In late November, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked by a group calling itself the ‘Guardians of Peace’. Within a few days, the magnitude of the leak became clear. In the 100 terabytes of data stolen were unreleased movies, private correspondences, employee information including medical and financial data, and much more. Speculation was swirling that North Korea had initiated the attack as retribution for the Sony film The Interview, about an attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un; these rumours were later endorsed by a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statement. There was no question about publishing the news that Sony’s systems had been breached, and many news outlets worldwide did. However as the nature of the information leaked became clear, decisions about publishing that information became decidedly more complicated.
The initial lots of information leaked contained salary information for several thousands of Sony employees, notably the top 17 executives of the company who were making more than 1 million US dollars a year. The information about the top executives was widely disseminated, as it revealed some startling statistics about Sony pay grades. The top executives were overwhelmingly white and male – there was only one woman and two non-white execs. This was still ‘safe’ information to publish, since it spoke to important issues: the lack of diversity in the upper echelons of an industry leading company, and the pay disparity between male and female employees with the same or similar titles. Additionally, much of the information could be found legally elsewhere, in public tax disclosures. It took the leak to bring this information front and centre.
Then the email-floodgate opened. Emails between and about top executives and celebrities began doing the rounds, exposing both mundane production details and the salacious gossip of star-studded feuds. Several sites noted that people were drawn to the information because the glamorous veneer of Hollywood was being lifted, and the mysterious workings of a secretive industry revealed. Some of the emails revealed what could be critical information about industry attitudes, like the exchange between a Sony exec and a producer about President Obama’s favourite movies, naming only ‘black’ films. Many were published simply to embarrass the big names mentioned within them.
The timing of the Sony hack, so soon after ‘the Fappening’ in which private, nude photos of celebrities were leaked online, drew inevitable comparisons between the two. The hacking and leaking of the nude photos was almost universally decried, and news outlets did not publish the photos. Those who did not approve of the Sony information being revealed declared that the two incidents amounted to nearly the same thing: leaking private information to harm another party. This ignited a debate about whether the Sony emails were more newsworthy, and closer in fact to Wikileaks-style information leaking and the Snowden revelations.
Clearly the information from the Sony hack lies somewhere in the middle: more newsworthy and noteworthy than nude photos, but perhaps not as much in the public interest as national security concerns. The differences have to do with how the information was obtained in each case, and who the targets were. The information in all three scenarios was stolen, but were those thefts justified? The celebrity photos were gleaned from hacking individual iCloud accounts, the Sony emails from corporate servers, and the Snowden leaks from databases of the United States government itself.
The hacking of personal accounts to leak private photos, of celebrities but in their private capacities, is perhaps the most clear-cut case. The nature of the photos, nudes of mainly young women and couples, added to the gravity of the crime, with some saying it was akin to a sexual violation. When Sony was hacked, despite the fact that the hacks were of information pertaining to individuals, there was still a sense that the company itself was the target. It is perhaps easier to sympathise with an individual, even a rich and famous one, than with a faceless corporate monolith or the might of the state. There is also the sense that the larger the target, the better prepared it should have been for attacks such as those perpetuated – where were the safeguards?
Those who initiated the hacks acted illegally, but what about the journalists using that information? In the United States journalists are protected by the First Amendment which allows the use of such information to educate the general public. Furthermore, it could be argued that Sony could no longer consider the information private anyway. Can the information gleaned from the hacks be distinguished from other information of dubious provenance? Journalists use information from anonymous sources and whistleblowers as a matter of course. They also use information which their targets would prefer remained private. Does this make journalism a form of ‘permissible thievery’? It may be a question of interpretation rather than access. The FBI approached at least one cybersecurity expert to question him about ‘illegal downloading’ after he had accessed the leaked documents. Sony itself tried to disrupt downloads of the stolen files. Yet there seems to be no stopping the flow of information.
With such massive amounts of information, as in the Sony hack case, the Snowden files and the Wikileaks, people have to make calls about what information is interesting and in the public interest. Are experienced journalists the best people to make those calls? Researched articles with an editorial stance of some kind are surely better than simple reproductions of stolen material online. Journalists can provide context and verify information before publishing it. However, in publishing stolen material, journalists run the risk of playing into the hands of the hackers. If the Sony hack was conducted to harm Sony financially, aren’t journalists helping this cause by reporting harmful details about the company? On the other hand, do they have any obligation to protect Sony? There is perhaps no way to stay impartial when reporting information of this kind. Some feel that in the current environment, journalism itself is under threat, with the 24-hour news cycle and changing modes of publication. Any publication that claims to carry news cannot afford to be left out of a story this big.
The author is a Junior Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation.
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