Marcel Winatschek

The Phone That Knew Too Much

Christopher Chaney hacked into Scarlett Johansson’s phone and found what anyone paying attention had already suspected: she is as extraordinary undressed as she is in every frame she’s ever appeared in. The photos circulated the way these things always do—quickly, permanently, through the specific infrastructure the internet built for exactly this purpose. Johansson went to the FBI, which seems correct. Chaney eventually went to prison, which also seems correct. The images themselves were the kind that make you feel briefly stupid for being alive—not because of what they reveal, but because of the gap between the person on screen and the person in the bathroom mirror of a hotel room, which is no gap at all. Just a body. One of the great ones. Held on a stranger’s server without her permission.