The N.S.A. Dips Into Pornography
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL, NYT
There is so much that’s outrageous about American spy agencies’ data collection programs that I felt slightly guilty this morning when I burst into laughter at the latest revelation from the Snowden papers.
According to an article on the Huffington Post, the National Security Agency gathered evidence of Muslim “radicalizers” who — wait for it — looked at “sexually explicit material” on the Web. The suggestion was that counter-terrorism agents could use that information to discredit these reprehensible people, who espouse a religion that discourages porn surfing.
On one level, this is old news — using embarrassing sexual information against enemies. Spy novels are replete with the fabled “honey trap” in which a tempting woman is placed in the path of an intelligence target in the hope that he will succumb and be vulnerable to blackmail. The only progress we’ve made in our digital times is that no actual person need be involved anymore, just images on the web.
On another level, it’s sort of hilarious to imagine a gang of techno spy nerds in a darkened room, poring over browser histories, hunting for dirty URL’s, which of course they don’t linger over.
(More here.)
There is so much that’s outrageous about American spy agencies’ data collection programs that I felt slightly guilty this morning when I burst into laughter at the latest revelation from the Snowden papers.
According to an article on the Huffington Post, the National Security Agency gathered evidence of Muslim “radicalizers” who — wait for it — looked at “sexually explicit material” on the Web. The suggestion was that counter-terrorism agents could use that information to discredit these reprehensible people, who espouse a religion that discourages porn surfing.
On one level, this is old news — using embarrassing sexual information against enemies. Spy novels are replete with the fabled “honey trap” in which a tempting woman is placed in the path of an intelligence target in the hope that he will succumb and be vulnerable to blackmail. The only progress we’ve made in our digital times is that no actual person need be involved anymore, just images on the web.
On another level, it’s sort of hilarious to imagine a gang of techno spy nerds in a darkened room, poring over browser histories, hunting for dirty URL’s, which of course they don’t linger over.
(More here.)
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