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No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
- minimaxir 8y agoImportant note: This is written by Jeff Bezos himself. Normally, the Bezos affair story would be gossipy, but this alleges extortion, extraordinarily. (Also, why is Jeff Bezos using Medium? He owns a newspaper.)
- danso 8y agoHe probably doesn’t want to give people more reasons to suspect that he might use WaPo as his personal propaganda platform.
- cromwellian 8y agoHe says as much. 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.
- matt4077 8y agoHe really hasn’t given them any, has he? I mean, besides buying it. The Post has even been quite critical of Amazon, regarding HQ 2, for example.
- olefoo 8y agoHe actually seems to understand the relationship of publisher to newspaper in a way that fairly traditional. He ( in the form of Amozon ) has made it very easy to subscribe to the Post and helped raise it's paywall. But has assiduously left the editorial side of the house to the people he has hired to run it.
- OkGoDoIt 8y agoIs there a good way to verify it’s actually written by him? Doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to set up a fake Medium profile and post this claiming to be him. There’s nothing else posted under this profile, almost no followers, unless he has linked to it from some other verified source I don’t think we can assume it is genuine. 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.
- berberous 8y agoHe tweeted it: https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1093643321732464646 https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1093643321732464646
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- woodruffw 8y ago> (Also, why is Jeff Bezos using Medium? He owns a newspaper.) Using his stake in the WaPo to boost a personal rebuttal would be a tremendous ethical lapse.
- dudus 8y agoAnd also contrary to his own arguments in this very story.
- loeg 8y agoCould just publish it as a letter to the editor, no? Papers public random screeds all the time.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoAs Bezos states in his post, he already gets tons of crap from Trump and other idiots that he uses WaPo for personal ends (mainly because these other amoral characters couldn't believe themselves owning a newspaper and not using it as a personal propaganda outlet). He's wise to post this on a neutral platform and not give his enemies any more ammunition.
- loeg 8y agoSure, I don't think leaning on WaPo would have helped him here (and I did not suggest that). Plenty of other papers he doesn't own publish random letters to the editor.
- theNJR 8y agoAlso interesting that the writing is a bit clunky. Doesn't seem to have gone through 100 coms people.
- wp381640 8y agoapparently his lawyers didn't even know he was posting it does come across as quickly written and rather genuine
- sundvor 8y agoYep, and I love it even more so for that reason. This is the kind of gloves off, honest response that instantly made me respect him.
- postscapes1 8y agoThis was my first thoughts as well. Very strange writing style "complexifier", "back to the story" multiple times.
- spydum 8y agomaybe he considered his audience, and it's not the genpop, but tech people who read such things?
- hbosch 8y agoPersonal stuff is for blogs. The Washington Post is a business, a respected newspaper, an internationally renowned journalistic publication. It’s not a soapbox for Bezos... 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?
- rsynnott 8y agoActually, it'd be far less improper to do that than to put it in the Post.
- imgabe 8y agoYeah but why Medium? Surely he could throw up a static site in an S3 bucket...
- ElijahLynn 8y agoMedium has reach.
- newsbinator 8y agoBecause it's there. Jeff Bezos didn't spend his Thursday afternoon throwing up a static site in an S3 bucket. He hit "publish" on Medium.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoApparently it's not a clear cut case of extortion, because no money is exchanged. A "thing of value" may do, but it's not clear that AMI's demands rise to that level.
- Mtinie 8y agoAMI is willing to accept a loss of future profits gained from running the story, in exchange for Bezos’s capitulation. If you have access to AMI’s advertising rate card and a rough subscriber count you can estimate the USD value this information represents. 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. ——- [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextortion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextortion
- bayesian_horse 8y agoNo, it doesn't only mean "money". Still, it's not perfectly clear that the requested declaration is a "thing of value" and legal scholars are already debating it. 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...
- BuffaloBagel 8y ago> (Also, why is Jeff Bezos using Medium? He owns a newspaper.) 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.
- kumarvvr 8y agoOne thing for sure is that he cannot retro-actively edit an article on Medium, without medium knowing about it. I am not sure the same thing can be true with his own newspaper.
- hirsin 8y agoFairly certain you can't edit the news/paper/ after it's been printed and distributed.
- ck425 8y agoHe doesn't need to use the Post. He's the richest man in the world, if he writes an article claiming someone is trying to extort him it'll get plenty of press regardless. And with Medium he can just publish it himself and it removes any biases folk have about the paper.
- rsynnott 8y agoHe owns a newspaper company, but the newspaper isn't his personal blog. It would be quite improper to use it as such, and a decent editor probably wouldn't allow it. He could maybe write an opinion piece, though even that seems dubious.
- danso 8y ago> Well, that got my attention. But not in the way they likely hoped. Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can? 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.
- hypochondria 8y agoI don't think that this is a great example. The scandal was already out. His wife was already leaving him. The public already knows and already assumed lurid exploits. The rest is just details. It would be different if the decision to publicize this extortion attempt had been what caused his divorce.
- reitzensteinm 8y agoThey are threatening to post photos of him sexting. Calling that "just details" is a stunning lack of empathy. Even if you'd personally be unperturbed by a similar situation, the vast majority of humans would find it humiliating and invasive in the extreme.
- hypochondria 8y ago> They are threatening to post photos of him sexting. Is a photo published in a disreputable magazine significantly worse than the information already out so far which already got people thinking about him sexting anyway combined with losing custody of ~70 billion dollars in the coming divorce? I'm not so sure. Their privacy was already thoroughly invaded before this latest development.
- reitzensteinm 8y agoIt doesn't matter if it's worse. Going through a public divorce doesn't make one stop caring about an invasion of sexual privacy. It doesn't work like that.
- andrewstuart 8y ago"proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter" 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.
- Pharmakon 8y agoThat gave me chills, and the phrase, If you’re going to shoot the king, you’d better be goddamned sure you’re going to kill him flashed through my mind. Well, they missed spectacularly, and now the man who has a rocket company for fun is clearly pissed.
- exolymph 8y agoYou come at the king, you best not miss. Also, never take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy ;P
- Pharmakon 8y agoI think Omar, Stringer and Machiavelli would have gotten along on some level. "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
- mcguire 8y agoIf you're going to do unto others,do unto them hard enough that they cannot return the favor.
- weston 8y agoIt’s amazing how many people in Trump’s inner circle love quoting mob movies, calling people “rats” and “stoolies” but can’t seem to get down even the basics of being a half-decent criminal. I mean, Roger Stone literally told people to lie to Congress via an email. One can quote mob movies all day but that doesn’t make them a smart criminal.
- Balgair 8y agoWhatever you think about Jeff, this is the correct way to handle such things. We should all have the same character in such a situation (despite how the situation arose; in this case via an affair). Jeff has MANY other issues of moral disfortitude (we all do to some degree, though not at these scales). However, this particular event is to be applauded and emulated.
- gumby 8y agoAgree, good for him!
- buboard 8y agoThis sounds too bad to be true , but if true i think it's how any sensible person should handle it. I mean, a dik pik who will care a month later. Did they really think that such misguided extortion would work? It really doesn't make much sense unless someone else was pushing forward this extortion
- anonu 8y agoI'm gonna guess that the National Enquirer knows what the response will be when they say "we'll release your pics". They probably weren't expecting this move by bezos
- optimiz3 8y agoAmazon could pull a CloudFlare and knock them off the internet as nationalenquirer.com seems to be hosted on AWS. My guess is Amazon/Bezos already has multiple backups of the Enquirer's digital assets for forensic purposes. https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680 https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680
- kerng 8y agoI'm not sure if you are joking, but that's exactly what they should not be doing. They also can't just go poke around their customer's data. That would be very unwise...
- andrewstuart 8y agoHaving read the whole thing, man Jeff Bezos has a great deal of courage. 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoI'm going to push back against this characterization as "ghastly personal behavior". For one, it's not clear if he and his wife were already separated, at least at a personal level, before this affair. But this general idea that it's somehow "ghastly" to send a paramour love notes and sexually suggestive pictures is a sad remnant of our puritanical history, and the sooner we rid ourselves of this notion, the better.
- prawn 8y agoThe ghastly behaviour is a description of the extorters, surely?!
- dlgeek 8y agoI think GP's "ghastly behaviour" (seems like you inserted the "personal" unless it was an edit?) is referring to AMI rather than Bezos.
- auganov 8y agoThe status of his marriage is the key thing here. And there's plenty indicating he is very much a classical cheater. 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.
- rsynnott 8y agoIf they're separated, then the status of their marriage is irrelevant.
- e3pi 8y agoGood billionairism or otherwise Jeff. Please don't enter a Saudi embassy, unless to hand out hearing protectors with a smile on them.
- minimaxir 8y agoGranted, this strategy is very high risk unless you're one of the richest people in the world.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- longerthoughts 8y agoBut what person without means is going to be the target of tabloid blackmailing?
- Jach 8y agoAnyone with a job has means, more agencies just need to start thinking of it as a pipeline business. You can even go as low as to threaten to dox various meme authors for instance, unless they start paying $10/mo into a fund. Get enough of them over enough time and the methods used to de-anonymize or uncover whatever other information you want to charge people for the privilege of not releasing will pay for themselves. /s
- Barrin92 8y agonot exactly tabloid blackmail, but 'revenge porn' was and is still prevalent on the internet, and I don't doubt that a lot of small scale blackmail happens as well, and if I would guess I think many of the affected people have very little recourse.
- sjg007 8y agoI mean, technically, they've opened themselves up to multiple felonies.
- stupidcar 8y agoThe problem I have with most super rich people is that they consider genuine risk far less important than potential embarrassment. E.g. they won't dare taking a stand politically because of the chance that someone will go public with some scandalous nonsense. Bezos on the other hand seems willing to calculate differently. I have to say, this has changed my opinion of him a lot in his favour. On the very remote chance you're reading this Jeff, good on you!
- romanovtexas 8y agoSlightly off topic, but the fact that the world's richest man who owns a tech giant chose to publish this on a closed platform like Medium should be worrisome for the future of the open web. On the other hand, this might just be the biggest brand endorsement for Medium till date.
- danso 8y agoI mean, Amazon doesn't really have an associated "official" blogging platform, not in the way that Google has Blogger, Yahoo has Tumblr, and Twitter has Medium. Also worth noting that Amazon's spokesperson used Medium when writing a rebuttal to a high-profile investigation of Amazon's business practices in 2015: https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t-tell-you-a1128aa78931 https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t...
- romanovtexas 8y agoBlogger and Tumblr aren't like Medium; maybe a good comparison for them would be Wordpress. Twitter's official blog isn't on Medium. So doesn't "have" it - blog.twitter.com
- mejari 8y agoOnly HN could turn Jeff Bezos publicly outing a company attempting to extort him with naked photos into a threat to the "future of the open web".
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoThis is good for bitcoin?
- romanovtexas 8y agoI mean, he's talking about journalistic standards. Having an open web is crucial for having good journalism on the web.
- buboard 8y ago
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y agoI am glad that Jeff Bezos is aggressively going after AMI for their scummy behavior. I was also glad that Peter Thiel aggressively went after Gawker Media for their scummy behavior. Sometimes these badly behaving media outlets need to have a billionaire personally invested in stopping their bad behavior.
- darawk 8y agoYa, there's some real danger here with regard to precedent, but I agree, in both of these cases, the world is much better off without Gawker and AMI.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoGawker didn't try to extort Hulk Hogan or Peter Thiel. The situations aren't comparable.
- praneshp 8y agoYeah, that was more open and shut (court orders them to do something, they refused. Play stupid games win stupid prizes)
- natechols 8y agoNo, they went right ahead and published revenge porn.
- buboard 8y agostill i believe most people consider extortion a graver crime
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y agoFrom the article: >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.
- mikeash 8y agoI look forward to seeing these scumbags becoming a smoking crater.
- ronilan 8y agoHe chose Medium. @ev is 3 out of 3 (and a podcast pivot).
- theNJR 8y agoWhat were the other 2?
- owenwil 8y agoI mean, that is if Medium doesn't run out of money in the next ~18 months. It's been a savage series of pivots to get to here, and even then, I'm not sure if it's actually sustainable.
- buboard 8y agobig kudos but he should remove the popups , with the extra gdpr prompts it's unbearable
- skiman10 8y agoThis browser extension has really saved my Medium reading experience. https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA
- 8y ago
- Lazare 8y agoThe title does this post a misservice. This is way, way more interesting than you might think, and I highly recommend following the link and reading the whole thing.
- 40acres 8y agoThe elite are really the only members of society who can successfully dismantle tabloid media like AMI, see: Peter Theil v. Gawker.
- buboard 8y agoperhas because they are also the only ones who would care to do so?
- scottydelta 8y agoand have the means to put up a fight.
- redthrowaway 8y agoNow this is Fuck You Money.
- emilsedgh 8y agoWell in this case there's no money involved really. It's just a fuck you.
- rococode 8y agoThe "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" part gives off pretty strong "money is no object" vibes haha.
- loeg 8y agoHe specifically calls attention to the fact that his wealth is one reason he was able to speak out about this: > 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)
- Eloso 8y agoInteresting attempt to blackmail someone (who in this case happens to be, you know, the richest man in the world), with information that is generally public already. All that would have been added were a few additional pictures. How much extra public embarrassment is going to come from that?
- randomacct3847 8y agoI’m glad not all tech billionaires are sterile robots
- CobrastanJorji 8y agoCounterpoint: this is likely how a sterile robot would respond to an extortion attempt.
- unreal37 8y agoSterile robots don't have naked selfies floating around.
- buboard 8y agothey can deepfake them
- darkpuma 8y agoIt's only a matter of time before they implement that feature.
- floatingatoll 8y agoOne quarter of the first page of Google Images results for "humanoid robots" are unclothed, with unprotected robot surfaces showing.
- notatoad 8y agoApparently AMI and David Pecker's non-prosecution agreement for the Michael Cohen stuff is contingent on them not continuing to do crime. So i guess that's out the window now. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1093654471157170177 https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1093654471157170177
- fisherjeff 8y agoDepends on the analysis I suppose. This one makes it sound unlikely that the agreement will be voided: https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1093658366583422978 https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/10936583665834229...
- notatoad 8y ago"blackmail is legal" is a pretty depressing take, but it does seem plausible.
- ineedasername 8y agoLuckily extortion is illegal, and a venn diagram of the two is quite nearly a circle.
- kevinmchugh 8y agoBlackmail is a law which forbids the possessor of some information from offering to sell it to the subject of the information. The possessor can sell it to anyone else in the world, but cannot offer to the subject. 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.
- iknownothing52 8y agoWeird, i always found it hard to justify the legality of either that type of bidding war or the operations and structure of an organisation that would participate it one. 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.
- ginger123 8y agoHow can they publish photos which they don't own the copyrights?
- gwern 8y agoThat's what all the back-and-forth about 'fair use' and Bezo's competency as a CEO is about.
- mdanger007 8y agothe paparazzi exist in a 1st amendment gray area. they cover public figures but the newsworthy nature of their salacious stories and gathering tactics are always getting challenged in court.
- unreal37 8y agoThe paparazzi own their photographs though. In copyright, the person who takes the photo owns it. These photos were stolen.
- pmyteh 8y agoFair use for news reporting, basically. Their justification is in the email chain at the bottom.
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- lawnchair_larry 8y agoThis title should probably be changed to something useful. There is no indication of what it might be in the original title.
- rblion 8y agoI respect him even more now. 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.
- 3pt14159 8y agoYour respect is misplaced. Amazon has some of the worst business practices of any company its size. They region shop. They mix inventory. They engage in anti-competitive behaviour. They use their position as a platform to influence their competitive business objectives. They exploit OSS in a manner that is technically, maybe legal but essentially against the idea of the license. They force companies to buy out counterfeits of their own goods just to stop a mandatory reduction in their price. They do not allow you to remove a product from Amazon once it has been put up for sale by anyone that isn't you and then they have the gall to talk all high minded about investments in education while they (or their founder) pay almost nothing in tax. Bezos can get fucked. He's worse than Thiel[0] or Andreessen.[1] Those two only committed a single capital sin each. And I know it shouldn't mean a damn thing but I'm going to say it anyway, I've never worked with APIs or CLIs as infuriating as AWS's. They're horrible. The documentation is horrible. The service is over-priced and horrible, with unexpected caps and delays and fees that you only hit once you're starting to scale. Fuck Amazon and fuck Bezos. He's like an Elon Musk without the class or philosophy. [0] Thiel and his self-serving, false-but-seemingly-naive libertarianism and hypocritical support of Trump. [1] Andreessen's support for the NSA's lies to congress about what they were doing. I don't support Snowden's actions—they were far too reckless—but I also don't support blatant lies to congress. We either have a democracy or we don't and we shouldn't be lied to. A simple "that is classified" is sufficient, and Andreessen calling Snowden a traitor because "we all know it was going on anyway" is the admission of a kleptocrat or oligarch of their privileged, beguiling position. Edit: Amazon is a plague. I invite the downvotes, Bezos bots or not. Nobody disagrees with what I've outlined because it's fundamentally true. Amazon is fucking trash.
- nindalf 8y ago
- radicaldreamer 8y agoWonder what the Saudi connection is...
- atomical 8y agoJeff Bezos met with their leader.
- kawera 8y agoThey killed a WaPo journalist.
- tptacek 8y agoThe Post, along with the Times, has been pursuing and reporting a story that David Pecker, AMI's CEO, has been working with a Saudi go-between, in part as an effort to expand their business. More importantly, Jamal Khashoggi, who we now know almost beyond a reasonable doubt† was targeted by Mohammad Bin Salman before Saudi assassins murdered him in Turkey (most probably at MBS's behest), was a Post employee. † Reports emerged today that there's apparently audio of MBS himself ruminating over having him murdered.
- yourapostasy 8y agoHow does that explain Pecker's rage at the WaPo digging into AMI's Saudi connection, though? 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.
- defen 8y ago> If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they say they’ll publish the photos, and quickly. And there’s an associated threat: They’ll keep the photos on hand and publish them in the future if we ever deviate from that lie. 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.
- raphlinus 8y agoYes, they do explicitly say exactly that. Term 3 in Jon Fine's email is "AMI agrees not to publish" and that directly follows term 2, which is Bezos backing off his assertion that AMI is politically motivated in their coverage. And term 6 means they get to keep the blackmail materials.
- fxfan 8y agoI don't usually put myself in debates on HN but I have always thought of you as a very rational guy so I'm surprised you make this comment- 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.
- mejari 8y agoFrom the quoted e-mail: >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.
- jonknee 8y ago> I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out. 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.
- Aeolun 8y agoI never thought I’d be rooting for Bezos, but I am.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoIf you ever find yourself with scandalous or incriminating material on someone remember this: Blackmail will always fail in the long run. 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.
- basil-rash 8y agoSlightly off topic, but does anyone know why this is so low on HN? It has more votes and is more recent than anything except the "How I didn't make a billion dollar company" post, but is at rank 11. https://imgur.com/a/bifDABu https://imgur.com/a/bifDABu
- baby 8y agoHN penalizes post randomly sometimes. The last time I had one of my blogpost pretty high on the front page, it lasted an hour and then went directly to 5th-page. It gave me an impression that everything on the FP is heavily handpicked.
- floatingatoll 8y agoThose penalties can occur simply from users flagging posts, which is likely what happened here, given the vitriol elsewhere in-thread about Amazon.
- anythingnonidin 8y agoProbably got flagged by some users.
- loeg 8y agoHN penalizes high discussion posts for being gossipy.
- elihu 8y agoThe title isn't something that I would have had any idea what it was about or why I should read it if I hadn't been linked here from a comment thread with a more informative title.
- acheron 8y agoYep. I don't read medium posts as a general principle, and the title meant nothing to me so I skipped right over it. Only saw it in another thread.
- natalyarostova 8y agobased
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- dangban 8y agoJeff Bezos, if you're reading this: 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.
- ShriekBob 8y agoI agree. 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.
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- amluto 8y agoGiven that Jeff Bezos appears to be willing to spend almost unlimited money on this, it’ll be interesting to see if a felony investigation happens.
- mr_toad 8y agoCan a DA get some political mileage from prosecuting this? My guess is yes.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kawera 8y ago"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." Wow!
- ineedasername 8y agoYeah I know. It's almost just slipped in there as an afterthought, but it tells a story of Bezos saying to AMI: "I'll spend more money on this than your entire media 'empire' is worth, if that's what it takes... And I'll barely notice the loss."
- markdog12 8y ago> Bezos Exposes Pecker HuffPo headline
- kumarvvr 8y agoI find this extremely irresponsible. This is a serious issue. 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.
- BorRagnarok 8y agoNow if they do publish those photos, you'd only have to add 'his' to that headline.
- arrty88 8y agoIs his “gf” a plant?
- rdiddly 8y agoThought experiment: Try taking them at their word for a sec. "...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.
- buboard 8y agoAnd now we have to live in a world where Mr Bezos' unpublished "materials" are patiently waiting to be found among other junk in somebody's hard disk. How can humanity sleep at night...
- adrianmonk 8y agoYes. When they say it's newsworthy, the only reason they care about that is the legal protection it could offer them if they did publish the photos. 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-enquirer-trump-payments-david-pecker-catch-and-kill 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.
- seanwilson 8y agoI'm impressed he didn't censor out the text that says what the photos contain. The post would have had a similar impact either way I think. Nobody should have to be embarrassed about harm-free personal activities though.
- peteretep 8y agoIs there anything particularly embarrassing about them? All sounds pretty vanilla to me?
- seanwilson 8y agoIf they have no value in causing embarrassment, what value would they have as blackmail material? There's nothing embarrassing about being naked but I'm sure most people wouldn't want naked photos of themselves made public.
- exolymph 8y agoIt's one thing to know that someone has taken a dick pic, but another thing to actually see it.
- floatingatoll 8y agoIf he was a woman, releasing those photos could end his career as a C-level executive at any US corporation.
- rabidrat 8y agoAt a corporation she founded? You think nudies of Martha Stewart would dethrone her?
- ralph84 8y agoMany more men than women have had their career as C-level executives ended by sexual indiscretions. That's of course because there are many more men than women in C-level executive positions, but your "if he was a woman" is a non sequitur.
- scottlocklin 8y agoNot taking pictures of your cock and sending them to a sociopath would have been a better strategy. Richest man on earth (well, until the divorce anyway) and he has less common sense than my dumb ass.
- ineedasername 8y agoWhat struck me was how brazen AMI was about the blackmail. Then I realized: they were comoftable doing it that way, putting it in writing, because in nearly every other time they've done this, it worked.
- CaliforniaKarl 8y agoHe seems to be driving his point home in how, when including the email from Dylan Howard, the mobile (cell) number in the text is redacted, but the signature image (containing said number) is left unmodified.
- abledon 8y agoprobably personal cell # vs business cell #
- apo 8y agoHere’s a piece of context: My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy. 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?
- patrickg_zill 8y agoBezos essentially got paid by the CIA to buy the WashPost ($600 million contract from the CIA, next thing you know, Bezos buys the paper). 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.
- fxfan 8y agoI didn't downvote- can you please elaborate more?
- buboard 8y agohe says it s plausible but doesnt offer evidence , or even imply it is true. It's not exactly secret that they are not fond of each other.
- usefulcat 8y agoSo let me get this straight.. the owner(s) of the National Enquirer are doing this.. because they're worried about what, their journalistic credibility? Seriously? After having published the Enquirer for decades already? Alternately, maybe some people just like to be bullies.
- trendoid 8y agoIt is possibly due to pressure from Saudi Arabia. MBS was pissed that WP is going after him after killing of Khashoggi. Enquirer (and Pecker) are quite close to MBS, they ran a cover story on him (how awesome he is). It could be a bigger story than it seems at the moment.
- sidcool 8y agoHow can they act above national security interest? Don't they realize the security institutions would destroy them?
- trendoid 8y agoThey have President's blessing, who is already acting above national security interest. So yeah, they don't care.
- jonknee 8y agoNot just a cover story, they created a whole glossy ad free magazine about him and printed 200,000 copies. It's bizarre. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-publisher-pal-puts-saudi-propaganda-magazine-in-us-supermarkets 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.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoAt some point in the future we will look back at this administration and marvel at the magnitude of criminal activities surrounding this president.
- trendoid 8y agoThere is enough crime to marvel at right now.
- int_19h 8y agoI'm afraid that at said point, we will marvel more with the fact that the people at the center of it all got away with it. Remember Nixon, or Iran-Contra?
- bayesian_horse 8y agoMaybe, maybe not. 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.
- throwaway5752 8y agoThink what you will of Amazon or Jeff Bezos, but his conduct here is heroic. I don't say that lightly.
- walrus01 8y agoQuoting somebody who posted in the deleted duplicate thread: "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 "
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- slg 8y agoIt seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. 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/1093715333079318530 https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/109371533307931853...
- jonknee 8y agoWhich makes stories like this a lot more interesting: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mby7kq/malware-to-spy-hack-iphones 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.
- danso 8y agoWorth pointing out that the only mobile device that Bezos has apparently tweeted from (publically) seems to be an iPhone. Doesn’t mean he didn’t have a burner phone for conducting his affairs of course. https://twitter.com/dancow/status/1093732934299856899 https://twitter.com/dancow/status/1093732934299856899
- inopinatus 8y agoGenuinely disappointed that it is not a Fire phone.
- gpderetta 8y ago
- crawfordcomeaux 8y agoI have done things in my past that people could and may publicly shame me for. I was worrying TODAY about what I could do to try to avoid a possible future where my research gets derailed from some kind of extortion. It's my understanding that reciprocal altruism can spread easily through a competitive community, but extortion can overcome altruism when information is kept private. 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!
- martin1975 8y agoAm I the only one that thinks if Bezos never lets his personal Mr. Pecker roam beyond his marriage bed that none of this explanation would be needed?
- RyanShook 8y agoThis entire Bezos/Enquirer saga is complexifying.
- medecau 8y agoNationalEnquirer.com redirects(302) to radaronline.com Web Archive has snapshots from yesterday (2019/02/07) still showing the National Enquirer website.
- rnvhhynr 8y agoIt just says 403 here in Europe.
- danans 8y agoRonan Farrow tweeted that he and anther journalist were similarly threatened by AMI: https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1093690150448758784 https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1093690150448758784
- 1nvalid 8y agoGuess where Mr. Pecker is hosting! https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680 https://twitter.com/ryanhuber/status/1093665718464327680
- a13n 8y agohttps://www.nationalenquirer.com https://www.nationalenquirer.com is now down
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- piker 8y agoInterestingly up, but responding with 403. Being unfamiliar with AWS' web hosting platform, is there a service that would fall back to denying access if certain sub-modules or instances were pulled?
- ircshotty 8y agoOnly down in Europe. Likely has always been due to GDPR?
- BorRagnarok 8y agoYeah why wouldn't he just pull the plug on them? I know I would.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoBecause he's not that petty? The moral high ground is worth so much more than that.
- knorker 8y agoWhy risk losing the moral high ground?
- mikehines 8y agoThis may someday be adapted into "A Very American Scandal".
- bArray 8y agoThis is literally the best thing he could have done. Would love to hear more about other people who have been black-mailed too - perhaps there is something much larger afoot. Hell, if they are this bold about taking on Bezos, potentially the other black-mail-ees are some very influential big hitters (billionaires, politicians, etc). 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.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoI don't agree. 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.
- acjohnson55 8y agoHow can any retailer carry AMI's product anymore? There is no longer plausible deniability about their business practices.
- RomanPushkin 8y agoTLDR?
- m0zg 8y agoWith iPhones on both ends, I'm having a hard time believing the "hack" accusation. Apple has learned their lessons from The Fappening debacle, and you you can't as much as sneeze without triggering 2FA if you're accessing stuff from the device not already tied to the user. 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.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoI believe people on this thread are viewing this thing in a specific way, and that there are other ways to consider this. 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.
- lazybreather 8y agoHiding in all the obvious noise surrounding this case, where Bezos is certainly the nice guy, I can still get Gail Wynand vibes from him. The power he holds is unprecedented.
- cm2187 8y agoBillionaire uses own newspaper to attack Trump. Billionaire uses own newspaper to attack billionaire using own newspaper to attack Trump.
- rsynnott 8y ago"The nasty newspaper was mean about poor little Donald by reporting on his wrongdoing" does _not_ justify blackmail. In any way. What on earth are you talking about?
- guilamu 8y agoI'm not a fan of the guy. He (and all the GAFAs) is killing our public services all over Europe by not paying any taxes (legally, I know, we did this to ourselves). 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!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Gupie 8y agoAt least no one is threatening to release compromising photos of Trump. That would be horrible.
- fxfan 8y agoCan anyone actually knowledgeable and not just rooting for one side tell me whether it would be illegal for NE to now go ahead and publish the said pics? 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
- rsynnott 8y agoRevenge porn laws might be an issue. 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?
- andyjohnson0 8y agoThe astonishingly un-subtle words of the lawyer involved surprised me: "That said, if your client agrees to cease and desist such defamatory behavior, we are willing to engage in constructive conversations regarding the texts and photos which we have in our possession." Is there any way that this could pass a professional ethics review? After reading more about him [1], I have to wonder: why this person still allowed to practice law? [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/02/marty-singer-hollywood-lawyer https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/02/marty-singer-ho...
- blattimwind 8y agoThe quoted portion was authored by Jon P. Fine (who actually worked for well over a decade at Amazon before ending up as General Counsel for AMI); Marty Singer represents Bezos in this case and the quoted portion is addressed at him.
- andyjohnson0 8y agoAh, my mistake. Wrong name.
- reuben_scratton 8y ago"Middle-aged man has dick, likes sex" shocker! Kudos to Jeff for standing up to this bullshit.
- buboard 8y agoWhatever people say about the social media, their evilness is at least transparent. This kind of "journalism" is another level of evil and reminds me why all traditional media should be distrusted.
- cooperadymas 8y agoFor all the times Hacker News criticizes personal "anecdata", nitpicks the tiniest flaw in methodology, and demands statistical significance for every trivial matter, when it comes to politics they sure are willing to run the gossip mill without an ounce of critical thought.
- Antifragile1 8y agoThis place is populated by libtards, what do you expect?
- naval-gazer 8y agoThis is not anecdotal information. 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.
- ben0x539 8y agohey mods do you think you could edit the title of this submission to give some idea what it's about or who wrote it?
- hsnewman 8y agoLooks like Bezos will own the National Enquirer soon.
- lowry 8y agoHow bold of him! (pun intended)
- amelius 8y agoImho, the best possible response to this kind of situation is to generate thousands of (deep) fakes, with different parameters, and spread them. Then, nobody will know what the real photos were. Also, with this many fakes going around, nobody will really care anymore. And mr. Bezos certainly has the resources to get a team of CGI artists to work on something like this.
- jm4 8y agoI get the sense that his response is more about principle and not getting pushed around by some sleazeball hack posing as a journalist than it is about avoiding personal embarrassment. Bezos is secure in his professional life. Whether or not more pictures come out have little bearing on the outcome of his divorce. The biggest concern here is the reaction of his family and friends. The ones closest to him would probably know about the extortion attempt anyway. This is a guy who is worth $140B. That’s not normal and has likely made relationships difficult for many years. The people he truly cares about, the ones who are close, have already gotten past the thing that makes him completely different from everyone else in the world. Why would they care about something like sexting and nude pics that make him the same as most people in the world? They don’t care. As for everyone else not close to him, I’m sure he learned long ago how to tune out the noise.
- itissid 8y agoThe right to publish here would be protected under the first amendment. But: 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? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollea_v._Gawker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollea_v._Gawker [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail#United_States)
- naval-gazer 8y agoIt looks like criminal blackmail attempt. In a normal case Bezos would just forward all evidence to authorities for more investigation and prosecution. He would issue short press release later when the case goes to court. 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.
- ineedasername 8y agoOn Gavin de Becker: If you've done some shady stuff, it's hard to imagine a worse person to have investigating and digging into your activities than Gavin de Becker. Here's a excerpt from Gavin's wikipedia entry on just a little of his work over the years. This Bezos issue isn't even his first foray up against a tabloid: 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] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_de_Becker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_de_Becker
- novaleaf 8y agosome commentary and backstory by the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/jeff-bezos-says-national-enquirer-is-attempting-to-blackmail-him-with-intimate-photos/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/jeff-bezos-says-nation...
- ncmncm 8y agoBlackmail is the motivator behind practically all surveillance. It's the essence of spycraft and much of what we call law enforcement. Most of it, as here, doesn't directly involve money, but coercion. Getting something on a judge's son, prosecutor's father, or administrator's husband is as useful as on the target. 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.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago> My lawyers argued that AMI has no right to publish photos since any person holds the copyright to their own photos, and since the photos in themselves don’t add anything newsworthy. Wait, is this really true? If it is, then why do wedding photogs claim they have copyright ownership?
- atulatul 8y agoIs this a good place to quote a few lines from The Godfather? 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?
- glenrivard 8y agoCould this be related to the news that Google found iOS zero days that were exploited? Be interesting if so and if Google made Bezos aware? https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/08/hackers-exploited-two-vulnerabilities-ios-12-1-4/ https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/08/hackers-exploited-two-v... Google Researchers Say Hackers Exploited Two Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Patched in Apple's iOS 12.1.4 Update
- pylus 8y agoNot surprised the whole mainstream media attacks him recently. This guy doesn't agree with them, so he gets consequences. The left has a vast corrupt media support it. I wonder which one is the next victim of this party. Apple and Walmart have been consistently threatened, and the past year has been Facebook (the left likes FB a lot and even not disclosing some bad things of this company until 2017 ).
- pergadad 8y agoUhh are you so deep in your conspiracy theories that you missed the whole fox news complex? There's no left wing equivalent to that.
- ggdG 8y ago> [...]the whole fox news complex? There's no left wing equivalent to that. CNN and MSNBC easily fit that bill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_iXfbxfwDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_iXfbxfwDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgBxfHdb4OU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgBxfHdb4OU
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ddoran 8y agoToday's NY Post had fun with this. The cover headline: "Bezos exposes Pecker" [1] https://nypost.com/cover/covers-for-friday-february-8-2019/ https://nypost.com/cover/covers-for-friday-february-8-2019/
- e3pi 8y agoYesterday evening, "NTY, Mr. Pecker" was global headline news, blowing up more so this morning. Why is there still nothing on Google News?
- spir 8y agoObligatory blackmail scene from the Dark Knight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z6o1GIEsQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z6o1GIEsQE
- vonnik 8y agoSomeone at the New York Post can die now with the knowledge that their life work is complete: https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1093723253934309376 https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1093723253934309376
- intopieces 8y agoWhat’s kind of weird about this move by National Enquirer is that it seems so poorly thought out. Bezos’ “affair” was known to his wife and they parted amicably; sending genital photos is probably the least embarrassing thing you could catch a billionaire doing, and in fact it kind of humanizes him. 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.
- amai 8y agoMaybe a naive question: But why does Mr. Benzos not go to the police with all that evidence? Why did he choose to publish all this instead?
- hrez 8y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/behind-trump-s-tabloid-king-a-connected-and-flush-hedge-fund https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/behind-tr...