Sex, Lies and Data
All the times a data hack ruined a person’s life
I thought this would be harder. On second thought, let me rephrase that: I was hoping this would be harder. I thought it would take a lot of digging to uncover stories about people whose privacy had been jeopardized in a way that changed the course of theirs and their loved one’s lives for the worse. I figured, naively perhaps, that the recent news alleging that the Saudi government used an Israeli cybersecurity firm’s spyware to hack the sensitive conversations of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was a less common occurrence. Or at the very least that similar stories would be more difficult to find than entering “hack ruined life,” into a Google search bar. I was wrong.
First, let me further explain the recent news I’m referring to…
Last week, the Washington Post reported that attorneys for Omar Abdulaziz, a 27 year old Canada-based Saudi activist who is based in Montreal, lodged a civil case against the NSO Group in Tel Aviv on Sunday, legal papers show. The opposition activist has said he learned that his phone had been hacked in August, some two months after he clicked on an infected link. The Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto project that investigates digital espionage aimed at civil society, concluded with “high confidence” that the Saudi government targeted his cellphone using Pegasus spyware created by NSO. Put more simply, it’s been uncovered that one major factor that led to the death of Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi government is the fact that his messages were hacked. All of which got me thinking, how often does a person’s data directly reckon with their reality.
1) The Fappening
We’ll start this list off on a slightly less fatal note. On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, and with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. More commonly referred to as the Fappening, the distribution of the images was a major invasion of privacy for their subjects. The leak also prompted increased concern from analysts surrounding the privacy and security of cloud computing services such as iCloud — with a particular emphasis on their use to store sensitive, private information.
2) The Ultimate Robbery
In 2015, Fox Sports reporter Charissa Thompson had her entire life turned upside down after hackers got a hold of her personal videos and pictures in her phone and released various nude photos, as well as a video of her masturbating. “”When it comes to your physical being and intimate photos between you and your boyfriend and things that you sent to someone when you were in a long-distance relationship and in love, it is your private property,” Thompson told Sports Illustrated. “So it felt — the obvious — like such an invasion. But then the depths I am still taking to get back that privacy are unbelievable. The way I equate is someone came into my home, robbed my home of all its possessions, put it out in the cul-de-sac right in front of me, and I had to buy all of it right back to put back in my house.”
3) The Government Overreach
Just last month in Mexico, after Javier Valdez, a prominent investigative reporter, had been shot dead, his colleagues received a text message that the killer had been detained. In all likelihood however, it wasn’t true. Since 2011, at least three Mexican federal agencies have purchased about $80 million worth of spyware created by an Israeli cyberarms manufacturer. The same software mentioned above — Pegasus — which infiltrates smartphones to monitor every detail of a person’s cellular life including calls, texts, email, contacts and calendars. It can even use the microphone and camera on phones for surveillance, turning a target’s smartphone into a personal bug. Why is the Mexican government doing this? According to the New York Times, the Mexican government is monitoring journalists and their families. “Cyberexperts can verify when the software has been used on a target’s phone, leaving them with few doubts that the Mexican government, or some rogue actor within it, was involved,” reported the Times.
4) The Spyware Hack
This past August, a company that sells spyware to consumers specifically and openly marketing its product to domestic abusers got hacked. In fact, it was the seventh company that sells spyware to average consumers that’s been breached in the last two years. “The company has published several blog posts pitching its products as a solution to ‘spy on your cheating husband,’ given that it’s ‘undetectable’ and ‘silent.’” But as it turns out, it’s real pitch should be that it’s got mediocre security and per the hacker’s own words, the data left in the wrong hands is potentially “very dangerous.” “You can know everything about any person, and also you know the attacker identity. It is very easy to ransomware them, and gain a lot of dirty money,” L.M. [the hacker] told Motherboard. “Any black hat hacker can fuck them and turn their life into a hell.”
5) The Facebook Hack
But of course, arguably the most famous data hack in recent memory occurred just a few short months ago when Facebook announced that anywhere from 50 to 90 million user accounts had been jeopardized after the company had been hacked. While acknowledging that the breach was massive, Facebook admitted that they have no information about who was responsible, what their intentions were, or whether any account information was mishandled. “Since we’ve only just started our investigation, we have yet to determine whether these accounts were misused or any information accessed,” the company said. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that as of writing this, there is no evidence that this particular hack has ruined the life of any of its victims but I’m including it in this list because the not knowing what, who or why this hack occurred is what makes this particular data breach so terrifying. Not to mention the fact that 50–90 million users were at risk of having their digital identities and thence their lives turned upside down, inside out and auctioned off to the highest bidder.
So what’s the conclusion here…
Despite what you want to believe, data is not just information that’s stored in the form of 0s and 1s. In the 21st century and every subsequent century, data is your private property. It is your secrets, your profile and increasingly, it is interlinked with your livelihood. Which only means that as governments and independent actors continue to infiltrate our lives via our most vulnerable technological pressure points, your data could be the difference between life and death.
