Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to key eventsSkip to navigation

Sony CEO insists 'we made no mistake' after US accuses North Korea of hack – as it happened

This article is more than 9 years old
  • Obama: ‘we will respond proportionally’
  • FBI concludes North Korea mounted hack on Sony
  • President says Sony ‘made a mistake’ by scrapping film
  • North Korean diplomat denies connection
 Updated 
Fri 19 Dec 2014 16.37 ESTFirst published on Fri 19 Dec 2014 11.28 EST
President Obama at the White House.
President Obama at the White House. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Obama at the White House. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Live feed

Key events

Summary

We’re going to wrap our live coverage of the Sony cyberattack for the day, with a list of the key developments below.

  • Obama said Sony made a mistake by acceding to the hackers’ demands that its satirical film be scrapped. “We cannot have a society where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States …That’s not who we are.”
  • Sony chairman Michael Lynton insisted his company made no such mistake and would still try to distribute The Interview. He tried to shift blame onto the theaters that refused to carry the film after the hackers’ threats.

“This is a problem that’s going to be with us for a very long time,” Senator Dianne Feinstein has announced from the pulpit of CNN.

Feinstein, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said it is imperative that Congress pass legislation that would “allow companies to share information with each other and the government … and be protected from liability for doing so.”

Pressed by Jake Tapper on the question of whether Sony made a mistake, she refused to assign blame, saying she thought that chairman Michael Lynton “did practice all due diligence, he did call the White House, he recognizes there are contracts with big theater companies.”

“This is a complicated matter …if something were to happen, who is liable for a loss of life?”

She instead returned to the responsibility of the federal government “to respond appropriately, imminently.”

“This can’t continue to happen in my view. This is a problem that’s going to be with us for a very long time. so we have to get certain strictures in place to get a handle on it.”

“I hope we can convince the North Koreans that this action has a very heavy price.”

Finally, Feinstein urged US allies to write an international accord on cybersecurity, saying that the US has already been attacked by hackers in China, Russia, Iran and the states.

“At some point if we face a disastrous attack, and this is what we must prevent, only an international agreement [can] solve it.”

Sony chairman: 'we made no mistake'

Sony made no mistake in pulling The Interview, the company’s chairman insists, despite President Obama’s assertion that they did just that.

Michael Lynton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that Sony “experienced the worst cyberattack in American history and persevered under enormous stress for months.”

Lynton tries to shift blame onto the theaters at “the crucial moment that the threat came out, from what was called the GOP at the time”.

“The movie theaters came to us one by one over the course of a very short period of time, and announced that the would not carry the film. At that point we had no [choice] but to not proceed. And that’s all.”

The CEO even argued “we have not backed down” and said that Sony still has “every desire to have the American public see this movie.”

He said the company is considering “a number of options”, but that it requires an intermediary such as Netflix or a video-on-demand distributor. None, he said, have “stepped forward and said they are willing.”

“We don’t have that direct interface with the American public.”

Asked by Zakaria whether he’d still make the film, Lynton tried to put on a brave face: “I would make the movie again, for the same reasons we made it in the first place. It was a funny comedy, it served as political satire. Knowing what I know now we might’ve done some things slightly differently, but I think a lot of events have overtaken us in a way we have no control of.”

Share
Updated at 

The Interview is not the only film that distributors are shying from in the wake of the Sony cyberattack: Paramount Pictures has pulled the 2004 comedy Team America: World Police from screenings in a handful of theaters around the US.

Courtesy my colleague Oliver Laughland (@oliverlaughland):

Paramount has contacted cinemas to inform them Team America, which depicts the death of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, has been pulled from release.

A spokesman for the Capitol Theatre in Cleveland told the Guardian the studio did not offer any reason for the film’s removal. The cinema had booked Team America back in October for a late-night cult screening.

The Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Dallas had booked a screening of the film after The Interview was dropped, but announced on Twitter this too had been pulled “due to circumstances beyond our control”. The Plaza cinema in Atlanta also tweeted it had pulled a screening of Team America.

The 2004 film, which sees Kim Jong-il played by a puppet and killed after he is impaled on the spike of a bavarian helmet, grossed over $50m at the box office. After his death, Kim is revealed to be an alien cockroach from the fictional planet Gyron.

The Guardians of Peace have warned Sony to “never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy”, the Associated Press reports.

The email was confirmed by a person close to the studio who requested anonymity because the person wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter. It was sent to several employees of the Culver City, California, company that’s been roiled by a hacking group calling itself Guardians of Peace.

“Very wise to cancel ‘the interview’ it will be very useful for you,” read the message. “We ensure the purity of your data and as long as you make no more trouble.”

The email also warned against any release of the Seth Rogen, James Franco comedy and insisted that “anything related to the movie, including trailers” be removed from the Internet.

“Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy,” wrote the hackers.

“It’s above us now at government level,” said the person close to Sony.

Joshua Pollack, a North Korea watcher and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, is reading between the lines of various statements.

FBI made statement on NK Sony Pictures hack; POTUS called it a "crime." This implies it won't be treated as warfare.

— Joshua H. Pollack (@Joshua_Pollack) December 19, 2014

How the administration classifies the hack could affect its response. North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terror in 2008, and hawkish senator John McCain said the cyberattack was “an act of war” earlier Friday.

So what happens to The Interview, asks my colleague Peter Bradshaw from the Guardian’s film desk, a question he answers in piece all about censorship and the states eager to stop writers like Salman Rushdie and comedians like Seth Rogen.

Despite being withdrawn from cinemas, and having no theatrical or DVD release schedule, it will certainly surface. Variety’s Steven Gaydosshrewdly commented that it will of course become freely available online using precisely the same BitTorrent technology that the North Korean cyber-warriors used for their hacking. On another commercial and diplomatic level, questions will be asked in Los Angeles and Washington about exactly how much China knew about all this. Sony Pictures have led the way in partnerships with the Chinese film industry: even planning a Chinese remake of My Best Friend’s Wedding. All this might be under strain.

Perhaps, in any case, Hollywood misread the nature of the North Korea regime. Despite its authoritarianism and instinctive suspicion and loathing for anything that smacks of artistic freedom, it does take cinema very seriously. The Pyongyang international film festival, however bureaucratic and sclerotic, is a rare North Korean institution to which outsiders are theoretically invited (it even showed Bend It Like Beckham once).

You can read the full piece, titled “Sony’s retreat signals an unprecedented defeat on American turf,” here.

Summary

A quick look at the day’s developments.

  • Obama said Sony made a mistake by acceding to the hackers’ demands that its satirical film be scrapped. “We cannot have a society where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States …That’s not who we are.”
Share
Updated at 

Obama ended with a reflection on the past year and his entire presidency:

“One of the great things about this job is you get to meet American people of every race and every faith. And what I don’t think is always captured in our political debates is that the vast majority of people are trying to do the right thing. And people are basically good and have good intentions. Sometimes our institutions don’t work [as well]. Maybe police departments [do the wrong thing and] surface hidden biases.”

He says videos like that of Eric Garner’s death “trouble everybody”.

“We’ve gone through difficult times. It is your job, press corps, to report on all the mistakes that are made and all the bad things that happen and crises that look like they’re popping, and I understand that.

“But through persistent effort and faith in the American people, things get better.”

Obama listed the economy, energy, education and other issues as having improved over the past six years.

“Part of what I hope as we reflect on the new year is this should generate some confidence. When we work together we can’t be stopped.

“And now I’m going on vacation.”

Obama. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Share
Updated at 

One last question gets in, on the topic of race relations in the US.

“Black America in the aggregate is better off than when I came into office,” Obama said.

He continued: “This is a legacy of a troubled racial past, but that’s not an excuse for black folks, and I think the overwhelming majority of black folks understand that’s not an excuse.”

People are working hard, “hustling every day”, Obama said.

“They’re starting behind oftentimes in the race. What’s true for all Americans is we should be willing to provide people a hand up – not a handout. Help them afford college, and if we can help them succeed that’s going to be good for all of us.

“A lot of what we’re seeing is coloured by Ferguson, and what we’ve seen in New York, and that is that there are specific instances at least where law enforcement doesn’t feel as if it’s being applied in a colorblind fashion.

“The taskforce that I’ve formed is supposed to respond back to me in 90 days – not with a bunch of abstract musings about race relations but some really concrete practical things that law enforcement, and police departments, can begin using right now.”

Obama also responded to a question about the broader press around police killings and existing divides between black and white Americans.

“I actually think it’s been a healthy conversation. This is not a new phenomenon. You’re not going to solve the problem if it’s not being talked about.”

Share
Updated at 

The Keystone XL pipeline comes up in what Obama says is the last question.

Obama: “At issue in Keystone is not American oil. It is Canadian oil, that is drawn out of tar sands. That oil, currently, is being shipped out, through rails and trucks, and it would save Canadian companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pump it through the United States down to the Gulf.

“There’s very little impact, nominal impact, on US gas prices, what the average consumer American cares about, by having this Canadian oil get through.

“And sometimes the implication is that gas prices are going to go lower here in the States, but they’re not. It’s good for Canadian oil companies. But it’s not going to be even a nominal benefit to American jobs.”

He talks more about jobs.

“Now the creation of the pipeline itself is probably going to create a couple of thousand jobs. There’s probably a couple additional jobs that can be created in the refining process down at the Gulf.”

Those aren’t insignificant, he says, but next to the jobs created by work on roads and bridges they simply don’t compare. He pitches infrastructure to Congress again.

“We could probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs, or a million jobs, so if that’s the argument there are lots of ways to create American jobs.

“I want to make sure that if in fact this process goes forward, I want to make sure it’s not adding to the problem of climate change, which I do consider a very serious issue. And it does increase the cost to the American people.”

Share
Updated at 

Asked about politics and Congress, Obama says he takes Speaker John Boehner and Mitch McConnell at their word that they want to work with the president and not against him.

The reporter also asks about his streak of executive actions, like on immigration.

“The question’s going to be if executive actions on areas like minimum wage or equal pay, or a more sensible immigration system – if those are important to Republicans or if executive action bothers them, there is a very simple solution: pass legislation.”

He says both Democrats and Republicans simply need to start finding compromises again.

Share
Updated at 

A reporter now asks what happens if Cuba’s human rights abuses worsen.

“That doesn’t mean that over the next two years we can’t anticipate and take certain actions that we may find deeply troubling, either inside of Cuba or with respect to their foreign policy. And that could put significant strains on the relationship,” Obama replies.

“But that’s true of a lot of countries out there where we have an embassy.

“And the whole point of normalizing relations gives us the greater opportunity to have an influence.”

Obama says he would be surprised if the Castro regime “moves to effectively undermine their own policy”.

“There will be carrots and sticks that we can apply.”

Asked about whether Fidel came up in his conversation with President Raul Castro of Cuba, Obama says that the ex-president was mentioned only in passing. Obama says he took about 15 minutes to get his preliminary remarks out of the way, “and the end of my remarks I apologised for taking such a long time.”

“And he said, ‘Don’t worry about it Mr President, you still have a chance to break Fidel’s record, he once spoke for seven hours straight.’ And then Raul gave his own preliminary remarks that lasted at least twice as long as mine, and that gave me the opportunity to say ‘it runs in the family’.”

About the embargo:

“We can’t unilaterally bring down the embargo. But what I do think is going to happen is there’s going to be a process where Congress digests it; there are bipartisan supporters [...] people will see the reactions that unfold. I think there’s going to be a healthy debate in Congress.”

Share
Updated at 

Obama: no indication North Korea was working with another country

“We have no indication that North Korea was acting in conjunction with another country,” Obama said in relation to the Sony hack.

He is then asked about Cuba, and his position on the regime and human rights abuses there.

“We are glad Cuba has released more than 50 dissidents,” he says, adding that he’s glad Raul Castro agreed to work with the UN and international groups.

Obama. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“I share the concerns of dissidents there and human rights activists. This is still a regime that represses its people. As I said in the announcement I don’t anticipiate overnight changes. But I know deep in my bones that if you do the same thing for 50 years and nothing’s changed, you’ve got to do something else.”

Then he moves onto the long term strategy of the tectonic shift in US-Cuban relations.

“Suddenly Cuba is open to the world in ways it hasn’t been. It’s open to Americans. It’s open to church groups visiting their fellow believers in ways they haven’t before. It opens the prospect of telecommunications and the internet.

“And over time that chips away at this hermetically sealed society, and I believe that offers the best prospect of greater freedom, greater self-determination of the Cuban people. I think it’ll happen in fits and starts, but we’ll have a better chance.”

“Change is going to come to Cuba, it has to. They’ve been reliant for years, first on subsidies from the Soviet Union, then from Venezuela.” It has to change, Obama says, though he doesn’t know how quickly.

Share
Updated at 

Obama now talks about pushing infrastructure in the next Congress.

“We are way behind, and early on we indicated that there’s a way to incorporate corporate tax reform [...] eliminating loopholes so that everybody’s doing their fair share. Infrastructure has historically not been a Democrat or Republican issue, and I’d like to return to that.”

Share
Updated at 

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed