Jeff Bezos v. The Enquirer: How Does It Affect Us?

By HILLARY PIZARRO

The controversy surrounding Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos  and the National Enquirer’s threat to publish explicit personal images has thrown the court for a loop and amassed a lot of national attention, including that of past victims of blackmail and what everyone now knows as “exposing.”

Recently, Bezos revealed in a blog post on Medium.com that he was being blackmailed with explicit personal pictures by National Enquirer’s publisher, Dylan J. Pecker. In his post, he revealed the self-proclaimed “confidential” email he was sent along with terms Bezos would have to follow in order to keep the pictures from being released to the public:

Bezos is taking legal action against the Enquirer, already putting various important figures on trial, even some that revealed secrets about President Trump and his campaign. Bezos also mentioned in his post, “If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?” 

It’s not that easy

Exposing and blackmail is not a gender-biased issue. Everyone is vulnerable to becoming a victim in the digital age of social media. Nude photos have become issues in the workplace as well as schools, the only sliver of efforts being assemblies about the dangers of exposure which prove to be in vain.

A 19-year-old Union High graduate, who prefers to be identified by first name Fernando for his privacy, is a victim of exposing.   Not a lot could be done to protect him without putting him under investigation.

“I got exposed sophomore year, everyone remembers it, I didn’t come back to school for a week,” he says. “They didn’t have an assembly or anything but everyone knew, everyone was asking about it and looking for people who screenshot it.”

Fernando did not take legal action to avoid getting in trouble himself for sexual harassment or spreading of child pornography.

While assemblies and meeting are held, not everyone is familiar with education about this topic, much less their rights as a victim.

Christian Quintana, who graduated from Linden High School in 2015, does not recall having ever had any sort of assembly regarding nudes photos, much less about what victims could do if those photos got out. He says, “There was a handful of photos spread around but it was all just topic of conversation, the school never addressed it even though they probably knew it was happening.”

The laws and the stats

Blogspot mindyourmind.ca, is a Canadian site with a mission to help teens and adults educate themselves on their physical and mental wellness,  talks about this in detail and reminds everyone that if they receive a nude photo and chose to distribute it without the consent of their partner, it is indeed considered sexual assault/harassment and an invasion of privacy. This is all according to Andrea Slane’s “Sexting, Teens, and a Proposed Offense of Invasion of Privacy,” a study on sexting laws in Canada and how they protect victims to some degree regardless of age, gender or background. Laws there state that without proof of consent, a perpetrator can catch the same charges to that of assault and harassment.

This is not the same case for America as laws are individual to each state and only 25 have laws regarding the distribution or receiving of photos, according to the Cyberbullying Research Center. Only 6 of those states reach the penalty of felony and 16 reach the penalty of a misdemeanor. Amy Adele Hasinoff is an associate professor at the University of Denver in Colorado, she has written books and done extensive research on sexting and gendered norms of privacy and sexuality. She appeared at a TedTalk addressing the statistics of sexting and what a victim could possibly do if their photos are ever distributed. She claims that even if someone does file a lawsuit regarding private photos being distributed without consent, it will most likely be an unsuccessful attempt.

Kristin Monemarano, sophomore and journalism major at Ramapo College, is shocked at the lack of sexting laws in the country.
She says,”I think that’s scary and it’s terrible for people who are in a bad situation and they don’t have any resources to get out of it so they can’t rely on the law.”

These laws and possibilities are not enough to stop the act of sexting though as victims get in trouble along with their perpetrators, and with the development of technology comes the increase of these cases. In a survey done by Cosmopolitan Magazine, conducted using 850 of their readers around the ages of 21, they found that 64.24 percent of women have taken nude photos and only 11.28 percent have not.

Another survey done by Zavamed.com, an online healthcare organization, shows that out of 2,000 interviewed Europeans and Americans, 40 percent of American men are likely to send nude photos as opposed to the 36 percent of American women.

This also brings blackmail into the conversation as these photos once sent in trust become ammunition for spiteful or cruel perpetrators.

These photos can cause an immense amount of emotional distress to the victim, leaving them with depression or anxiety as to what the person could possibly do with the photos or what could happen to their lives if they got out. Enough Is Enough, a non-profit organization committed to making the internet a safer place, cites a steady increase in patients reporting to the National Center for Psychological Trauma because of sexting and blackmail. They say, “they have worked with more and more patients dealing with anxiety and depression because of decisions they have made while sexting.” 

The distribution of personal photos can ruin one’s future, people having been fired from jobs and refused opportunities because they were victims.

College Sophomore, 19, requesting to go by Jay, is a victim of this sort of blackmail after she and her partner at the time broke up. “I had him blocked and he would call me using *67 and demand I unblock him, yell at me, or tell me I never cared about him,” she says.

“I felt like I was pressured, I had no choice, when I finally called him back he said that if I didn’t stop blocking him or get back with him, he would expose me,” she added.“He gave me a few days to think about it, I got back together with him the next morning.”

When asked about how her high school handled cases like these she said, “There were so many different pictures sent around my school and literally nothing was done about it. The teachers knew about them, everyone did.” When asked if the school ever did anything to address sexting, “No, never actually. My sister’s an English teacher there and she’s told me about a freshman there whose boyfriend airdrops her nudes to everyone in her class.” She said, “The girl sent the pictures in middle school and after they broke up, the kid just sends them every time they have a class together just to remind everyone what she did.”