The naked truth: Stars are asking to be hacked (AP)

NEW YORK – Maybe it's not fair to blame the victim.

A victim like, say, Scarlett Johansson or Christina Aguilera, among the many celebrities whose racy "private" photos have been hacked and posted to the Internet for everyone to ogle. (Now don't pretend such photos have escaped your notice!)

What sort of person would engage in such predatory practices as those with which Christopher Chaney has been charged? The Jacksonville, Fla., man was arrested on Thursday as part of a yearlong investigation into celebrity hacking that authorities dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi." There were more than 50 victims in the case that also included Mila Kunis and Renee Olstead, authorities said.

U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte described those who engage in such activity as "scum" — scum preying upon such victims as Johansson, whose nude pictures were among those Chaney allegedly mined and put online.

Poor Scarlett.

On the other hand ... really?! What was going on in Johansson's pretty head when she, like so many, snapped candid self-portraits without figuring out that:

(a) She's a lovely woman.

(b) She's a famous woman.

(c) She's a highly marketable woman whose every move, clothed or unclothed, is of interest to a public salivating for details.

This sort of head-in-the-cloud narcissism (or is it head-in-the-iCloud?) fails to acknowledge that, more and more, people live in glass houses — especially famous people, whose houses are bigger and even more transparent than others.

So is it completely unreasonable to blame their neighbors (and, thanks to the Internet, all of us are neighbors) for taking a peek at otherwise forbidden sights when given the chance?

In simpler times, anyone would be slammed for watching a woman who displayed herself, undraped, in her bedroom window. Maybe this woman had an exhibitionist streak, but good manners dictated that the startled onlooker avert his eyes. To keep staring would brand him a voyeur, even a perv.

And for the certified Peeping Tom in simpler times, a pair of binoculars was needed. Today, all that's required is a search engine and celebrity cyber-hackers to supply it.

In this era of digital snooping, why would any celebrity delude himself or herself that his or her physical seclusion guarantees privacy? However high the walls surrounding one's property and however well-staffed one's security detail, why would any celebrity store nude photos on any electronic device that connects to the Internet — unless, of course, the celeb is a closet exhibitionist and secretly hopes the stuff will go viral.

No one needs to be as brazen a show-off as Anthony Weiner, the New York Congressman who was forced to resign last June after sending sexually explicit messages and photos of himself to women who were following him on Twitter. Even Johansson presumably knows better than to pull that stunt.

But she didn't know better than to leave ripe for the picking those photos of her in her birthday suit, as if to dare some hacker to share them with the world.

Sure, Johansson is one of many victims of cyber-hacking.

Maybe she was also asking for it.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier

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'Hacked off' celebrities lead war on British tabloids (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – It took the hacking of a murdered girl's phone to make the News of the World scandal explode, but British celebrities have wasted no time in using the row to press their own agenda against the tabloids.

Actor Hugh Grant has led the charge by becoming an investigative reporter himself for a day -- one newspaper joked that it was his best role yet -- and taping a former News of the World journalist saying the practice was widespread.

The recent launch of a "Hacked Off" campaign calling for greater press regulation meanwhile attracted figures including socialite Jemima Khan and former world motorsport chief Max Mosley, himself the victim of a tabloid sting.

Grant "has been eloquent, he has been able to talk about it in such a way that people have been interested and taken notice," Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust and coordinator of the Hacked Off group, told AFP.

The petition now has more than 8,300 signatures.

Yet there was little real outcry in Britain about phone hacking until July 4 when it was reported that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had hacked and deleted the messages of Milly Dowler, a murdered 13-year-old schoolgirl.

The paper has since shut down.

Before that, the jailing of two people in 2007 over the hacking of British royals, and various lawsuits by celebrities including British actors Jude Law and Sienna Miller, attracted relatively little interest from the public.

"Their attitude is, 'Max Clifford and Sienna Miller use the media and do very well from it, so I won't lose too much sleep over it,'" publicist Max Clifford told the BBC.

Since the Dowler hacking emerged, however, showbiz figures have found the scandal a useful stick with which to beat their tabloid foes.

Grant, who starred in the 1994 film "Four Weddings and a Funeral", has toured the TV studios in the past fortnight telling how he secretly recorded a conversation with Paul McMullan, a former News of the World journalist.

During the encounter -- which Grant wrote about in the New Statesman magazine in April with relatively little fanfare -- he said McMullan admitted "industrial scale phone-hacking" at the paper.

On talk shows Grant has since had colourful exchanges with McMullen and other journalists, at one point denying he was bitter about the press after the coverage he received during his 1995 arrest with a Hollywood prostitute.

"If you don't want to get in the paper keep it in your trousers," said John Gaunt, a British radio talk show presenter, referring to the incident.

"Cheap and pathetic," Grant replied.

Another vocal celebrity has been comedian Steve Coogan, who plays the inept chat-show host Alan Partridge on television and has starred in Hollywood movies including "Around the World in 80 Days."

A victim of phone hacking himself, he also appeared on a television panel show with McMullan, angrily accusing him of being "morally bankrupt".

McMullan hit back by noting that Coogan had received money for appearing in films including "Night at the Museum" made by 20th Century Fox, owned by Murdoch's News Corp.

Meanwhile Khan, who is Grant's former girlfriend, wrote a lengthy account in The Independent newspaper describing the "long, painful process of trying to find out the truth" about how she was hacked.

"The press, police and Parliament have all colluded on the issue of phone hacking," Khan wrote.

Moore, of the Hacked Off campaign, says he wants "transparency" in the press and a change in the culture of tabloid newsrooms to one that "doesn't encourage hacking."

Meanwhile new celebrity lawsuits are coming in. Jude Law on Friday sued The Sun, what is thought to be the first such legal action against Rupert Murdoch's best-selling daily tabloid.

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