A British soldier disobeyed a direct order to remove the SIM card from his cellphone before being deployed to a part of Estonia, approximately 90 miles west of the Russian border.
As a result of his refusal to engage in this element of operational security (opsec), the soldier, had his phone hacked, and nude photos of himself were stolen and used as blackmail against him.
I also read stories like this and feel like an alien, because I do have nudes of myself on my phone, some of them unflattering or kinky, and while I don’t want them sent to my family and coworkers (I probably wouldn’t care much about my friends seeing them, to be honest), I wouldn’t be blackmailed about it.
Like, what? Are they truly going to be surprised that I have genitals or sexual interests? It’s a body and some fetishes: everyone has them.
Even if the phone took photos without my knowledge, they have a picture of me masturbating or taking a shit. It’s probably a picture of my face, ankles, or the wall of my bedroom opposite my face, based on how I use my phone during those activities and whether they use the front of back facing camera, but even if they had full body pictures of either… I also have a digestive system and enjoy endorphins, neither of which could possibly come as a surprise to anyone.
And I was raised an American Catholic. I’ve done a lot of work, but I can’t imagine I’m one of the more shameless (in a good way) or sexually liberated people out there.
What’s so scary to people? Is it that they’re masturbating to illegal things or really compromising but not technically illegal things, like stepdaughter porn with an actress who looks like your stepdaughter (just the first totally life destroying but legal thing I could think of)? I don’t intend to victim blame, but I don’t understand how you get blackmailed if you’re not doing something you know is objectively sketchy and not just personal. But even so, if you’re someone who has that kind of sexual secret, you should be the first person to agree to remove your SIM card, no?
That just brings me back to not understanding.
Although, I will concede that with the prevalence of image generating AI, I could see someone taking an innocent picture from my phone and turning it into something very incriminating that might make resisting blackmail harder, but I think I’d probably just hope for the best that others in the picture could corroborate that it never happened and/or that people will be able to determine that it’s not a real picture. Maybe that’s naive, but I also believe the people in my life, being aware that images can be generated and that I went into a situation where blackmail is common enough to need counter strategies, would have enough faith in me to not believe an image that’s out of character and that I deny. Maybe that’s naive, or maybe it’s that I’m a woman and society is more likely to believe me about pictures I say are fake (though maybe I’ve been uncreative- I’ve been assuming the obvious blackmail angle is pedophilia or CSAM, but I don’t know if it would be as easy to convince people in my life that bestiality pictures or something like that were fake- I hope so, because people have seen me around animals, but I can’t be as sure).
I think there’s the extra part of him also doing this directly against orders, which had much more serious consequences.
But yeah, I feel pretty similar. Having good friends/family means this is mildly embarassing, not an actual blackmail worthy event.
People are all too willing to believe the worst about someone, even if they should know better, and even if they know there is a smear campaign against someone. Your own family could be turned against you, don’t think they couldn’t.
They could be, and you can’t know, but I do think it’s pretty unlikely for my immediate family - we’ve already survived my sister‘s vengeful long term ex who told pretty astute lies to try to divide us and we’re all the same kind of autistic, so we have a mutual understanding based on hundreds of conversations most people would hate that we’re all very kantian in our own ways about ethics (which, to be fair, would in my case definitely preclude me from volunteering to be a soldier in most situations, but that kind of breaks the hypothetical).
If they didn’t know that AI generated images existed and didn’t know that I was in a situation where blackmail was a concern, it might be different, but in this situation they’d probably need a lot of evidence of different types to start to wonder if I was a monster.
They also wouldn’t think I was a monster for masturbating, taking nudes, or shitting, which helps.
Besides, if they were somehow turned against me, it would be no less devastating by knowing about the possibility beforehand, so I don’t really see the point in trying to figure out exactly what it would take.