Hackers leaked her photos then she was charged for breaking anti-porn laws | Hacker News Reader

Hackers leaked her photos then she was charged for breaking anti-porn laws

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93 pointsrogerram52 comments

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> " In Rwanda, nude photos of 2017 presidential candidate, Diane Rwigara, surfaced on the internet. She said the images had been doctored and were intended to discredit her."

This is the crazy part. Why bother "hacking" when deep-faking is such an easy option? At the same time, this allows for plausible deniability even if the photos are real.

One difference is that with a deep-fake the target knows it's not real, and is easier to shrug off, at least for themselves. If the target knows it is real then the feeling of shame and embarrassment would be a lot greater for many people (depending on personality and cultural attitudes).

Having deep fake photos pop up in the internet is going to make most people feel shame.

Probably, but less. Personally I wouldn't actually care all that much.

But it's impossible to tell if that shame is because the photo is fake or real because people have a range of natural reactions to something like that.

The psychological impact of remembering those exact pictures can be very jarring.

We should thank hackers in a way for exposing what the world is becoming in terms of mass surveillance.

If they did not pull stunts like these we would be much more trusting of our devices. Governments and shadier entities would access our data at their will and wouldn't stupidly publicize what they are doing when they don't have to.

Of course a presidential candidate has powerful enemies who may be themselves part of the state establishment. So in this case I believe the situations are intertwined

“But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable, let's drink their health, then meet with them no more.”

— V

How could have her phone been hacked after creating a profile on a web site?

There was a time when you could root an Android phone to install a custom OS by visiting a website that exploited a vulnerability. It's reasonable to assume that's not the only vulnerability of its kind.

You probably still can, unless the Android phone was made in the last 2-3 years. Android manufacturers are absolutely dismal when it comes to security updates, few devices get good support for the 5+ years a smartphone is actually used

You definitely still can. Zerodium pays "up to" $500k for them.

Useless after reboot, if you're using verified boot.

Android didn't get that until 8. This was before that. A lot of devices run pre-8 Androids.

Probably classic phishing attack of pretending to be Google/Apple and asking her for the username/password, with some blah blah like "Welcome to the UN website, please link your Google/Apple/Instagram account by entering your username and password here:".

IIRC Facebook and LinkedIn did this in the past, they would say "Welcome to Facebook/LinkedIn! Let us go through your inbox to harvest email addresses so you can find your friends, we already have your email address, just enter your password here:".

Most African and Asian countries have laws against the production or distribution of pornography.

Unless you're talking to Church members, it's not really seen as a moral concern but a simple procedural problem: we can't easily be sure if pornography was produced with willing knowing participants and the economic benefits are not worth the bureaucracy to make sure.

The whole article is an odd scattershot approach of criticizing many different countries without naming specifics of the law and only interviewing the 'victims' without getting any insight into the actual governments---who are democratically elected and literally pay people to respond to these questions.

For example, the Uganda law was dropped[1] and the arrested model never faced any jail time or fines. In the Uganda case, the law went further than any others by criminalizing nudity and 'indecent' clothing regardless of context, which is insane considering nudity is not naturally taboo in our culture (nudity taboos were imported from Christian missionaries). It even criminalized 'indecent' language like songs about sex. It was light-years past a 'anti-pornography' law but it's being lumped in under the same banner because the article is in my opinion lazily written.

The Rwanda case was a politician being shamed---not an example of a law being used against anyone.

Lydia's case has no country attached but she used the anti-pornography laws to get her ex-boyfriend to stop posting her pictures on social media. That's a case of the law being used for good, right?

In the Tanzania case, the woman herself is urging the government to take action against the people who illegally posted her pictures [2]. Why is this article using that example as support for the anti-pornography camp?

All said, it just doesn't make sense.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58235637 [2] https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/entertainment/news/200128885...

Thanks for adding some interesting info around these things.

I can see how it's easy to feel this: "she used the anti-pornography laws to get her ex-boyfriend to stop posting her pictures on social media. That's a case of the law being used for good, right?"

but I'm not in agreement for a few reasons...

first let me say I m 100% against people sharing intimate photos of others without permission.

Things get a little different in my opinion when people become high level public figures for some reasons .. for example sharing the pics of mr wiener with hookers was not cool.. but considering he became a public figure trying to climb the political ladders and especially because part of that process was him prosecuting hookers and making PR stunts out of it.. well then sharing the pics became a slightly different thing.

Anyhow I hate that anti-porn laws are used for her censoring public discourse - and if the pics were otherwise noteworthy (like they included bisexual whatever and she had voted against lgb or something) - then the photos could be censored in some type of way and published in newspapers for legit public discussion.

I believe she should be able to use copyright laws alone to stop publication / sharing of her pics, and perhaps a lawsuit for defamation (not a great recourse vs poor people) - or other means. But I don't think anti-porn laws should be a thing and they should not be weaponized by the political class to hide things they don't like.

(even though yes, I agree this one appears to be used "good" - I don't have enough info to be 100 on that)

> Unless you're talking to Church members, it's not really seen as a moral concern but a simple procedural problem: we can't easily be sure if pornography was produced with willing knowing participants and the economic benefits are not worth the bureaucracy to make sure.

I'm not sure I buy that it is purely a procedural problem. There is no way to know anyone in any industry is a willing participant in the production of anything. It is already against the law to enslave or coerce people, so you already have a bureaucracy to handle it. You just need a way to report unlawful activity and a bureaucracy that considers sex workers on equal footing to other professions. IMO it is that last point that is the problem and it basically swings back around to people making a moral judgement about sex and sex workers.

On a total tangent, in my opinion many countries in Africa would benefit from a benevolent dictator like Paul. Unfortunately getting a truly benevolent dictator seems to be a one in a million possibility.

So, in a nutshell, presidential candidate is a felon.

Education is key here - we the tech-savvy, need to make more of an effort to educate those less so, on how to remove files from their devices that could prove compromising in the future.

Naturally, I understand that what I've just said isn't the whole answer, but I really do think it's a good place to start.

No, the problem is victim blaming and criminalizing nudity.

> Despite this, Tanzania’s cybercrime unit said that NCII cases are few and far between, with the head of the Cybercrime Unit, Joshua Mwangaza insisting it is not in the country’s culture to send “porn pictures.”

Yeah, that’s some gaslighting right there.

I think the key here would be to change to laws so that victims of non-consensual release of pictures are not charged.

If you are going to change the laws, why not just make pornography legal and use the freed policing to go after illegal hacking of secure devices...

What does "hacking of secure devices" even mean? A device that can be successfully hacked is by definition not secure.

If you want to tackle this issue, get the pornography legislation done with, prosecute distribution of images without consent (with safeguards not to stifle legitimate journalism) and educate people not to create their own kompromat - a nude picture that has not been made cannot be leaked.

Indeed, but I'm not really holding my breath that Uganda is going to change its laws any time soon. Not much you or I can do about this, so education is the next best thing that can make a meaningful difference.

Both of these are true of course. People need to be aware of the dangers online, and learn how to protect themselves from scammers and other predators. But punishing the victim is utterly ridiculous.

Getting laws changed is hard, educating others is easier, and if we all made the effort, the law change wouldn't be necessary.

A similar situation happened in the United States.

https://apnews.com/article/courts-illinois-archive-5872ff80b...

Why this comment? Zero relation whatsoever, in one case the one publishing another's nudes was punished, in the other the victim.

Not all that similar, the victim was not charged.

Sorry, what am I missing?

1. its illegal to produce pornographic material in Uganda*

2. she produced pornographic material (of herself)

3. it came to light (its always a risk)

4. she has been charged.

If you play silly games…

* I don't think it should be, but that's their law.

It's like saying:

1. A gentleman retires and starts a bar 2. Stock it with liquor 3. One night a kid breaks in and gets drunk 4. Cops show up. 5. Bar owner gets prosecuted for supplying alcohol to minors.

So you believe it's irrelevant and should not be discussed?

No more than a) barman sells beer to 20 year sold in USA (1), b) someone leaks a photo of it, c) the authorities find out, d) the twit gets charged.

Hence my question: "What am I missing?"

It fits a pretty simple pattern: "someone broke a local law, it leaked, got punished".

(1) although legal elsewhere

Generally we shouldn't be glad when inhumane laws are enforced, yes?

Even if you supported anti-pornogrophy laws (I know you aren't saying that), another reason why this should be challenged is because it's going to be enforced in gender-biased ways. Primarily women will share a disproportionate burden of scrutiny for this law, particularly so in the case of revenge porn or deepfake.

It's important to advocate for treating women fairly, even when that comes at the cost of cultural insensitivity.

Indecent exposure laws tend to primarily target men. Anti-pornogrophy laws tend to primarily target women.

What conclusions can we make of a culture that have both laws that get enforced in their gender-biased ways?

That there seems to be much of sexual frustration in the men of that culture. Hard to say about the women's sexual frustration because it manifests differently.

It seems that indecent exposure in combination with public urination is quite common. Not sure how much correlation that has with sexual frustration.

> hurr-durr inhumane laws

Dura lex, sed lex.

Laws were humane enough when allowed one to run for president

The issue is that this local law Is flawed, and this flawed law double tapped with criminal activities to hurt female citizens. That is why most of us emphasize with the victim here, but concern less about an underage getting beer from some barman exposed.

If a law is considered unfair that's a perfectly fine topic of discussion. You are being obtuse on purpose.

I think the issue is that the law is unjust and shouldn’t exist.

If HN had to discuss every daft, wrong rule in every country that offended our progressive, post-national sentiments, we would never have time to discuss compilers.

And that would be a crime itself.

I don’t think it would be a crime, but definitely boring.

In this situation I think it’s more newsworthy because of the nature of the violation is more unusual since a law against pornography seems to be intended to punish producers but this person isn’t a producer.

Also, it’s an attractive lady, so that usually makes more people want to discuss.

And Uganda has some other particularly bad laws related to sexuality.

> punish producers but this person isn’t a producer.

Er, then who made it?

Hint, when a common law document says "…the production of…" it means exactly that; they use "… and/or distribution of…" to capture the derived crime of, well, distributing it.

Like kiddie porn, DIY nuclear weapons, and counterfeit money, some things are a crime to simply make - even in the basement their mother's house.

Adults need to be careful in life.

> Also, it’s an attractive lady

Bingo. A ton of karma later, we finally get somewhere.

HackerNews - always about the consistent application of principles without favour or exception.

> Adults need to be careful in life.

No, they don't.

Proponents of such world view are those who feel that they cannot compete with regards to merit and talent, so they hope to do so via their "superior morality".

Bill Clinton did such an amazing job that he could have had orgies with Victoria Secret models in the WH every night for all I care.

Same with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Eric Shmidt, Angela Merkel (Armani male models maybe?).

Mary Barra? With that mid-engine Corvette at 59k MSRP she can "dance with mr. Brownstone" every day for all I care, as long as they keep pumping them out in Dearborn.

Same goes for the Rwandan woman in the article.

>> Adults need to be careful in life.

> No, they don't.

Atheists like me can go to Saudi Arabia (or Uganda) and say and do as we like without pause for the consequences (unreasonable as they may be) to myself and the people that dependent on me?

Come now, this thread is just getting silly.

I will have to bow out now.

> Atheists like me can go to Saudi Arabia (or Uganda) and say and do as we like without pause for the consequences

Honestly, you can. You show the bald eagle in your passport and you'd be looking at a slap on the wrist in all places except North Korea and Iran.

If you want to discuss compilers, why did you click on this thread?

Because - and focus now - I came to learn something. I even said so in my OP.

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