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George Clooney, WikiLeaks' lawyer wife hand out burner phones to wedding guests
Day 4: 'News'-papers STILL rammed with Clooney nuptials
George Clooney and his new wife – a human rights lawyer who has represented six-fingered embassy dweller Julian AssangeTM – went to extreme lengths to safeguard the privacy of their wedding, even issuing guests with "burner phones" under their control.
Guests at last weekend's nuptials between George Clooney and top lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice, Italy, were reportedly given strict instructions on how to help keep images and details of the wedding festivities beyond the reach of tabloid journalists and hackers.
Clooney – who is due to direct a film about the News of the World celebrity voicemail hacking scandal – reportedly ordered wedding guests to leave their personal smartphones and tablets in their hotel rooms.
Clooney's burner phones (brand unknown) served as a ticket for the event, celebrity gossip site TMZ reports. Guests were also given instructions on smartphone security protocols for the event, Business Insider adds.
Team Clooney were apparently nervous about photographs and other information leaking out from the poorly protected accounts of celebrity guests, a concern heightened by the iCloud celeb nudie hacking scandal.
Security veteran Graham Cluley commented: "How were George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin to know if the celebrities they had invited to their three-day wedding party hadn’t already had their accounts compromised, and might be unwittingly leaking information and snaps? But the precaution taken by the newlyweds wasn’t taken purely because of hackers, but because the couple are said to have sold the rights to the wedding photographs to a magazine [American Vogue], in return for a charitable donation."
"Tactics like this might work for a three-day party, but are sadly impractical and beyond the budget for most of us," he added.
It's possible that photos taken using Clooney's phones were syncing to a cloud under his control, so the newlyweds could tell who had taken pictures of what. The security precautions were probably more geared towards inadvertent leakage or hacker threats.
"Mr and Mrs Clooney had tight control of the phones, and I am sure they would have taken measures to ensure that they could track who took what photographs, and leave them off their Christmas card list if anyone were ungracious enough to share a pic taken on their burner phones with the tabloids," Cluley concluded. ®