ve seen is from people who think “abolish ICE” is equivalent to “end all border and immigration enforcement.”
If that argument held any water we'd have to erase all attempted communication-based crimes: blackmail, libel, bribery, etc.
"Yes, my Email said I wanted to blackmail Jeff Bezos, but I wasn't being literal your honor" -> "OK, you're free to go"
Sorry, words matter especially when they have consequences and impact people's lives.
I'm sure he could use steganography to signal this or that, if need be.
I mean, come on, are you going to say Waters was "threatening" here: "I did not threaten [Trump] constituents and supporters. I do that all the time, but I didn't do that that time," Waters said to laughter from a crowd in Los Angeles."
You have to take context into consideration.
He's widely known to have paid for and used dirt on his enemies to influence things to his advantage.
I think like most con men he likes to boast about what he's doing even if it's illegal. Or after getting away with it for so long and seeing others do it too, it just feels normal.
I think he did use back channels with Rodger Stone to execute the crime, but he probably didn't even know it was a crime because he's been getting dirt on people his whole career. The only problem with this time was it was a Presidential election and a foreign power.
His "joke" was deliberate treason.
If Republicans were guaranteed to keep the President and VP slot, you'd see an impeachment much more easily. I don't think any Republican will want Pelosi a heartbeat away from the Presidency unless Trump's crime was so clear and egregious that 2/3 of the country wanted him gone.
And 230yrs is pretty young for a country.
http://www.crf-usa.org/impeachment/high-crimes-and-misdemean...
The former was impeached for firing the Secretary of War without consent of the Senate, and refusing to reinstate Stanton in that position when it did not ratify the dismissal. Acquitted by one vote.
The latter was impeached for lying about inappropriate personal behavior, and obstruction of justice for witness tampering and impeding investigations. Acquitted.
Trump could be impeached by the House for a misdemeanor as inconsequential as littering in a national park. And the standard of proof for conviction in the Senate is not specified. It could be as low as "a police dog alerted on his hamburger wrapper" if his loyal contingent has 33 senators or as high as "we need to analyze, line by line, the source code for the video encoder of the camera that recorded the president dropping the wrapper on the ground, to ensure it has not been tampered with by terrorist immigrant caravans" if his contingent has 34 senators. It is not specified by the Constitution, so it is de facto determined ad hoc by the Senate and chief justice at the time of the trial.
It should be obvious that suspected crimes that are more severe than firing cabinet officials without permission, or covering up a political scandal--such as those imputed to Nixon during the Watergate burglary investigation, or suspected acceptance of foreign emoluments--should be impeached more readily. But as long as the Senate is needed to convict, and the burden of proof is not specified, then the House cannot realistically impeach, and expect a conviction with a president-supporting Senate in place, until the case against can meet the standard of "beyond even petty, unreasonable, and dubiously-contrived doubts". And that is solely so that when the Senate refuses to convict anyway, the evidence and the vote against conviction can be used against the party in subsequent election campaigns.
I have little doubt that the current president will be confronted by a stack of previously sealed criminal indictments on the afternoon of the next president's inauguration day. Those cases will be tried in courts with a fixed standard of proof--beyond reasonable doubt for criminal cases, and preponderance of evidence for civil cases.
The precedent has already been set there also -- both Bill and Hillary Clinton have remained free of prosecution in spite of all the many criminal conspiracies they engaged in.
There's no debate there was just as much, if not more, dirt and conspiracy around them when they were in office as there is around the current occupant of the White House.
There are almost certainly more claims made about/against the Clintons than there are about/against the Trumps. But many of the claims against the Clintons haven't had enough "there" there for anyone but, well, conspiracy theorists to run with them. There have been, as far as I know, considerably fewer actual legal investigations against the Clintons, their associates, and their businesses than against the Trumps, their associates, and their businesses, and certainly far fewer actual charges and indictments.
There's a lot of political history behind the campaign against the Clintons, and a lot of it's fascinating -- but it's not actually a history of a corrupt criminal enterprise, at least on the part of the Clintons. It's the history of personal vendettas and rich conservative ideologues, and the history of the birth of the modern right-wing media movement, starting with the Arkansas Project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Project
The Trump Organization also has a lot of fascinating history, but you know what? From all appearances, it may well be a history of a corrupt criminal enterprise.
Bill Clinton's supposed "conspiracies" are mainly sexual assaults and their ensuing covers-up. Some of his accusers received cash settlements, and presumably would not testify against in any criminal trials. The remainder apparently did not leave enough evidence by the time Clinton left office to pursue criminal charges, or did not come forward until #MeToo emboldened them to do so, long after he left office, and possibly after any relevant statutes of limitations had elapsed.
If Bill Clinton was indeed as dirty as Donald Trump appears to be, he was certainly better at cleaning up the evidence of it. He may have also pursued a policy of being more honest in less critical situations, such that he could attempt a lie--and still be believed based on reputation--when a deception would benefit him most. Furthermore, fewer of Clinton's former aides, employees, and associates were indicted and convicted during his term in office.
It is possible that Clinton was not charged because he was a more cautious criminal. It is also possible the reports of his crimes were invented or exaggerated to weaken him or his wife politically. It is also possible that I think Trump's suspected crimes are so much more severe than Clinton's that the best fixers in the country can't massage them away.
In any case, that's a fallacy of distraction. It doesn't matter what anyone else did but Trump, when the states' attorneys come knocking on Trump's door. They have prosecutorial discretion, and many have political ambitions of their own, so it may well be a matter of whether going after a former president and getting the conviction will help them more in the future than permanently burning all of that president's remaining political allies. Clinton can still pull in some votes and some campaign contributions. Even Nixon had folks that would still go to bat for him after he resigned. Trump is burning his (R) bridges, and snubbing all possible networking opportunities with the (D) side. It's almost like he has no conception whatsoever about how he can stay politically relevant--or at least politically protected--after leaving office.
What world do you live in that you should continue to make such baseless claims and expect to be taken seriously?
Washington is full of people who want power. They posture and make noise about political sides and beliefs, but in reality most of them are on the same side -- the side of the elite. They want power and money and don't like outsiders. The current inhabitant of the white house isn't part of the gang, and a significant portion of both camps (well, all of one camp and a portion of the other) are working very hard against him every day.
Surely you jest.
People are acting all shocked like this is a new state of affairs. It's not. We are just far more empowered now to actually learn about these things.
Wether you call it gaining influence or blackmail, it's usually the technique of authoritarians or the corrupt and not a path we want to advocate or even tolerate.
Yes, all presidents and foreign powers do this. Although Bezos doesn't present any proof that it's actually happening here, just speculation.
I'm happy to be proven wrong but to also be clear: there is zero evidence that Trump had anything to do with this.
As others have pointed out, he tweet-taunted Bezos a few weeks ago in a way that seems rather connected to this recent revelation.
Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski wrote an op-ed (in the Post!!) about having been threatened with blackmail by AMI, seemingly in direct connection to the White House's desires. Ronan Farrow came forward yesterday to say that AMI tried something similar with him.
Sure, Trump may have nothing to do with it. But you and I aren't courts of law; we're people, and we're allowed to look at the evidence and come to our own conclusions.
If your conclusion is that this is an "era ... which blames Trump for every thing that goes wrong with no evidence whatsoever" then you're just doing a bad job of evaluating evidence.
That realization is actually foundational to our system of criminal Due Process. It's why nearly every piece of evidence entered into trial, even simple documents and scientific analyses, requires a witness to vouchsafe. Facts cannot be divorced from their human origin, and any fact can be challenged by challenging the credibility of its origin.
All facts are messy things, and while some are messier than others there's no avoiding careful consideration in light of the available context. It follows that the distinction between fact and conjecture is one of opinion.
Before a crime is proven, there's usually speculation. Just like people suspected Nixon of being involved in Watergate before there was actual proof. The truth can come slowly.
I agree that we need to follow due process, but it's just as dangerous to categorize any suspicion of criminal activity as "blaming Trump for everything". You're just on the opposite end of the spectrum as people who thinks he's guilty before we have proof.
Evidence takes time, especially with plea bargains where there's incentive to hold out until the evidence against you is overwhelming.
It's best to be somewhere in the middle where you're equally skeptical and open to whatever news and evidence comes out.
You mean the FBI hired Fusion GPS for official business? I believe the term you are looking for is "contracting".
Like other smear attempts for instance Wikileaks on the Clinton campaign and also why its unlikely Mueller will EVER get the smoking gun on Trump. You don’t need to order these things, your allies will do it without your knowledge. Deniability.
By contrast, we've arrived at a point where those very same techniques, practiced openly and brazenly, are considered legitimate in the eyes of a significant plurality of both Washington leaders and the national electorate.
Corruption has always existed, but unless it's normalized you at least have a fighting change of containing it. When its normalized it will consume the whole system. Pervasive cynicism is sufficient to normalize it, and that's often how it metastasizes.
Not to say that previous Presidents haven't done bad things, abused laws, etc, (shit, even launched disinfo campaigns, used the press to attack enemies, etc) but this is just gobsmackingly different from what has come before.
Obviously caveat "if this is true" blah blah blah because my Lord who knows what's true anymore. But knock off the jaded pseudo-educated bs; this is radically fucking strange and a departure from history up until this point.
That's what's unprecedented. It's not abuse of power or corruption that's unprecedented. It's serial, bald faced lies to a willfully, spitefully credulous audience. Not even Nixon or his defenders were so unscrupulous, although it's fair to say that in Nixon lies some precedence.
I used to think it quaint that the dominant principle behind the 6th Amendment prohibition against compelling testimony against oneself remains the so-called cruel trilemma-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_officio_oat). But I realize now that, even without the metaphysical threat of damnation, a society must leave space for even the most corrupt and malicious individuals to avoid outright lying. Lies are the greatest poison to civil society by threatening the very notion of accountability and therefore of fairness or justice. Even when we know somebody is lying it's crucial that we grant them the fiction of plausible deniability, a quid pro quo for not violating the cardinal rule. In so far as the body politic permits and tolerates open lying, it destroys the last and perhaps only common bond between citizens--commitment to a shared truth, even if only nominally.
When a politician says that they can't remember, or even qualifies what would otherwise be a lie with "not to my recollection", that's actually a powerful gesture--submission to a critical civic virtue. When we get to a point when politicians, especially national leaders, don't bother with such gestures, and supporters don't even nominally demand them let alone exact some price, we're in a very bad place.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, there's solid evidence that Reagan openly lied when he denied any knowledge about Iran-Contra. But I think it's telling that we've convinced ourselves he was suffering from Alzheimers, forcing plausible deniability upon him. Even most Reagan detractors have reflexively internalized that narrative. (Obviously he was suffering from Alzheimers, but it's not very reasonable to believe that he was suffering to such an extent that he lacked the capacity for even complicity.)
He was arguably more powerful than the Presidents he supposedly served.
But I'm familiar with Hoover; this is wildly different. For one thing, unless I'm mistaken, he was never actually President. "Arguably more powerful than the Presidents he supposedly served" is a neat line and not unreasonable, but doesn't really approach what I'm arguing: that this moment is without precedent in American (world?) history.
That's because the story here likely goes beyond simply AMI going after Bezos at the White House's direction - that would be a hell of a story but also hardly original.
A President conspiring with two separate foreign powers to undermine our elections in order to enrich himself is just one part of the overall story that I contend is novel here. It may not even be the seediest part, depending on what comes of, say, the Seychelles meeting.
If it happened, even then I think it would not be unprecedented -- I'd have to think for a bit about specific examples but I suspect we've even done it to other countries ourselves.
Wait, they are? Who?
Yet all the jaded Hacker News historians around here haven't really pointed out any actual incidents in history that approach this story. "You should read about Hoover" or "Abraham Lincoln did some bad shit during the Civil War" doesn't really approach the level of "President conspiring with two separate foreign adversaries/frenemies to undermine American elections, enrich himself and blackmail his enemies" to say nothing of all the juicy details we don't yet know.
2. Do X.
Was he actually hacked? Saudi LEO could've easily got those pics from Apple legally.
Foreign agency, different story. But there are enough people with a smartphone in the US that it doesn’t take a state-backed agency to obtain a compromising picture of a well known public figure.
Are you sure that they are a single entity, where people are of uniform opinion? And every single person follows law to the letter of it? Trump could request this task unofficially from someone as a 'favour' - the agency as a whole might not have access to the request.
You can cover up things quietly, but lying to Congress when asked about it carries a very different set of penalties.
The Saudis seem like a much more likely party to do it in my opinion, mostly because we know they are willing to do a lot worse against people they oppose (or who oppose them).
That being said, I also think that playing the "A government hacked my phone" is a much better play on behalf of Bezos then claiming it was done by someone accessing his or Sanchezs phone (for example her brother who is supposedly a Trump supporter, like the link in the end suggests).
For me it checks out - leaking informations sounds like something that Trump or his supporters would do. Why would not they, if they have the option to? Per the intelligence agencies - are you sure that they are a single entity, where people are of uniform opinion? And every single person follows law to the letter of it? There is the example that those services employed Snowden - if the services were so organised as to avoid such hacks, we would not have heard of Snowden.
Sure, Sanchez' phone might have had leaks in it... but it is just as plausible as a government officials (US or non-US) accessing his phone.
>>For me it checks out - leaking informations sounds like something that Trump or his supporters would do. Why would not they, if they have the option to? Per the intelligence agencies - are you sure that they are a single entity, where people are of uniform opinion? And every single person follows law to the letter of it? There is the example that those services employed Snowden - if the services were so organised as to avoid such hacks, we would not have heard of Snowden.
But from my experience in other government entities, I believe that doing something like hacking into someone's phone, would require approval and support from high enough officials in those organizations, and so far it seems that these organization do still seem to remain professional and not involved in political actions by the president.
I agree that there might be (and I'm assuming there are) private Trump supporters in those agencies, that for example, would do 'a Snowden' and release classified and private information that they shouldn't. But that information first needs to gathered, and I don't think Jeff Bezos has done something to warrant previous gathering of information about him. (If information about Trump for example is released this way, it would seem more likely to me, because we know they collected that information while thinking he might be a spy).
But once again, I hope I'm not just being hopefully optimistic in my trust of 'the system'.
What happens is something approximately like this:
Saudi military intelligence puts through a request via appropriate channels to the Five Eyes for a tap on some low-profile woman's phone, claiming it's necessary in pursuit of a counter-terrorism objective. This ends up with GCHQ rather than NSA (NSA spies on Brits, Brits spy on Americans, they work at adjacent desks and share info: this is the traditional work-around for laws banning domestic spying) who happily hand over the contents of a foreign POIs phone to an allied intel agency.
Nobody at any senior level has a clue what's going on under cover of surveillance: stuff like this happens thousands of times a day. Meanwhile, the Saudi officer in charge of the kompromat on Bezos now has the dodgy photos off his girlfriend's phone ...
If GCHQ doesn't work, route through some other allied SIGINT agency with cooperation via NSA, preferably in a country where the Khashoggi thing is just another "foreigners doing horrible things to each other" back page story and nobody has a clue about Jeff Bezos' divorce.
TLDR: the global war on terror has given us a global hairball of inter-tangled intelligence sharing arrangements, and these can be manipulated for pleasure and profit by any sufficiently corrupt party who is plugged in to it.
(You're looking at the present-day for context, but these agencies run on protocols that have built up over many decades, dating back to the Cold War.)
I would welcome your conjectures on how the spooks controlled Obama. His enduring legacy may be heavy use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, and a radical expansion of "death from the sky", which seem incompatible with his personality, creating a mystery: What leverage did/do the spooks have on him?
My read on BHO is that as a non-white guy super-achieving in a quietly racist political climate (we've subsequently had a refresher course in American racial politics: it never went away) he was at pains to avoid alienating factions that might work against him.
He was also a lawyer: not just any lawyer, but a former editor of the Harvard Law Review (a plum niche reserved for star pupils at the #1 law school in the United States, often an early sign that the individual is on the road to the Supreme Court). Instead of heading for the bench Obama went into politics, but he is above all else a legalist (and a constitutional expert). As such, he worked only within the established legal frameworks, carefully trying to build a platform for incremental adjustments.
The Espionage Age was already a feature of the system before he arrived in the Oval Office: he continued to use it as it was designed. He didn't rock the boat or try to impose a radical agenda on the DoJ. He wouldn't do anything that might give his enemies a lever against him. He was, in fact, a conservative politician: not "conservative" in the sense of Movement Conservativism (which is actually a very radical political platform), but a Burkean conservative.
The spooks didn't need leverage on him: he was theirs from the outset.
They are huge customers for British arms sales (look up the Al Yamamah deal — roughly US $100Bn in business). They're known to have bought surveillance and intelligence monitoring software from Israel. They're in everybody's back pockets, and in their wallets.
As a Brit, I find your belief that US citizens are immune from monitoring by the intelligence services of other nations (when that kind of money is passing hands) touching ...
As are a lot of countries. Does not mean we will allow surveillance without any questions.
>As a Brit, I find your belief that US citizens are immune from monitoring by the intelligence services of other nations (when that kind of money is passing hands) touching ...
I never said or implied that.
Read the comment again:
>No Five Eyes member is going to randomly tap some US citizens phone because the Saudis asked without some serious investigation.
It’s hard to conclude that five eyes isn’t a domestic spying proxy program.
One is resource management and risk evaluation (aka, there are bigger problems), another is knowledge of FIS operations and many others...
You've incorrectly attributed the argument from a specific offshoot (that foreign spy tools persist because of limited counterintelligence resources) and applied it to the root supposition (that nation states utilize parallel construction, through a conspiracy with known adversaries as a matter of course and that spy infrastructure is built specifically for that purpose).
Of course it's more likely that someone (anyone, really) just pwned Ms. Sanchez's phone directly.
Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up
As observed elsewhere, Ms. Sanchez's phone could have been accessed by any number of parties. It certainly wasn't "inside the firewall". So it could have been the Saudis, and those murderers have incentives to embarrass Bezos. It could have been the Russians. It could have been Amazon short-sellers. It could have been Wal-Mart. It could have been the proverbial fat guy in his mom's basement. At least Guccifer 2.0 hasn't come up.
Pecker is a moron though. How could Bezos possibly respond to this in any other way than what we see here? Trump seems to surround himself with morons.
https://attorneyalexhernandez.com/read-david-pecker-ami-plea...
Get the prison cell ready.
But we don't know who Mueller's selfie was of. (there was a claim it was some random who was sexting Guccifer 2 but that doesn't seem like something worth filing)
Maybe the better question is how or from whom he obtained it.
Manafort or Cohen seem most likely sources as Mueller's got all their stuff or maybe the AMI handed it over as part of their cooperation deal.
It's all a little weird as attempting to extort Bezos right now seems insane given the legal peril they are in. This may be worse than their part in election contribution violation they were previously on the hook for.
The theater was all for nothing, as real world consequences show they could have murdered the jouralist in cold blood and broad daylight.
Government dirty tricks rarely involve their A team, because when doing something illegal loyalty is even more important than competence.
Cf. "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"
Of course, one doesn't detect a great deal of self-respect in the upper echelons of power in more "democratic" nations, either.
You mean, the newspaper that Bezos owns is backing his story?
Color me surprised.
Reality can be stranger than fiction. With all the new revelations that come out about all these entities on a regular basis - what is to be believed anymore?
https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/02/how-bezos-dick-pics-might...
Taking on Amazon cybersecurity could be a job for the likes of the NSA, but accessing a cracked phone without being caught is almost amateur level hacking.
For background, see Troy Hunt's explanation for this data [0]. He certainly didn't add Ms. Sanchez's passwords to this. The MEGA uploader could have, one supposes, but that pushes the timeline back to early January. The idea that someone was sitting on all these creds (140M email addresses in this breach that HIBP has never seen before.), and then released them as a smokescreen for Ms. Sanchez's would be, let's say, conspiratorial.
[0] https://www.troyhunt.com/the-773-million-record-collection-1...
- https://www.nationalenquirer.com is hosted in AWS
- https://www.nationalenquirer.com is down
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spyi...
But my Bayesian prior of how the world works is that someone had access to someone's phone (his or his GFs) and gave the photos to the Enquirer.
Stay tuned.
even if that isn't the case, the amount of effort required for amazon to obtain a warrant from a magistrate judge or however they'd play it is negligible.
All they need to do is to tick one of the boxes in their ToS and kick them off their property. Heck, there's an entire sub-category of law colloquially known as "Amazon-law", where you hire folks who specialize in navigating the intricacies of Amazon's policies so your business doesn't get crushed:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...
Edit: https://aws.amazon.com/aup/ TL;DR - they can do whatever they want.
No Illegal, Harmful, or Offensive Use or Content
You may not use, or encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to use, the Services or AWS Site for any illegal, harmful, fraudulent, infringing or offensive use, or to transmit, store, display, distribute or otherwise make available content that is illegal, harmful, fraudulent, infringing or offensive. Prohibited activities or content include:
Illegal, Harmful or Fraudulent Activities. Any activities that are illegal, that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation, including disseminating, promoting or facilitating child pornography, offering or disseminating fraudulent goods, services, schemes, or promotions, make-money-fast schemes, ponzi and pyramid schemes, phishing, or pharming.
Infringing Content. Content that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property or proprietary rights of others.
Offensive Content. Content that is defamatory, obscene, abusive, invasive of privacy, or otherwise objectionable, including content that constitutes child pornography, relates to bestiality, or depicts non-consensual sex acts.
Our Monitoring and Enforcement
We reserve the right, but do not assume the obligation, to investigate any violation of this Policy or misuse of the Services or AWS Site.> You may not use, or encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to use, the Services or AWS Site for... content that violate the rights of others, or that may be harmful to others, our operations or reputation...
Character assassination of the chief head of AWS is damaging to the reputation of AWS in no uncertain terms.
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)
Even if AWS has nothing to do with this it (unfairly) reflects extremely bad on them.
That would make being caught leaking the photos perjury. The stakes are so high that AMI might well not dare to do that.
Its easy to imagine that Bezos, whatever he is saying publicly, is also getting excellent legal consul privately and that two can play at the games that AMI is so infamous for.
The kind of people who care about "celebrity gossip" will have no idea who he is, and the people who do know who he is won't care. There is no market for these photos.
We all hate when the big guys use lawsuits to stifle the little guys, but getting AMI execs tied up in legal worries and costs seems, in this instance, to have popular appeal?
The only thing those photos would change is undeniably confirm that richest man on the planet has actual human male body and some love life, which pretty much everyone already suspected.
Some people will get a kick of it but it will eventually blend into the background same as fappening or a photo of a hole in the sock of president of world bank.
Yes, with conditions.
Bezos himself writes, in the article we're discussing:
I asked him to prioritise protecting my time since I have other things I prefer to work on and to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter. - emphasis mine.
And that:
On that point, numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI, and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake.
Thus making it plain, simple, and obvious, that he recognises that having a net worth up around the US$137 billion[1] mark has it's perks.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
Edit: inconsequential grammar improvement
Fair point, but obviously someone like Bezos should be able to make use of his resources in cases like these and I‘m sure nobody is arguing against that.
On that point, numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI, and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake.
You’re right, most people are never going to face such an adversary personally.
But there are legions of other adversaries, at all sorts of levels, who are out to pray on almost anyone with a bit of money / fame.
What they care about is whether you have something that poses a danger to their (hidden) agendas.
If this is true, it may also mean that it is more likely that you have a lot of money (because there appears to be a statistical correlation between having lots of money and having stuff that's dangerous to the agendas of state-level global actors, likely because having lots of money means having lots of power and influence, which results in getting access to "stuff" you wouldn't have otherwise), but the former does not automatically result in the latter, and it also isn't a requirement for the latter.
Hence you can very well, through an infinite amount of random circumstances, come into possession of material deemed "dangerous" by the US and Saudi governments, while still being just a normal person living a normal life with a 5-digit net worth. Resulting in you being blackmailed by the US and Saudi governments. Most likely with quite some success.
Essentially we could develop a herd immunity to blackmail.
But if humanity as a whole...
As far as I’ve been able to determine, much to my chagrin, in many of the ways that matter most, humanity isn’t a coherent whole.
And I’ve got no idea what to do about it.
Then imagine if the material was about this other woman before he got his divorce.
Then imagine if the material contained actual borderline illegal stuff or something like photos of his nieces on a beach holiday.
He got lucky - many many others would capitulate.
"Imagine if instead of simply walking down the street you punched everybody you passed."
Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a prominent person post the details of a personal extortion attempt out of defiance for all to see.
Weird and outrageous things I can think of that people have consented to:
- 'playing' with excrement (Gross! this is what the owner of Whole Foods thinks of basic hygiene)
- master slave play (Misogynist Bezos ordered this woman to ...)
- cuckolding (haha Bezos isn't enough of a man to satisfy his girlfriend himself)
Maybe the last one will 'only' cause you to lose the respect and thereby business deals of your peers.
--The President of the United States
Everything you mention pales in comparison to the quote above as long as it's between enthusiastically consenting adults.
Granted, I could just be projecting, but I don't think I'm alone here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44QgPty17Mc
This shows the whole Trump/AMI/Campaign org to essentially be a criminal mafia enterprise.
There are quite a few connections with organized crime, it turns out. This isn't just a random slur, but something that merits investigation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/are-trumps-mob-conne...
and of course there's this, too:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d...
This is the very definition of a criminal enterprise. Breaking federal election laws, blackmailing those investigating your crimes. If the connection to the Trump campaign bothers you, that too is factual, given that AMI's agreement involved assistance they gave to the Trump campaign that was illegal, and the owner, David Pecker, is a close personal friend of the President.
There's pretty good circumstantial evidence from this, and the Cohen tapes, that using power and privilege to "deal with" personal or political enemies does not give pause to these people.
Thus, mafia-like behavior.
Sneaky edit : I'm sure one could not ignore his massive balls on any of the selfies AMI allegedly got their hands on ;)
And it's easy for us to say "Well I wouldn't be in that place to begin with", but as I much as I not be in this EXACT place, most of us have made mistakes that we deeply regret and fear getting out, or at least have the capability to. I don't have to assume I'd do this particular set of bad acts to be vulnerable. And once socially vulnerable, would money make it go away? No, not entirely, not enough. So how hard must it be for people who AREN'T disgustingly wealthy? Or even wealthy? Or even well-off?
Heck, with the quality of "deepfakes" or whatever now-a-days, all you need to do is find someone vulnerable to BEING vulnerable, and they don't even have to have done wrong. One marriage that has had no infidelity but is struggling, one person with a child/spouse who is suffering from serious depression/anxiety/suicidal/related issues. "hey, I have these pictures, and if you do X they don't have to see the light of day. You can deny them being real all you want...do you think that will really help?"
Or take the gross spectacle of releasing celebrity sex pics, or even just non-celebrity revenge pics. The only answer is for (1) we as a society to reject attempts to abuse this info and (2) to be less puritanical and judgmental about the victims here. To the Bezos example, one person can do wrong and we can oppose another using it to do wrong against them without condoning any of the original wrong.
Bezos has a hard time doing this, and it's far, far easier for him than for anyone else. I didn't care about his personal life before (note: Not the same as saying it doesn't matter) and I still don't, but even if I did I can find the blackmail efforts repugnant without letting adulterers off the hook.
...but that's hard too. Just not nearly as hard.
Agreed, probably Jeff Bezos has made those mistakes as well. However I fail to see any mistakes of his threatened to be revealed.
Cheating on his wife?
AMI way overplayed their hand here, and we may yet find that they had gone all-in.
And despite the letter, does anyone think he isn’t spending a big chunk of time on this?
Most Fortune 500 CEOs would be gone or forced into retirement.
That would mean he literally committed fraud. What's your source for that info?
> And despite the letter, does anyone think he isn’t spending a big chunk of time on this?
Why shouldn't he spend his time on whatever he wants?
Blue Origin yanked a super bowl ad after it was disclosed Sanchez was involved in its production team (presumably she was not free, and the ad certainly wasn’t.) It was then shifted to Washington Post at the last minute, with a slapdash ad. [0]
> ... time on whatever he wants?
He can, but that time has to come from somewhere. It’s hard to believe Amazon is getting his full attention. He can own the stock, but I certainly question whether Amazon has a business-focused leader right now.
[0]https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/04/jeff-bezo...
Forget about the embarrassment, if he secretly capitulates to this, then the real blackmail material would be the capitulation, not the photos. Cause if the owner of Washington Post bowed down to blackmail, every article published in the article will be called into question.
And who gives a shit if a billionaire cheated on his wife or sent dick pics. I don't care. Did he murder someone? Did he not divorce his wife by parting with half his fortune?
Half of their fortune. It was communal property.
If his keeps his money in $100 bills, then you're right. $136 billion would weigh about 1,230 metric tons.
More likely, his cash consists of electronic entries in bank systems which weigh substantially less.
"Used for emphasis while not being literally true." [1]
I think AMI was looking forward to either damage WaPo or want JB to relinquish control of it. The game is WaPo, not JB.
I imagine this was the goal. They have some nude photos which are embarrassing and a chance for them to get in the door. If they could get Bezos and Washington Post to bow down on that, they'd have much more power and leverage going forward that could potentially destroy them both. Bezos called them out, and now all they have are these fairly meaningless Bezos nudes, which are not in the highest of demand.
I heard some people suggesting that it was a really poor move to blackmail Bezos in writing. However, if you believe the above, then it makes perfect sense. They wanted a very clean paper trail of their requests, Bezos and the Washington Post accepting the offer, and the future outcome of those actions. This would provide them with blackmail material much more valuable than the photos.
I wonder if this was the plan all along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7f9D4KclJw
(David Letterman talks about an extortion attempt on him)
"...an exploration of Mr. Bezos’ judgment... is indeed newsworthy and in the public interest."
Wonderful! Looking out for my interests! My heroes, fightin' for me against all the bad judgment! So grateful!
But then, if he'll agree to comply with their demands, suddenly it's not newsworthy anymore.
"AM agrees not to publish, distribute, share, or describe unpublished texts and photos (the “Unpublished Materials”)."
What?! Sellouts! Traitors! What about the public interest?! All the bad judgment!??!?
So yeah, not only do they blackmail public figures; by their willingness to bury the story they also show that they can't be counted on to hold public figures accountable when the time comes. He's right, real journalists don't act like this. (Not that I ever believed that shit; like I said, it was just a thought experiment.)
All you need is a bit of dirt on them, and you're safe from being exposed. Actually that might be the one thing that made this case different and turned it into a blackmail attempt instead of just another in the thousands of sleaze stories over the years.
They clearly don't care about using journalism to benefit the public good. They've already admitted to that much when they openly acknowledged they helped bury the Karen McDougal / Trump story. ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/12/national-enq... ) If it's important for shareholders to know about a sex scandal involving Bezos, then it's important for voters to know about sex scandal involving Trump.
That's the richest guy in the world saying "I don't give a XXXX what it costs, find out who did it."
It's also the moment in your life when, if you get the result that guys wants, he'll be glad to write you a cheque for $20,000,000 and will be happy to do so and he won't be interested in why the number is that high.
Also, never take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy ;P
"Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge." -Machiavelli
One can quote mob movies all day but that doesn’t make them a smart criminal.
Go where the cops ain't.
People who idolize criminals show an entirely different character defect, one that is in opposition to being productive in any task criminal or otherwise.
I mean come on, you are literally taking on the richest person on earth and didn't even evaluate implications!? Just to belabor the point, he's not only the richest person right now, he's among the top 15[1] wealthiest persons of human civilization. And you are threatening him with, what, a bunch of nudish images and adult text messages!?
> and now the man who has a rocket company for fun is clearly pissed.
This had me laughing for a long time!!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
Edit: Added wikipedia reference.
If it were a crime, it really wouldn’t be much of a threat because they’d be unlikely to follow through, would they?
Edit: there is one federal law where threatening embarrassment is enough, but that requires a demand for money or property, which this is explicitly not.
And because the downvotes are already rolling in: Note that I find this just as abhorrent as you do, and that sexploitation should absolutely be a crime. But the legal situation unfortunately is not at all as clear as the moral one. And the replies below are mostly embarrassing in that nobody even seems to have a clue on the difference between civil and criminal law. Carry on then...
> Blackmail is the crime of threatening to reveal embarrassing, disgraceful or damaging information about a person to the public, family, spouse or associates unless money is paid to purchase silence. It is a form of extortion. Because the information is usually substantially true, it is not revealing the information that is criminal, but demanding money to withhold it.
Blackmail for Theft: Conspiracy to commit Theft.
Blackmail for Fraud: Conspiracy to commit Fraud.
It seems its considered blackmail but in the strictly legal sense I'm not sure. There's probably a law to cover that though, extortion?
Now if AMI wanted you or I to say those statements I’m not sure how valuable they’d be.
I would think that the demand for a public statement would qualify, however, I'm not a lawyer, and this case is unusual enough that I would not be confident in my personal interpretation of the law.
That's entirely untrue. The downvotes are rolling in because your assertion about blackmail is simply wrong. There are a myriad of local, state, and federal laws on blackmail that cover situations like this.
Blackmail can involve any threats to coerce using private materials, not just for financial objectives.
https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/10936583665834229...
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've committed a crime.
I've always found it hard to justify blackmail laws.
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.
If you actually had a setup as you described, all of the news outlets would publish the facts of your story, without paying you anything, because facts aren’t protected by copyright. The only thing you could sell would be an exclusive interview.
When I said publishing house I meant book publishers like Penguin Random House. I don't know where news outlets come into it.
Whether the medium is a book or a newspaper or a website is legally immaterial. Thinking about the information as news is just useful because no one owns the facts, only their particular descriptions of them.
You wouldn't believe the number of people who sidestep trouble with a deal like that, and then go right out and burn it up like idiots. I just don't get it?
Or did it say they wouldn't commit any more crimes?
We are all human. Nobody wins this 'moral crusade' that takes up so much airtime.
We should be much more focused on the existential threats that the entire biosphere is dealing with, not the 'dick pics' of the world's richest man. He's just another dude at his core it seems, happens to be founder of Amazon though.
Normally, the Bezos affair story would be gossipy, but this alleges extortion, extraordinarily.
(Also, why is Jeff Bezos using Medium? He owns a newspaper.)
Of course, we all know the only reason WashPo publishes articles critical of the administration is Bezos right? It mean, it's not like every other mainstream paper all over the world does it. And for no connection, no connection at all, the Whitehouse is suddenly talking about raising the rate Amazon is charged for postage. That couldn't possibly be vindictive retaliation by state power to get a newspaper to change, could it? Nah.
Edit: apparently he verified it by tweeting it. Still a worthwhile thing to remember to check in the future though, I imagine this kind of thing eventually being gamed, especially in such a drama-filled escapade as this.
Using his stake in the WaPo to boost a personal rebuttal would be a tremendous ethical lapse.
it does come across as quickly written and rather genuine
Very strange writing style "complexifier", "back to the story" multiple times.
In fact, why not bring up that he owns one of the most heavily trafficked websites on the planet. Why didn’t he publish this letter to Amazon.com front page? Equally valid question, no?
Jeff Bezos didn't spend his Thursday afternoon throwing up a static site in an S3 bucket.
He hit "publish" on Medium.
As others have mentioned, “thing of value” does not have to be monetary. For example, there are a number of cases where a person was found guilty of extorting another for sexual favors[0] or to exact a particular benefit (political or otherwise) from a victim.
——-
The idea of AMI foregoing a story is not a good argument in this case because this would mean AMI profits by Bezos ignoring the request...
Failure to immediately understand why this is bad idea boggles my mind. Maybe this is how we ended up with Trump in the first place.
I am not sure the same thing can be true with his own newspaper.
It helps to be backed by untold wealth but here is a guy who stands tall in the face of ghastly behaviour and in the face of deep personal embarrassment.
+1 Bezos.
Whatever the right adjective is, I'd definitely pick a negative one.
The way he cheated only makes an already dirty act so much nastier.
/s
Taken from the point of view of the divorce court, this is a LOT more ammo for his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her side. These photos are very soon to hit the greater web/papers and WILL be used against him in the proceedings.
You are correct, this decision by him to speak out is likely to cost him Billions.
It's something in the way people would look at you, talk about you, etc ...
If you combine that with the Streisand effect, there's no way a public figure can take this kind of hit and walk away unphased. It's very much human nature, and that's why Jeff's move is bold.
The only thing missing here is Bezos offering to up the ante with a newer dickpic.
In fact offering the full text of the extortion attempt shows true courage, and at the same time claims back all the power the items might have had.
It just makes me despise these dickheads even more and totally root (the Australian version) for Bezos - go get them!!
I'm super interested in what happens next.
AFAIK we are talking about a naked pic. If that was really so dangerous, people would never take naked selfies in the first place. I think it's hyperbole, even by american's puritan standards
I do of course realize that things can be very different for people in different positions, and of course sextortion of minors is a very different thing. But for someone reasonably secure both financially and emotionally, who cares? Only the sort of people I don't willingly spend time around anyway.
I don't know Bezos, but he's certainly OK financially, and this reaction seems to demonstrate emotional competence, too.
One thought did occur to me is that he is basically daring AMI to release the pictures. What if he knows the providence of these pictures, knows how they got into AMI hands, and knows that if AMI publish them he can sue them, Gawker (not Buzzfeed) style, into the ground?
Bezos is reasonably safe in airing this, because AMI will only dig itself a deeper hole if they post them. AMI botched the crud out of this operation by leaving a paper trail: They made accepting their offer completely unnecessary; I don't think there's any chance the pictures get posted now.
Given a choice between action X and action Y, and given all the facts and experience and self-knowledge currently at one's disposal, which option will you look back on in future with fewer/lesser regrets?
You then commit to the path that you currently judge minimises your future contrition.
The very literal minded will take this at face value and miss the point of the construct, which is that having committed to a given path you have minimised your regret even if it turns out to be the wrong choice. Because you can look back and say "given the information I had, it looked like the right one". Which is another way of saying, "if I had my time again, I'd do it the same way", only now with rational evidence of this claim.
Thus turning confirmation bias into an affirmative and effective decision tool, by preforming the outcome around it.
If you follow this procedure, you may still turn out unhappy, but you won't blame yourself. It is especially recommended for people who may otherwise experience chronic decision paralysis comorbidly with crippling imposter syndrome.
One practical issue with this advice is that it can lead to the "death of a thousand cuts" where any single binary event can be weighed one way but over the course of thousands of iterations, the aggregate would be weighed the opposite.
Sure, in theory one would take into account all possible futures where this could happen but in practical terms that is a tough thing to do and there is seldom a good point to stop.
On the other hand I tend only to apply it for substantial life decisions. Quitting my job to launch a startup; getting married; moving to another country (x4); not eating the entire cheesecake; choosing Vim over Emacs etc.
<spoilers>
Where at the end once the mc has the new ability, she can see her painful future, and yet she accepts it because, well, what can you do about predestination? Had me thinking, if an individual could perceive time non-linearly, would they see their future folly, and yet perform the same mistakes, at peace with their actions?
</spoilers>
He has demonstrated a certain level of integrity, but that doesn't make him a Good Man.
And in the current world[+] there's so much exposure that such pictures will be drowned out by the sheer volume of stuff. Yes, we're still at a point where politicians can lose their jobs because of racialist photos or certain indiscretions, but at least the "indiscretions" have less and less power over non-politicians (actual bad deeds still do, but that's not an issue here).
And these pictures are all about consensual behavior that isn't extraordinary. There's not even a scandal.
[+] or in what I can imagine is a linear projection of today's world forward only a few years from now
For anyone else, going bankrupt in an attempt to fight blackmail would be a pyrrhic victory in the best-case scenario.
Morality aside, I don't have any sympathy for tabloids like these. What bothers me is I don't think much will change, even if Bezos wins here. As long as the public has voracious appetite for celebrity juicy stories, someone will find a way to feed it.
Can you clarify what makes one of these different from a racist photo?
Racialism -- pretending or willfully wanting to believe that there are actual meaningful racial distinctions differences -- you can see in the photos of lynchings, slave era laws in the slave states etc. I think most of the people in those photos knew they were wrong, just as I believe some of those old laws I've read were written by people who knew they were wrong. Likewise modern laws that happen to "coincidentally" exclude some sections of the population from voting.
I believe some racist comments and representations can be innocent (though in this day and age, quite few IMHO) and they can also be intended to send a message (e.g. neither Alexander Hamilton nor Aaron Burr were black; you could purposefully either neuter or hyper-extend the portrayal of Shylock to make a point).
The racialists have no excuse.
Sounds like precisely why he felt the buck had to stop somewhere.
It's commonnly known in espionage tradecraft that it's an absolute last resort or totally off limits tool. The risk you take with coercive trade craft are insanely high.
As proven here.
As others have pointed out, the big story is that he's directly accusing them of political motivation (US and/or Saudi), with them threatening him almost confirming that this is correct. For them to show their hand so badly hints strongly towards some guilt. Digging further seems like the last thing they want, so I think it's what should be done.
Would just like to add - regardless of how embarrassing the photos may or may not be, any "news" agency that publishes them goes straight to the top of my shit list and hopefully everybody elses too. Would be good if there was some organized way to show solidarity against black mail of this kind.
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.
Bezos will not win if this blows up. He'll win in the eyes of a few people, and lose in others, and it will only create a stain on his record.
Think of the legacy of Bill and Melinda Gates. It's relatively unscathed.
This will happen even if he does what you said.
> Think of the legacy of Bill and Melinda Gates. It's relatively unscathed.
Yeah, that's because they did not do anything wrong. Here, Jeff cheated on his wife and he is facing the consequences. BTW, Bill gates was very much reviled during the early Microsoft days. People tend to see beyond his past actions due to his tremendously useful social work he has undertaken since he left MS.
I think fewer people than you think are still willing to defend Pecker.
HuffPo headline
I am beginning to think that this is a conspiracy by AMI to damage Washington Post. If Jeff would have done something as requested by AMI, they would again use that against him and start shouting that WaPo has lost credibility, since Jeff is so easy to blackmail.
Wow!
The investigations against Trump and his people are already way past the scope of Nixon or Iran-Contra.
Particularly, at the very least, Trump is on the hook for state charges in New York about his Trump foundation. He can't get pardoned by a sympathetic successor.
I think he did good by reacting as he did, though.
However, something is bugging me: how can you be so stupid to make dick pics with a connected device nowadays?
I mean, the fappening happened, so much happened that you cannot ignore the fact that nothing you're doing with an online device is private.
Anyone, any entity with enough cash, can hack into all your devices in a glimpse.
When you're Jeff f*ing Bezos, you must know better, come on!
My guess is yes.
Along with the United States Marshals Service, he co-designed the MOSAIC Threat Assessment Systems, which is used to screen threats to Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, members of United States Congress, and senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency... De Becker testified in the successful 1994 civil case arising when The Globe tabloid accused an uninvolved man of being the actual assassin of Senator Robert Kennedy. Globe tried to get de Becker's testimony thrown out by a higher court; however, it was ultimately upheld[0]
† Reports emerged today that there's apparently audio of MBS himself ruminating over having him murdered.
Nearly everyone who wants funding at this scale hits up the Saudis. Describing that AMI looked for funding with the Saudi royals doesn't strike me as a particularly significant reveal; Musk did it relatively recently, and he wasn't excoriated for it. How is news that AMI is doing it worthy of a push-all-the-chips-into-the-pot move like AMI pulled?
Now if Bezos' private investigation team is getting close to some kind of Kryptonite like Pecker personally authorized his staff to assist with encouraging Khashoggi to visit the Saudi's Turkish embassy as a favor to the royals to try to ingratiate himself and angle for a funding pitch, then I could understand Pecker's reaction. Even if Pecker and AMI didn't know the Saudi's intent, it would indeed be very awkward for AMI and the Saudis. The other direction this could be going is the Saudis are directing AMI via cut-outs to dissuade any deeper investigation into Khashoggi's death, and miscalculated Bezos' mettle.
I wonder if AMI overplayed the "Bezos cheated in his marriage!1!1" angle, too. If there is more or less a collective shoulder shrug that billionaire POTUS DJT cheated on Melania, I'm not clear what AMI thought the impact would be on Amazon's public opinion that its billionaire founder/leader is doing the same.
This will be interesting to follow.
Whether or not Pecker is a criminal mastermind is for the courts to say, but his response does him no favors in the public eye and in the press.
The Saudis claimed they had no involvement in it, although an Associate Press investigation revealed that it had circulated among Saudis weeks before publication [2]
This issue was distributed at supermarkets across the United States.
Whether there was an untoward arrangement behind it might be under investigation.
1.https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-publisher-pal-puts-saud...
2. https://nypost.com/2018/04/24/the-strange-saga-of-a-pro-saud...
Alternately, maybe some people just like to be bullies.
It could be a bigger story than it seems at the moment.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-publisher-pal-puts-saud...
> Greeting Americans on newsstands is a high-quality glossy advertisement for MBS, The New Kingdom. It retails for $13.99, has no ads and its 200,000 copies can be found in venues ranging from U.S. airports to WalMart, Safeway and Kroger’s—raising questions about the magazine’s financing and its origins. The Saudis say they don’t know how it came to be. AMI, which publishes The National Enquirer, insists it had no outside editorial or financial assistance, from the Trump administration or otherwise.
Web Archive has snapshots from yesterday (2019/02/07) still showing the National Enquirer website.
Kudos to Jeff for standing up to this bullshit.
Was that decision or contract awarded by merit, or coerced? We can rarely know. This is not academic. Why did Obama ratchet up the war on whistleblowers in the CIA/NSA/DIA, charging them with espionage? We can only speculate.
@ev is 3 out of 3 (and a podcast pivot).
> If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can? (On that point, numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI, and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake.)
(emphasis added)
"To modify a quote from The Dark Knight:
"Let me get this straight, you think one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, who owns the Washington Post and pays out of his own pocket to send rockets to space, won't stand up for himself so your plan is to blackmail this person?
Good Luck "
1. An argument for the news worthiness of these pictures could be made like in the Hulk Hogan v Gawker[1]. This is a delicate balance if a judge decides to let this go to trial. Things could get interesting. Especially given the written email.
2. Could a criminal case not be made for blackmail under Title 18 [2]? Or is it that now Jeff has published the letter it is no longer considered blackmail as long as they don't publish the picture?
This is public person directly involved laying down criminal blackmail attempt accusation whose goal was to stop him from investigating the source of the information. If Besoz is lying, Pecker and AMI can sue him for false accusations and win handsome sum of money.
Things that make this interesting case:
Pecker was not worried about himself, because National Enquirer has right to publish pictures they get. He wanted to hide source of the information. That's weird.
Pecker surely is not worried about the wellbeing of some paparazzi or low level information source. Attempted a blackmail and exposing himself to criminal liability means that there is something there.
"Bezos exposes Pecker"
[1] https://nypost.com/cover/covers-for-friday-february-8-2019/
President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.
Is Bezos implicating Trump himself in this scheme?
Let's not kid ourselves about his altruism - the purpose of owning a large paper like the Post is political power... this has been true since at least the time of Lord Beaverbrook.
More likely this was leaked either by Sanchez herself or by someone who had access to her Apple Photos photostream (such as on e.g. a Mac or a shared iPad) where all of this stuff would pop up unless they were using something like WhatsApp with "save images" setting set to off.
Less sophisticated users probably don't even know this setting exists, and it's on by default.
It's going to be fascinating to see what he uncovers. David Pecker has been playing this extortion game for decades (frequently on behalf of his buddy Don Trump). Now Bezos has given a blank check to drain the swamp.
> To lead my investigation, I retained Gavin de Becker. I’ve known Mr. de Becker for twenty years, his expertise in this arena is excellent, and he’s one of the smartest and most capable leaders I know. I asked him to prioritize protecting my time since I have other things I prefer to work on and to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter.
There's nothing embarrassing about being naked but I'm sure most people wouldn't want naked photos of themselves made public.
Abusing a position of power to get sexual favours from a coworker is something quite different, and I don’t think anyone benefits from conflation of the two.
The only salacious angle here — and the letter he got really tries to drive this home — was that he was conducting an affair.
This is Jeff Bezos helping us figure out useful language for standing up to extortion, which is important if we want reciprocal altruism to be a new cultural norm. Transparency is the anti-extortion pattern.
Thank you for your contribution, Jeff!
In the age of privacy conversations, I can’t see how this is supposed to end up positive for the paper. They oversold it here and seem to have opened themselves up to some tough questions in the process.
CNN and MSNBC easily fit that bill.
Wait, is this really true? If it is, then why do wedding photogs claim they have copyright ownership?
Michael Corleone: My father is no different than any other powerful man,... like a senator or a president.
Kay Adams: You know how naive you sound?
Michael: Why?
Kay Adams: Senators and presidents don't have men killed.
Michael: Who's being naive, Kay?
Because Bezos thinks there is a political angle, and he wants to really find out who is behind this and expose them, this seems to be the best course of action.
The sole reason for this blackmail attempt was to make Bezos to back down and stop trying to find the source of this information. This means someone was worried and it's not just normal paparazzi stuff. Peckers attempt has backfired spectacularly.
With all the publicity, any individual in the government or in some telecom company who might have illegally gained access to those records must be panicking.
If there is foreign involvement, this will become a counterintelligence investigation. If Trump is involved, Mueller will take a look. Pecker has already cooperation agreement with Mueller, so Pecker is in real trouble.
1) I suggest this is not blackmail in the legal sense. AMI, whatever they are - are not idiots. AMI probably knows better than any company in the world what is going to constitute 'newsworthy' items, at least in the legal sense. To suggest they would do something blatantly illegal and criminal in an email of all things ... I think does not make sense.
They do this sort of thing for a living.
2) This is a back room deal, a pretty normal one. They are asking Bezos to state:
"have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces."
This may actually technically be true. Does Bezos actually have hard evidence of political interference? And how would acquire this? And if he doesn't, what is the cost of merely stating a fact?
If we move out of a moral headspace for a moment and just consider the realpolitik of the situation - it's tantamount to a kind of 'legal blackmail' - superficially, it's not a bad deal at all.
This is hardball and it's not exactly uncommon in business, it's just of a very personal nature.
3) If those pics are published, the 'courage' of Bezos' ostensible principled stance are not going to be rewarded.
The #1 thing Bezos will be known for, for at least a decade are his 'dick picks' and that he was 'cheating on his wife and kids'.
None of the context will really matter that much, i.e. maybe he was already separated, maybe the 'dick picks' were totally private, nothing to do with work, the woman did not work for him etc..
It does not matter.
A dick pick is all anyone will know.
Bezos is famous among us, but he's not really famous among regular people, but this could make could really make him a 'household name' for the wrong reasons.
Remember: the realm of pop culture nobody cares about 'principles'. Images flashing across the screen of a blurred out penis will be 99% of the news type thing.
This is a 'pop culture' war, not a legal war, or a war among public intellectuals or businessmen. This is a 'Buzzfeed war' and Bezos doesn't have any ammunition.
His penis may be seen by billions, almost nobody will read his Medium post.
4) I respect his choice - but - he has a company to worry about. If this blows up, and it starts to affect his 'perceived credibility' - what is he going to tell his board? He had a 'truce agreement' on the table which seemed ostensibly reasonable (assuming Bezos doesn't have some crazy evidence that he really needs to provide the feds?).
The pragmatic choice would have been to make a truce with his warring entities.
Thankfully, Bezos has billions and ownership etc. and doesn't have a normal CEO-board relationship, as I believe most 'regular boards' would have seen only the realpolitik of the situation and would be aghast that he didn't make an agreement.
So good on him for ostensibly 'doing the right thing' but I feel there is much more to come.
...and have been caught before: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/12/national-enq...
I really think you give them too much credit. This is a publication known to operate somewhere on the spectrum between shady and illegal. This latest development fits the picture perfectly.
> 2) This is a back room deal, a pretty normal one. They are asking Bezos to state: "have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces."
“Asking“. If it is just a normal deal, not amounting to extortion, and I disagree with that, it‘s off the table now. After Bezos‘ letter a statement anywhere close to or resembling what AMI is asking is now meaningless.
> 3) If those pics are published, the 'courage' of Bezos' ostensible principled stance are not going to be rewarded. The #1 thing Bezos will be known for, for at least a decade are his 'dick picks' and that he was 'cheating on his wife and kids'.
Maybe 20 years ago. In today’s climate this story hardly fills a full news cycle. Furthermore sexting probably doesn’t lead to the same public shock and outrage it might have decades or just years ago, as it’s pretty much become a relatable thing large parts of the population have taking part in at some points in their life. It’s rather tame by today’s standards, where presidents fuck porn stars while their third(?) wife cares for the newborn and Jefrey Epstein gets a slap on the wrist for molesting and raping hundreds of children: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html
> 4) I respect his choice - but - he has a company to worry about. If this blows up, and it starts to affect his 'perceived credibility' - what is he going to tell his board? He had a 'truce agreement' on the table which seemed ostensibly reasonable (assuming Bezos doesn't have some crazy evidence that he really needs to provide the feds?). The pragmatic choice would have been to make a truce with his warring entities.
Playing along with AMI‘s demands is what actually would have affected Bezos‘ and The Post‘s credibility. His choice, even if bold, is the natural and obvious option. Frankly, I don‘t know what AMI was thinking.
"On December 12, 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced its agreement with A.M.I. "AMI admitted that it made the $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign," the press release said, so that Karen McDougal wouldn't "publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election."
I mean, it's not exactly an obscure bit of news.
Do a Playgirl spread, for charity. Spreadeagle.
Defang them.
--------
Edit:
defang them (pun intended... get it? "fang") by doing Playgirl now, and publishing those sext images alongside. And do it for some great charity.
Everybody will have a huge laugh over it, Jeff will be a hero, and National Enquirer will have nothing to publish.
Once you've torn them limb from limb, once Pecker is rotting in a jail sell and the only thing the National Enquirer is useful for is recycling them into cup holders; then you walk into Playgirl and do a photo shoot of these exact photos just to make sure they all know it was never about the pictures.
As of now, all I read from knowledgeable people is that there is no case- as is shown by the fact that mr bezos chose to make the 'evidence' public. My question is- does there still stay no case if they publish the pictures? Or does that change things? I'm assuming it won't because Mr bezos wouldn't risk publicizing the evidence considering that eventualit
But, really, what does he have to be worried about? If they publish them, what's the actual harm to him, now that he's said they exist?
http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2016/01/20/090...
These photos were stolen.
>I didn’t know much about most of that a few weeks ago when intimate texts messages from me were published in the National Enquirer. I engaged investigators to learn how those texts were obtained, and to determine the motives for the many unusual actions taken by the Enquirer. As it turns out, there are now several independent investigations looking into this matter.
AMI showed up on Bezos's rader after they published his intimate text messages. Gawker showed up on Thiel's radar after they outed him. They both then went investigating to see if there was some illegal activity that these media companies were engaged in.
They never explicitly say that, do they? I'm not enough of a lawyer to know if what they did still counts as extortion/blackmail, but as far as I can see they simply describe the photos, and propose an agreement that would prevent them from publishing the photos. But they never say "Do this or we'll publish the photos" - perhaps they never intended to publish them in the first place.
Situation A: where none of this happened. Ami reserves the right to publish photos. Perfectly legal.
Situation B: Present Offer- I wont publish them. But if you cheat- we go back to situation A.
Plain and simple. I am no lawyer bit everyone I've read today says that basically bezos has no case and his legal allowed him to publicize evidence and comment on 'an ongoing case'- commentary which can alter the 'case' pretty much means there is no case. The only thing that remains to be seen (or ignored) is when Ami will publish his photos because if they really want to play this game- that's what their next step would be.
>In the case of a breach of the agreement by one or more of the Bezos Parties, AM is released from its obligations under the agreement, and may publish the Unpublished Materials.
That's very directly saying that they will publish the photos if Bezos doesn't do what they say.
They don't really need to say more than that, do they?