For those that don’t know the biggest story in hong kong in the past few months isn’t about whether there will be democracy in 2012 or how turbulent the stock market is (biggest drop in history and biggest rise the next day) but the hong kong entertainment sex scandal involving Edison Chen, Gilian Chung, Cecelia Cheung and Bobo Chan. If you found this post through a search engine, I’m sorry to disappoint you that I am not hosting any of those pictures. However, I would like to use this as a case study to show how our lives and culture have been affected by the internet. First thing is nothing spreads through the internet faster than a sex scandal involving pictures, not even a wild fire. Can this “fire” be stopped? although a wide fire is hard to put out, it can be done which is unlike an internet sex scandal which can not be put out. If information can be stopped from spreading there wouldn’t be a piracy issue for music or videos. Hong Kong police should think about that first before putting out a statement that they will catch the culprit or that anyone with the pictures might be breaking the law (they changed the latter statement after getting criticized for saying something that doesn’t make sense at all). Hong Kong police have also said they have asked interpol to help them with the investigation however, rumor has it that interpol isn’t very psyched about getting involved as there is a lot of human rights and privacy issues involved in finding the culprit, getting ISPs to give up IPs of their clients doesn;t get much good publicity). Not being much of being a real hacker, I can name a few ways of eluding the police myself a) use an anonymous proxy to do everything, even the free TOR would be good, b) do it through someone’s insecure wifi connection c) use shady file sharing websites that have alot of illegal content themselves, i’m sure they aren;t spilling any beans. If you any pair any two or use all three together, that would be pretty hard to track even for a specialized unit. I think just using one would get the hong kong police running in circles already. If kira was a hacker, using zombie computers through a trojan or backdoors would do the trick nicely to leave a untraceable trail.

What interests me most about this story is how it is evolving. It is so dramatic. The person behind this scandal is calling himself Kira, after the main character in the popular manga “Death Note” who also acts behind the pseudonym Kira, and taunts the police that they will never arrest him or find out his real identity (if you have never heard about it, its a great story and I highly recommend it). We can see from Kira’s (our real life kira) action that he is highly intelligent as a) he has the whole thing planned, when to leak pics and stop to keep suspense b) elude arrest c) get a scapegoat to be arrested. Apart from intelligence, he is also got alot of guts, the people he is offending cecelia’s dad and gilian’s talent agency boss aren’t nice people to mess with and have a reputation in hong kong. Stepping on their toes while also taunting the hong kong police commissioner, kira has definately got some guts.

I have heard rumors from my friend whose family is in the media business in hong kong that the pics and video were brought by the highest bidder Next Media already, so Kira must have made a buck or two, but i believe he is doing all this for a power trip. I’m sure he, like most people, don’t have a very high opinion of Edison, but what he is doing is pretty classic hacker mentality, he isn’t doing it for money, he is doing it because its a challenge of wits, he is getting a feeling of being untouchable while each of his actions cause major headlines all in the self-righteous guise that information should be free. Every hacker wants to see how far he can go until he is stopped. Hence, unless Kira gets bored of all this, there is nothing anyone can do to stop this Kira until he has leaked out all the pictures.

By the way, if any of you were wondering if the those pics are real or as the talent management companies call it “photoshopped” or people that look like their client, thats all bullshit as its obviously real. If it was a photoshop prank, the detail is insane. For example, the background edison’s room, the frame by frame of the pics is obviously from a video, there is no way you could find “heads” at all the those different angles to photoshop, and the noise and lighting is so even. Most importantly no one can find the original pics for the heads or the bodies.

P.S what inspired me to write this post was LS and the pic below, of a modified edison video statement screen capture made to look like, someone else who is also in hiding, and will only contact the outside world through self made videos. its too good to not to let more people see it. Disclaimer: its not made by me, i found it on a forum, someone was using it as an avatar, props to that person for thinking about the parallel. hahaha

P.P.S some advise for Kira if he does happen to read my blog: give yourself unique name, like realKira or something  to brand yourself to the media, its much better PR like what the kira in death note did.  By having a unique handle, its alot easier for people to follow up on your story through a search engine and for you to find out who much an impact you have made (thats what you are doing it for right?)

P.P.P.S for people who want to find out more about what is happening and leads/links to the pictures for people that still haven’t seen them.  Edison Chen sex pictures

The 2nd most wanted person in the world?