Penn Jillette: You can stop hackers’ crimes | CNN

How the Sony hack unfolded —

Sony Pictures announce the controversial comedy "The Interview," a film depicting the assassination of North Korea's leader, will have a limited release on Christmas Day. The studio previously announced it would shelve plans to release the film after it became the victim of a cyber attack thought to have originated in North Korea. Click to see how the saga unfolded.

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In June 2014, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said "The Interview" was "the most undisguised terrorism." "If the U.S. administration connives at and patronizes the screening of the film, it will invite a strong and merciless countermeasure," he said.

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In November, "The Guardians of Peace," a hacker group with suspected ties to North Korea, said that it had hacked Sony Pictures and released massive amounts of data. The group added that there would be more leaks.

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December 5 -- Hackers<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/05/technology/security/conan-obrien-sylvester-stallone-sony-hack/"> exposed the security numbers of 47,423 people </a>including Conan O'Brien, Sylvester Stallone, Rebel Wilson, Judd Apatow and Frank Stallone.

December 5 -- Hackers exposed the security numbers of 47,423 people including Conan O'Brien, Sylvester Stallone, Rebel Wilson, Judd Apatow and Frank Stallone.

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In early December, hackers emailed Sony employees warning that "your family will be in danger." Guardians of Peace have claimed the email did not come from them. The FBI confirmed in a statement they were aware of the email and are investigating the "person or group responsible for the recent attack on the Sony Pictures network." Many security experts said the hack increasingly pointed to North Korea.

December 7 -- North Korea's state-run propaganda arm said they were not responsible for the Sony hack attack but applauded it as "a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers with the DPRK." They added they could not be responsible as America is "a country far across the ocean."

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December 8 -- Another message appeared on a website saying: "We have already given our clear demand to the management team of SONY, however, they have refused to accept. Do carry out our demand if you want to escape us. And, Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!"

David Goldman/AP

Sony Hack Timeline —

December 11 -- Another leaked email revealed a controversial exchange between a Sony executive and a producer, speculating over President Barack Obama's favorite films, referring to "Django Unchained" and other movies about African Americans such as "12 Years a Slave."

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December 15 -- Sony Pictures asked news organizations to stop examining and publicizing the information made public by the hackers. Attorney David Boies said that the hackers' tactics are part of "an ongoing campaign explicitly seeking to prevent [Sony] from distributing a motion picture."

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December 16 -- In an email to Sony Pictures' co-chair Amy Pascal, producer Scott Rudin called Angelina Jolie "minimally talented" and a "spoiled brat" with a "rampaging... ego". Jolie and Pascal were later photographed running into each other at an event with Jolie giving Pascal a nasty look. The leaks also revealed the secret aliases of some well-known actors such as Tom Hanks, Sara Michelle Gellar and Jessica Alba.

Courtesy Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images

December 16 -- The New York premiere of "The Interview" was canceled after "The Guardians of Peace" posted a threat against moviegoers. The message said: "We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places 'The Interview' be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to," the hacking group said. "The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001."

CTMG/Sony

December 17 -- Two former Sony employees sued the company for failing to protect their private information. The plaintiffs seek to form a class action lawsuit of up to 15,000 former employees. The plaintiffs want Sony to provide them with five years of credit monitoring, bank monitoring, identity theft insurance and credit restoration services. They also called for Sony to be subject to regular privacy audits.

December 18 -- Sony decided to cancel the release of "The Interview," a decision that sparked outrage among celebrities and politicians. A movie theater in Texas announced they would offer a free screening of Team America -- which features the leader's father Kim Jong Il -- instead until Paramount shut that down too. Sony also downplayed the possibility that the film could be released online.

David Goldman/AP

December 19 -- President Obama said in a news conference that Sony "made a mistake" in response to the studio's decision to cancel its plans to release "The Interview" on Christmas Day. He told CNN later that week that the Sony hack was an act of "cybervandalism", not "an act of war".

December 21 -- Sony Pictures' CEO Michael Lynton responds to President Obama's comments, telling CNN "we did not cave or back down." Mr Lynton also said Sony were looking into releasing "The Interview" on the internet but no major distributor has volunteered to release the film.

December 22 -- North Korea's internet goes black for more than nine hours. The <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/23/world/asia/north-korea-internet/index.html?hpt=ias_c2">cause of the outage is unknown</a>, but experts have suggested that a lone hacker could have carried it out, others even argued that the North Korean government could have deliberately disconnected themselves.

How the Sony hack unfolded —

December 22 -- North Korea's internet goes black for more than nine hours. The cause of the outage is unknown, but experts have suggested that a lone hacker could have carried it out, others even argued that the North Korean government could have deliberately disconnected themselves.

Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images

How the Sony hack unfolded —

December 23 -- Sony Pictures announced "The Interview" will be released on Christmas Day but only in a limited number of theatres. The studio's CEO Michael Lynton said: "while we hope this is only the first step of the film's release, we are proud to make it available to the public and to have stood up to those who attempted to suppress free speech." So far more than 200 independently-owned theatres have agreed to show the film.

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How the Sony hack unfolded

Editor’s Note: Penn Jillette, a writer, television host and frequent guest on a wide range of shows, is half of the Emmy Award-winning magic act duo Penn & Teller. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

Story highlights

Penn Jillette: Hacking is a crime that is enabled when we invade others' privacy

If we don't look at nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence or Sony emails, crime is lessened, he says

Jillette: I've been hacked but my information wasn't made public

CNN —

How about a world where we have murderers but no murders? The police still chase down criminals who commit murder, we have trials, juries who judge, and justice is handed out … but no one dies.

With many forms of cybercrime and hacking, we can just decide, as a society, to take away much of the damage before it happens. Imagine if the hackers had stolen intimate pictures from Jennifer Lawrence, and we all just agreed that, “She didn’t want us to see these pictures, so we’re not going to look.”

Penn Jillette

Lloyd Bishop/NBC/Getty Images

We don’t have a right to her body. If you were over at Jennifer’s house, and she left the room to get you a shortbread cookie and cup of decaffeinated tea (this is my fantasy), you wouldn’t take that opportunity to search for nude pictures on her computer.

If she wanted to change her shirt before you went out to see Dylan together (still my fantasy), and she asked you to turn her back while she did that, even if you were a bit tempted to peek, you wouldn’t. You’re a good person and you would respect her wishes.

If you were visiting Amy Pascal, and she left the room to get … um, let’s say a nice fig-filled cookie and some hot chocolate, I don’t think you would open up her computer and read her company emails to see if you could find something that you could use against her.

You just wouldn’t do that. I don’t even want to know what people are saying behind my back about me, let alone about someone else.

If you follow that same morality, if you simply think that people have a right to privacy and that you don’t want to see what people don’t want you to see, well, there would still be hacking crimes … but the victims would suffer less.

I’ve been seriously blackmailed. I’ve had all the information on my computer fall into the criminal hands and the criminal ask for money to not publish that information. Yup, there were sex pictures of me and somehow my criminal thought that me naked was as valuable as Jennifer Lawrence naked.

My criminal was a f—–g idiot. There was nothing on my drive that would have really done any damage to my career. It really wouldn’t have even embarrassed me that much, but I was still freaked by a bad guy looking at my stuff. My criminal was busted and stopped and the information never got out, but it was still yucky.

Jennifer Lawrence and Sony are all going to feel violated and the crime is still real, but we, as a society, can make much of the damage go away. We don’t need reporters to team up with the criminals to help them do the damage.

The crime is newsworthy, but not the content. It is not our right to see pictures and emails that the owners didn’t want us to see. We have no right to stolen goods. Even if someone else stole it first, stealing is still wrong.

We can’t stop any damage a murder causes just by not reporting it and not looking, but we can do that with hacking.

Let’s do that. If someone doesn’t want us to see something, let’s not look. Let’s not help criminals.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Penn Jillette.

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Hackers can’t be stopped, but some of their crimes can

How the Sony hack unfolded

Story highlights