Alright, let's start with what we know about the hack. We were told someone managed to get into the cloud services and stole a bunch of data. Let's take a moment and think about that. That data is all under multiple levels of encryption. Its own encryption, and then each account would have had its own passwords and encryption on it. So if someone stole terabytes from the cloud, and they would have had to to get lucky enough to get some celebrity accounts in there, broke into each one......and all they got were a few nude photos that they released for free? We're talking a tremendous undertaking here. It's simply not plausible that that was the ONLY juicy thing the hacker got a hold of. There are legal documents, pictures, videos, all SORTS of things backed up into the cloud, and all he got were a handful of nudes from a few celebrities? No, I can't accept such a stupid premise. He was never caught, despite many people being rightfully pissed about the invasion of privacy.

So let's break it down further. Aside from what were obviously a few private photos, nearly 100 percent were selfies and pictures that looked intimate, like what they'd send to their boyfriend or husband. So was the "hacker" a jilted lover of all of those girls? Seriously unlikely. He would have been unearthed a year ago and publicly shamed.

So these pictures, they look like selfies from a cell phone. Could the "hacker" just happen to have sophisticated enough tools to monitor one particular cell tower, and managed to get lucky and secure the pics that way. This is also an incredibly unlikely scenario. Even if those gals happened to send the photos to their boyfriends/husbands, each of them were sent within a very short range of each other or to people in incredibly close proximity? I must reiterate, this would be an absurd assumption to make.

So knowing the levels of difficulty involved and the ridiculous luck needed, especially to not get caught after all this time...? To have absolutely nothing else, we have to rule out the iCloud hack. The other method is silly as well. There's no agent that works for all the girls that got hacked that would have had access to their phones, or he would have been found out by now.

So ruling all those avenues out, we know thanks to Edward Snowden that there exists a government agency with the express purpose of monitoring phone calls, text messages, EMAILS, PICTURE MAIL, etc. and stores them. We know that facility exists, and that purpose. You can call Snowden a traitor all you want, but it's telling that no one even attempted to call him a liar. So there's a database run by a government agency that it would be preposterous to not assume had those pictures in the first place.

The circumstantial evidence is undeniable. Once this idea got in, I just can't figure out a way to disprove my theory easily. Maybe one of you can help me disprove it, because the ramifications of this idea are horrifying.

The thing is, since it came from the NSA, it leaves three options. Either a rogue agent did it for absolutely no reason and was never caught and never had the inclination to do anything like it again; a rogue agent did it and is now either in Guantanamo Bay, a shallow grave, or some other secret prison where he will never be able to reveal what he did; or someone was ordered to do it. I find the final option there as the most likely, but most disturbing scenario.