Forget iHacks, we're all exposed online

"Life is on the record," Tony Blair's press chief used to tell his staff. His point was not that it was no longer possible to talk "on background" or that journalists would not respect a confidence. It was that things get out and that it was safer to assume everything you say could be quoted.

I thought of his comment amid news of the Apple hack that has spewed dozens of highly personal images of celebrities on to the internet. The victims include genuine film stars such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Hudson and a number of other women whose celebrity status I guess we'll just have to take on trust. Those hacked were overwhelmingly women posing nude for pictures presumably taken either by or for their partners.

I write as someone who has never felt the urge to take or circulate nude photographs of myself - a decision that (perhaps worryingly) does not appear to have left a major gap in the life of my partner. Perhaps I should be bothered by this, or perhaps we are products of a different era. Nude photos of a loved one did not begin with the internet. The Polaroid camera built its success on the trend - one model was even known as the Polaroid Swinger and marketed with rather suggestive adverts. The alternative was having photos developed at the local pharmacist, where the leering smile of the shop assistant was enough to dissuade many an amorous couple from posing au naturel.

Today, low-grade Polaroids and those smirking intermediaries are gone. Nude pictures and sex videos are commonplace, maybe even the norm, and so inevitably are leaks, hacks and the particularly nauseating phenomenon known as revenge porn. This last is a singular concern among teenagers. Young girls feel pressured into posing nude for boyfriends, who then in effect blackmail them.

Though the appetite for nude snaps is not only about women, it affects them disproportionately - perhaps because the peeping class is predominantly male.

As far as one can tell there is nothing shameful in the hacked images but that does not reduce the mortification felt by the stars. Nor has it prevented a mean-spirited blame game in which some have castigated the celebrities for being foolish enough to take images they don't want published. Others, rightly, object to chiding victims of crime. For this is stolen property, just as surely as if they had been burgled. The difference is that this break-in leaves them feeling violated by the entire world. On Monday, terms related to the incident were the most searched for items online in the US. (In the UK it was behind football transfer deadline day - which must say something about British nature.)

However, apportioning blame is to miss a wider point, and one that celebrities are probably better placed to comprehend than most others.

This really is not to criticise the victims. Again, we do not blame burglary victims for keeping jewellery in the house. Yes, they did nothing wrong. Yes, they were victims of crime and, yes, they should not be treated as if they were to blame for the creepy and nasty actions of thieves. But this is another augury of the world into which we are moving.

Increasingly, there is no such thing as "off the record". The private indiscretions, minor rule-breaking, the personal sphere can all be dragged into the public. CCTV can capture our behaviour outdoors; GPS-enabled phones and travelcards record our every journey. Your computer keystrokes are recorded.

Everyone you know carries a video camera and once something is out there, it is out there. The certainties of "behind closed doors" are dissolving. In some cases this may be a price worth paying to regulate bad behaviour, but a country in which people do not feel an utter dread of breaking any norms is probably a happier one.

The price of nude photos, sex tapes or any behaviour you would rather your boss or your mother did not see is the greater risk that they will. There is nothing wrong with lovers posing nude as long as they weigh up the cost of jealous exes, malicious hackers and a prurient public.

Things are no longer necessarily private because we do them alone or with only one other. Likewise, off-colour texts, misjudged emails and social media posts can leave us as exposed as a film star.

We face a choice of living with the risk or inhibiting legitimate private behaviour. We may relax and take the chance. But everyone needs to know that life today is on the record and we are all naked online.

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