Whew, thank goodness! The world is finally paying attention to Internet security. Up till now, it's been too minor an issue to notice -- a few million credit cards stolen here, another million-plus tax returns and identities compromised there, not to mention the NSA crawling around in every citizen's inbox and brain stem while darkening the skies with cam-equipped, war-driving stealth drones that need to know where you are and what you're doing every minute of every day.
That's nothing, barely a blip on the trouble scale. Now it's serious. America and the world have come together around a real Internet tragedy and raised awareness of its security problems to a level where someone may have to do something. Finally! All it took was Jennifer Lawrence's butt.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Nude photos, phone records, NSA data offer essential lessons for admins. | For a humorous take on the tech industry's shenanigans, follow Cringely on Twitter. ]
Yeah, that's my patented talent of really subtle sarcasm, in case you didn't pick up on it. In truth I don't know what to think anymore. Is humanity too stupid to survive? Is that why aliens haven't bothered to visit us? Do we apathetic consumer addicts simply deserve the Web beatings we're taking every other day? You have to wonder.
Lawrence and the other compromised celebs made the news for a full week. Theories abounded. Apple claims it was someone else's fault. Other folks say Apple inexplicably didn't protect against brute-force attacks. Miley Cyrus wished she hadn't already shown everyone her goodies, so she could get some hack headlines, too. Every news outlet I saw ran multiple stories on the Case of the Cracked Celebrity Coochie all week long and some into this week.
Who's minding the Home Depot?
Meanwhile, Home Depot got hacked in the same timespan, losing what early reports say may be even more credit card numbers than Target. Yet it didn't even make Google's Top Stories list. My clean-mouthed editors probably won't let me print this, but W-T-F?! If all I'm doing is shouting at the wind when it comes to data assaults like this one, then I'm not sure what to do anymore.
On top of that, now there's a series of arguments about whether these celebrities should have known better. Let me make this very, very clear: Yes, they should have! I agree that celebrities should have the right to post any kind of pictures they want on the same cloud we all use and expect the same rights to privacy and the same level of security. Unfortunately, that means none.