Senate Commerce chairman wants answers on nude photo leaks

The powerful Senate Commerce Committee is planning to explore how hundreds of intimate pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and other celebrities found their way onto the Internet this weekend.

Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said on Thursday that he wants Apple to answer questions about the security of its iCloud storage service, where hackers allegedly stole the photos before posting them online.  

{mosads}“Apple is expected to introduce a new version of its iPhone that will enable, if not encourage, users to store more information with its cloud services, and I want to learn whether these focused, targeted attacks are symptomatic of wider, systemic vulnerabilities,” Rockefeller said in a statement on Thursday.

The stolen photos captured headlines, led to an FBI investigation and prompted concerns about the security of information stored on the cloud.

Rockefeller was one of many lawmakers working to get some type of data security law passed in Congress earlier this year, though those efforts have so far been unsuccessful.

Rockefeller also expressed outrage at a recebt possible hack at Home Depot that may have exposed millions of shoppers’ credit and debit card information.

The incident could be larger than Target’s data breach during last year’s holiday shopping season, and is “the latest in a string of data security breaches that have put millions of consumers at risk of financial harm and exposed their sensitive personal information,” Rockefeller said.

“The massive data breach is just one more example of the need for strong federal baseline consumer protections,” he said.

Rockefeller demanded details of internal investigations after the breach at Target as well as similar events at Neiman Marcus and Snapchat, and said he would request the same from Home Depot.