Yahoo Finance Alec Baldwin: We Are All Hackers
(RSAconference.com)
Every year, the RSA Conference brings out the best and brightest in the shadowy world of cybersecurity — people like former NSA Director Keith Alexander, former head of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers, and the world’s leading analysts, researchers, and cryptographers.
And, of course, Jack Donaghy of “30 Rock.”
Wait, what?
As the final keynote to this week’s 2015 RSA conference in San Francisco, actor Alec Baldwin engaged in a lively conversation with host Hugh Thompson, chief technology officer at security firm Blue Coat, about Hollywood and hackers.
Baldwin, who described himself as a Luddite who still has his original AOL email address, said the attack on Sony Pictures last fall — ostensibly to prevent the release of the Seth Rogen-James Franco satire The Interview — has already had a chilling effect on Hollywood.
The Emmy-winning star of “30 Rock” said many in Hollywood wished Congress or the White House had scheduled a screening of The Interview “just to stick it to the people who didn’t want it to be shown.”
“What happens next?” he said. “What do you do if people start to hack others in order to control their speech? Say someone says they want to do a bio of Putin, and somebody hacks into the studio system and says, if you release this film we will do these things to you?
“Everyone in this room has a hacker inside them,” he added. “Everyone feels that people are keeping things secret that shouldn’t be kept secret. But you have to step back and ask whether any of us has the right to judge what private information can rightfully be exposed.”
(Andres Fevrier/Flickr)
The leaking of thousands of emails from Sony Pictures, which ultimately led to the resignation of studio chief Amy Pascal, has changed how Hollywood communicates internally, Baldwin said.
“In the past you’d have a conversation on a phone and you’d send an email afterward saying, ‘This is my understanding of our discussion. Do you concur with this?’” he said. “Now we live in a world where people say, ‘Let’s discuss this offline.’ Phone calls and voice communication have become more popular again in the entertainment world.”
But Baldwin drew distinctions between individuals who had a “reasonable motivation” for releasing private information, like Edward Snowden, and criminal acts like the Sony hack. He added that as a well known star, it’s even harder to keep your life private “because everyone has a camera or a phone in their pocket.”
“Listen, I’m someone you didn’t have to hack in order to hear my personal communications,” Baldwin said, referring to a notorious 2007 incident when voicemails the actor left to his 11-year-old daughter were leaked to the media. “There are things that are better left private. That’s why the work done by security companies is so essential.”
As for that Putin movie?
“The industry is so precarious right now … it’s tough to negotiate it without caution,” he said. “I think a biopic of Putin is more likely to be streamed on Amazon before it would appear on NBC.”
Email Dan Tynan here: ModFamily1@yahoo.com.
