The TV show Scandal contains the type of story lines needed for a successful television program: sex, scandals, beautiful people, politics, power, money, etc.... According to Wikipedia, the plot centers around, "Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) [who] is a former White House Communications Director for the President of the United States who has left to start her own crisis management firm, Olivia Pope & Associates. Olivia has decided to dedicate her life to protecting the public images of the nation's elite but is finding that no matter how hard she tries, she cannot leave parts of her past behind."
Last night's episode centered around the President's daughter slipping her Secret Service detail and doing drugs and creating a threesome sex tape with a couple of boys/young men she has never met before having sex with them. Olivia Pope's team was called into action and asked to do what was necessary to delete the photos and avoid a scandal for the First Family.
Olivia's employees utilize social media and what may be considered NSA tactics combined with good old fashion detective work to track down the boys/young men who had sex with the president's daughter and then filmed it. As the episode progresses, it appears that the president's daughter was targeted because the parents of one of the boys/young men demand $2.5 million dollars to turn over all copies of the embarrassing sex tape.
The fictional parents live near my office in Bethesda and sound as though they were already very well off. After Olivia has received the authority to pay $2.5 million dollars to ensure that the video and all copies are destroyed, the parents demand an additional $500,000. This angers Olivia and she turns the tables on the black mailers and threatens to ruin them due to their despicable behavior. The bottom line is that the sex tape is destroyed and it appears that no blackmail money was paid.
Digital black mail has been a troubling growing trend. As USA Today reported earlier this year, the crime of sextortion against children is an epidemic. Once content has been put into a digital format, texted, and uploaded to the cloud it is very difficult to delete. Even technology experts are not sure if content uploaded online can be deleted.
While Scandal is a fictitious television program, some of the story lines are based upon real events. Not everyone has the resources available to clean up a sex tape incident. Even celebrities who may have the money to make a sex tape "disappear" are unable to protect themselves from a sex tape scandal.
The bottom line is that it is imperative to protect your privacy at all times. You never know who may use their cell phone or other digital device as a digital extortion weapon.
Copyright 2014 by Shear Law, LLC. All rights reserved.
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