You might not have heard of the EU's upcoming digital economy and society commissioner, but you'd have thought that whoever was about to take up this position might be savvy to the way internet users work (well, play). However, Günther Oettinger, who is to step into his new role in November, has said something quite unexpected about The Fappening (the hack of celebrities iCloud accounts to leak their nude photos to the public).
Speaking at an official meeting in Brussels on Monday, he said he was being 'semi-serious', then went into his rant: 'The fact that recently there have been an increasing number of public lamentations about nude photos of celebrities who took selfies – I just can't believe it. If someone is dumb enough as a celebrity to take a nude photo of themselves and put it online, they surely can't expect us to protect them. I mean, stupidity is something you cannot – or only partly – save people from.'
Well, clearly.
The person to call him out on this was none other than Julia Reda, a fellow MEP who represents – seriously – the Pirate Party. But don't let the swashbuckling title put you off, as she had this to say on her blog: 'The statement is unbelievable. The person applying to be in charge of shoring up trust in the internet so that Europeans do more business online, just blamed people whose personal data was accessed and spread without authorisation. He placed the moral blame for that crime squarely on the victims rather than the perpetrators.'
And that's the interesting point, because this was a simple case of property being stolen. The fact it was of a sexual nature does nothing to excuse the behaviour of the criminals. In fact, it makes it that much worse that they leaked the material. This isn't only stolen property – this is stolen property people are going to wank over, en masse! (See, we know a bit of European lingo, too).
When asked to clarify his remarks by the BBC, Oettinger said: 'Everybody has a right to privacy. The EU Commission wants to make cloud computing safer.' This actually sounds pretty right on. So does he apologise for his previous comments? His spokeswoman's reply says it all: 'No'.
The odd thing is, knowing politicians' tendency to take nude selfies, it's only a matter of time before Oettinger's MEP (member of erectile penis) is out there. The only difference is, politicians tend to leak the pictures themselves… grim.
You might also be interested in:
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** Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson**
Picture: Splash
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.