Privacy is something that an individual goes out of his or her way to protect. Whether it’s through password protection or a series of questions in order to obtain access to personal information, people take extreme measures to make sure their content is kept away from unwanted eyes.

Now, imagine if all of a sudden, that privacy was invaded and in a matter of seconds, all of your precious, personal content was exposed to millions of online viewers. That is exactly what has happened recently to a dozen female celebrities, whose nude photos were leaked on the internet from their personal iCloud accounts.

Marty Singer, a lawyer who is currently representing the dozens of celebrities affected by this scandal, has threatened to sue the popular search engine Google for $100 million for allegedly failing to remove the leaked images from its search results. Singer demanded that the search engine take the photos down weeks ago; however, he claims that they are still available to be searched and viewed by the public.

The members and employers of Google did not directly hack these women and post their private photos into the world wide web; however, they have allowed its various sites such as BlogSpot and Youtube to have the images available on display, and in the process, have allowed the victimization and unwanted exploration of women to manifest.

There have been various viewpoints regarding the issue, such as whether the women should have taken the intimate photos in the first place. How one chooses to express themselves, including what they do with their bodies, is a personal choice; when the celebrities’ photos were hacked into and stolen, their privacy was exploited.

Jennifer Lawrence, one of the stars involved, has addressed the controversial incident as a “sex crime”, a violation of her rights and her body.

When one shares intimate details with another individual, the idea is that the content is secure, and when those photos were stolen and exposed to the public, it was without permission and not a matter of choice.

Singer asserts that Google should have immediately taken down the photos and by failing to do so, the company has made profits from the leaked images that have led to the victimization of women. He addresses in a letter to the company that their reason for not removing the images were to “collect millions of dollars in advertising revenue.”

In this entire ordeal, women have been blatantly exposed to the public eye and exploited by hackers who stole their personal property and shared it with the world. These images have been shared on various social networking sites that are reached by Google searches, therefore it is justifiable to claim that because the company failed to take the photos down sooner, the images have been distributed to several websites, causing dozens of women to be terrorized and violated. This kind of scandal is unethical, and because Google failed to remove the photos, legal action needs to be taken.