Hacked celebs’ lawyers threaten to sue Google for failing to remove nude photos and videos

“Lawyers for the female celebrities whose nude or private images were hacked are threatening to sue Google for $100 million for allegedly failing to remove the images and ‘making millions from the victimization of women,'” Emily Smith reports for The New York Post’s Page Six. “Images of stars including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Amber Heard, Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez and Cara Delevingne have been distributed online in what is said to be the biggest celebrity hacking scandal in history.”

“Now top Hollywood lawyer Marty Singer, who represents over a dozen of the women affected by the leak, has written a sternly-worded letter to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as Eric Schmidt and Google lawyers accusing them of ‘blatantly unethical behavior,'” Smith reports. “The letter, exclusively seen by Page Six claims Google has failed, ‘to act expeditiously, and responsibly to remove the images, but in knowingly accommodating, facilitating, and perpetuating the unlawful conduct. Google is making millions and profiting from the victimization of women.'”

Read more in the full article here.


Related articles:
Apple denies iCloud breach – September 3, 2014


  1. Personal responsibility?

    When you and your body is technically so valuable, surely having ANY compromising images out there is a very very stupid thing to do.

    Saw the images, didn’t care.

    1. Apple sold hundreds of millions of iPhones. Some 80% of them are running iOS 7 or higher. One of the most practical features on iOS7 (and higher) is PhotoStream. You take a picture with your phone, and as soon as your phone is connected to WiFi (and most of the time, it always is), the photo is uploaded to your PhotoStream on the iCloud, and from there, automatically downloaded to all your other Apple devices. It works in the background and is completely transparent to the user. This is a great feature, as it allows you to have a safe backup of your recently taken photos, as well as a redundant copy of your entire photo library (assuming one of your Apple devices is a Mac).

      When a person takes a picture with their phone, logical assumption is that the picture is now on the phone and nowhere else but the phone. As the most intimate and private device one could have, it is a logical perception that it will be protected on that phone, and thus inaccessible, as long as you still have the phone. And recent introductions in iOS 7 mean that even if someone steals your iPhone, they can’t get to the data inside.

      There is only ONE single minor drawback to this, and how big it is will depend on how (in)secure is your Apple ID password. If you have a weak password, someone will guess it and gain access to your address book and pictures.

      You don’t have to be a “stupid vain celebrity” in order to make assumptions about security of your phone.

      On a related subject, the vast majority of public comments on this forum coming, with disdain, form a moral high ground, are from Americans, which is a bit amusing (and a quite a bit more hypocritical). Considering that Americans spend close to $1 Billion (with a ‘B’) annually on pornography, unless there is a thousand perverts who spend a million bucks each on their porn, most who comment about the immorality of these celebrities seem to be happily enjoying their porn in the privacy of their home…

        1. Well, the number is hotly contested. Porn industry has always been trying to inflate the number, and if you listen to them, they are bigger than the mainstream Hollywood. It is rather difficult to get the accurate data, but most reliable estimates seem to put it close to $1B. This still means that every average American adult male spends a bit under $10 on porn every year. Considering the amount of free porn out there (where spending is indirect, via online ads), Americans seem to be very porn-happy (if quite prudish in public…).

      1. Photostream needs to be turned on in order for it to upload to iCloud then onto a Mac or iPad.
        You have to access your photostream on the Mac or iPad and rename the photostream as well as moving it out of photostream onto your albums so that it is not deleted when you delete the photos from your iPhone.
        Delete the photos from your iPhone to delete the photostream from iCloud and photostream in order to start a new photostream having recovered memory from your iCloud and camera.
        Now only the photos in iCloud which are the latest could possibly be hacked via the advertised hack.
        If you have a massive memory on your iPhone which I presume celebs do and unlimited iCloud storage, then I can see a situation in which all your stream has not been named and moved out of iCloud onto your Macs hard drive.
        Does anybody else concur with my postulation?

  2. Whether you’re using Google’s services or Apple’s services, putting sensitive photos of yourself out there like that is a very stupid thing to do.

    No matter how secure it is. If one man made it, another man can break it. And once your photos are on the internet, they’re on the internet.

    1. They didn’t put the pictures “out there”. They took them with their iPhone and rightfully (but incorrectly) assumed that the pictures will remain on their phones and nowhere else but their phones, and that the phones are protected. They didn’t know what is PhotoStream and how it works.

      1. If you’re going to use today’s sophisticated smartphones, doesn’t it behoove you to learn a little about them? At least go through/learn the available preferences (like how to turn a feature OFF). Who’s responsibility is it when smartphone owners use technology apparently beyond their ken?

        1. Well, if you talk to a lawyer, he’ll tell you it is your responsibility to learn all the features.

          Ask an ordinary person and everyone will tell you that it is a normal expectation that when you take a picture with a camera (or a camera phone), that it will get stored on that camera(phone). It wasn’t until last year that the PhotoStream feature even became available, so nobody in their sane mind would expect ordinary people to actually know that there is this automatic upload to the cloud from your phone. And because it works with no user interaction, and so transparently, no user will ever even learn about it — it will all look like magic. As we all know, that is precisely why everyone flocks to Apple products — they just work (like magic).

  3. I’m surprised that the people who posted these photos online did only on Google, and not Fatbook, Twather or any of the one myriad of web sites that have sex photos.

    Of course the North American mainstream media would never publish nude photos, they think of the children and stick with a true seller, violence, beheadings and fear mongering.

    I’m surprised here too by this quote: “Google knows the images are hacked stolen property, private and confidential photos and videos unlawfully obtained and posted by pervert predators who are violating the victims’ privacy rights …” Why not name the NSA/CIA/FBI directly?

    I find this pretty sexist: “Google has turned a blind eye while its sites repeatedly exploit and victimize these women.” Come on, get with the program, Google exploits and victimizes everyone they possibly can.

    Oh lookie here, I remembered to put a /shjtt tag. Yes that satire humor, joke, tall tale tag means that this post is all imaginary and is solely for the amusement of the fine community at MDN.

  4. Predrag,
    When you first set up your phone, you are given the option to either log in or not to iCloud. If you blindly enable that feature, without know what it is, then you are either stupid or ignorant or both. So putting the blame on a ‘feature’ is a bit disingenuous.

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