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There is an upswell of questions surrounding hacking due to some recent celebrity nude pictures that have been showing up on the internet. The most disturbing thing to me is not that there are people that work out for a living that like to take pics of themselves naked. No, what I find myself flabbergasted by is that there is a school of thought out there that somehow the celebs are at fault because they took naked pics of themselves. Pictures they had secured and had in some cases had never shared. But its insinuated that because they have the pictures they are at fault.

So wait...if a hacker breaks through security settings and takes someones sensitive material it is somehow the fault of the person for having that material? What? Seriously? So in the same train of thought if a person had a gold watch and I kicked in the door and stole the watch it would be their fault for having the watch?

Discussion on whether or not the victim or the criminal should be blamed might make for good ratings but it reflects how fraked up we are as a society. Somewhere along the line we lost our way, big time. People got so caught up in wanting to color things with shades of gray that we have ended up with a absurdly gray landscape.

Are there situations when crime can be forgiven? Sure. Those are called extenuating circumstances. Like when the hungry person steals food. Or the cold person steals a blanket. Or the abused spouse plugs the abuser. But not every situation has extenuating circumstances. Sometimes you just frak up. Life is about choices and every day people make both good and bad choices. It is when they are not held accountable for the bad ones that our society slips one step closer to the offal pile.

I grew up with computers. Apple II and Apple IIE were in my elementary school. I learned to write code on them when I was young. I found coding somewhat interesting but it was tedious. Hence I did not grow up to be a great programer or master hacker. But I do have an understanding of how this stuff works. Most hacking works under a very simple principle.

People are stupid.

I mean that in the nicest possible way, but we all do dumb things. Like using a simple password or having password recovery questions that are easy for anyone to answer. For a celeb that has ever part of their life picked apart it is even easier to get this information. But I could probably get what I need from all of you by sending around a stupid Facebook questionnaire that most of you would answer. It is shockingly easy to get people to friend you and even easier to get all their info once you do.

Hackers exploit known issues in software. They use well known practices to reset passwords and change emails. People could blame the software coders and in some cases they would be right. Coders could blame lazy users for not following security guidelines and in some cases they would be right. But in the end there is only one group truly to blame.

Hackers. Because they are breaking the law. Hence they are criminals. When you choose to do something that you know to be illegal simply because you can that does not make you right. Until we start treating hackers and electronic crimes as seriously as we do other crimes this will keep happening. This week alone there have been reports of doctors office systems invaded, banks, retailers even small businesses compromised. By people that are overseas and thus out of the reach of our law enforcement. How long before you end up with something you didn't want shared with the world posted out there for all to see in the name of free information? Or your identity gets stolen by someone who doesn't think they should have to play by the rules.

The next age is going to be electronic. Each day people do more online. Bills are paid online, banking is done online as are loans. If we don’t find a way to police this new frontier and bring more of these keyboard bandits to justice it won't be long before they start running the show.