NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit 'Radicalizers'

[jct74]

Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit 'Radicalizers'

by Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim
Posted: 11/26/2013 11:20 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority.

The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. “A previous SIGINT" -- or signals intelligence, the interception of communications -- "assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent,” the document argues.

Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”

The Director of the National Security Agency -- described as "DIRNSA" -- is listed as the "originator" of the document. Beyond the NSA itself, the listed recipients include officials with the Departments of Justice and Commerce and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

...

None of the six individuals targeted by the NSA is accused in the document of being involved in terror plots. The agency believes they all currently reside outside the United States. It identifies one of them, however, as a "U.S. person," which means he is either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident. A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are.

...

One target's offending argument is that "Non-Muslims are a threat to Islam," and a vulnerability listed against him is "online promiscuity." Another target, a foreign citizen the NSA describes as a "respected academic," holds the offending view that "offensive jihad is justified," and his vulnerabilities are listed as "online promiscuity" and "publishes articles without checking facts." A third targeted radical is described as a "well-known media celebrity" based in the Middle East who argues that "the U.S perpetrated the 9/11 attack." Under vulnerabilities, he is said to lead "a glamorous lifestyle." A fourth target, who argues that "the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks on itself" is said to be vulnerable to accusations of “deceitful use of funds." The document expresses the hope that revealing damaging information about the individuals could undermine their perceived "devotion to the jihadist cause."

...

read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Laughable, to say the least. "NSA." Uh huh. More like Beat My Meat.

These public money leeches should report on their own habits of viewing the same material on company time and their expense accounts spent on 15 year old Asian girls.

[Mani]

Even if they did release the vulnerabilities....the Radical people would just call it US propaganda and ignore it. It's useless.


The truth is they are probably doing this to politically enemies or other adversaries within the state, because in the US, the perfect way to discredit a person is to smear them. It always works.

What a perfect weapon against NSA whistleblowers or others that start complaining about NSA or GOVT practices. Just snoop their porn habits and other private behavior and turn the messenger into a laughing stock.

[CPUd]

http://i.imgur.com/Iq0LLBp.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/XeXIWLt.png

[ObiRandKenobi]

im counting down the days til prostitutes accept bitcoins.

[mad cow]

-“personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority.

And they would never,ever,use this awesome power to influence or outright blackmail a sitting Senator,Congressman,Cabinet level Secretary,General,Admiral,Corporate CEO,President or Vice President or any of their senior staff cuz that would be wrong.

[thoughtomator]

Why bother when you can't actually show the evidence nor prove that it genuinely is associated with the person in question? Any person spending 5 minutes considering this tactic should have realized it is stupid and pointless top to bottom. The only person who would know for sure if the info was true would be the target himself, who need do nothing but deny it. The old school method of just accusing whoever you want to target of having child porn, planting it if necessary, is far more effective and a lot less work to pull off.

[purplechoe]

Laughable, to say the least. "NSA." Uh huh. More like Beat My Meat.

These public money leeches should report on their own habits of viewing the same material on company time and their expense accounts spent on 15 year old Asian girls.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/1153277/spaceballs-o.gif

[otherone]

And they would never,ever,use this awesome power to influence or outright blackmail a sitting Senator,Congressman,Cabinet level Secretary,General,Admiral,Corporate CEO,President or Vice President or any of their senior staff cuz that would be wrong.

simpler to do the SCOTUS.

[Origanalist]

What a great use of tax dollars. I'm for anything that will harm the reputation of "radicalizers". Let's start with the drone operators and those that order the strikes. Then on to the ultimate radicalizers, those that plan and start the wars that are killing people.

[pcosmar]

And they would never,ever,use this awesome power to influence or outright blackmail a sitting Senator,Congressman,Cabinet level Secretary,General,Admiral,Corporate CEO,President or Vice President or any of their senior staff cuz that would be wrong.

That was exactly one of the programs under the MK Ultra program.

Some of the victims have reported being kept in prostitution,, for the very purpose of blackmail.
And I'm pretty sure that was behind the Franklin sex scandal.

and this is another reason I don't think the programs ever ended.

[jbauer]

Either that or they were getting statistics on what the best porn sites were....oh and watching porn all day to make sure the terrorist don't do something.

[Anti Federalist]

LOL @ the "I've got nothing to hide crowd".

[Reason]

I'll bet the NSA has "backdoor" access to all the best porn sites...

[angelatc]

Even if they did release the vulnerabilities....the Radical people would just call it US propaganda and ignore it. It's useless.

Sure, or accuse the government of fabricating the story entirely. There is simply no way to know when they're telling the truth.

[Acala]

Junior high dorks with an unlimited checkbook.

[FSP-Rebel]

im counting down the days til prostitutes accept bitcoins.
In certain areas of Europe, they do.

[osan]

Well, all I can say is that if this is true, NSA are manned by idiots. Why, you ask? Because for the past 40+ years there has been a concerted effort to encourage people to turn away from traditional "western" moral values. Right or wrong, that effort has been wildly successful. Things once considered so shameful that anyone exposed has having done them would cause the book makers to give 50:50 that such people sou commit suidice somewhere on a lonely road outside of town.

Boys giving it to boys up the back alley... or to the girls... Girls licking girls... nothing is taboo anymore. Rightness and wrongness aside, this is what it is and the young people have shed most of the old-world shame associated with sexual activity. THIS is the environment within which NSA thinks they will blackmail people into silence and/or cooperation, at the end of threats of exposure? Are they fucking high? Seriously, you have to be a complete and blithering idiot to think that this is going to work on anything but the thinnest basis. Can these people really be that stupid?

All that aside, for the past 20+ years I have anticipated this move. Honestly, I am surprised this has not come to the fore much earlier, but so be it. For at least 20 years I have run a robot that goes to porn sites and randomly chooses anything it can get for "free". I have done it both openly and what I hope will prove sub rosa, though I will not be able to tell if my sneakiness has succeeded unit they come to have a talk with me. :)

I also sent bots to do searches with keywords like assassination, various drug names, info on hydrogen bombs, and the like. The searches are partitioned such that if they ever come to me, which I do not anticipate will ever happen because I am nobody, when they make their accusations or ask their questions I will be able to determine with good precision which of my covert methods work and which fail.

I don't give a shit about building bombs, girls licking girls, drug manufacture, how to assassinate a president, or any of it. But these are the types of things that do get attention and by making so much noise in so many directions, Theye will not be able to readily determine which, if any, of the subject matter areas is actually of interest to me. In addition, old as I am, I dispensed with the shame of the old world decades ago. I don't give the least shit whether someone thinks I watch net.porn. I don't care if someone thinks I used illicit drugs, am an alcoholic, am homosexual, use prostitutes, molest children, or what have you. That is the way to fight Themme on such points: give them nowhere to go. Neither confirm nor deny. Let them make what accusations they may and then laugh in their faces with such boisterousness that they will want nothing but to see you die of cancer for the bitterness of their frustration in failing to apprehend you as they'd hoped.

It boggles the rational mind when one considers what a childish place America now is. It does not even seem plausible that a population and its so-called "government" could have gone this far down the drain without the earth itself opening up and swallowing the entire nation whole. Try as I have, this is something around which I just cannot wrap my mind. Not only has the vision of "Idiocracy" been realized, it has actually been impossibly and dangerously surpassed. This is why I look forward to the paper-thin hope that a day of reckoning shall be upon us before much longer. Note, "paper-thin". We need it - the very viability of the race moving forward utterly depends upon the deep and widespread tidying up of the hopelessly unsound modes of thought and perception that have reduced most of the world's population into a quivering blob of compliant nitwits. A cull is so very much in order.

[Carson]

This thread reminds me of one a while back or an article I read.

Anyway all it takes to set someone up is to send them an email with an attachment containing the stuff you want to find on there computer and make a big deal about.

The way it might work out is you receive an email with an attachment. Even if you never open it and immediately delete it, it may still leave a copy on your hard drive. You think it's gone. It may not be. It could hang out in temporary files for a while.

Wah La...

Busted!

[Dr.3D]

I'll bet the NSA has "backdoor" access to all the best porn sites...
Just looking around, I've seen plenty that don't even have a lock on the front door and you can usually find your way into them by doing a video search on StartPage.com. I guess that would be a side door.

[jct74]

more great analysis from Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic:


The NSA's Porn-Surveillance Program: Not Safe for Democracy
Its targets extend beyond suspected terrorists—and some rhetoric that the First Amendment would protect is singled out.

CONOR FRIEDERSDORF
NOV 27 2013, 4:04 PM ET

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/newsroom/img/posts/2013/11/psp/2c7ec19b7.jpg


Let's think through the troubling implications of the latest surveillance-state news. "The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches," Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim report.

NSA apologists would have us believe that only terrorists have cause to be worried. A surveillance-state spokesperson told the Huffington Post, "without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence."

As the story notes, however, the targets are not necessarily terrorists. The term the NSA uses for them is "radicalizes," and if you're thinking of fiery orators urging people to strap on dynamite vests, know that the NSA chart accompanying the story includes one target who is a "well known media celebrity," and whose offense is arguing that "the U.S. perpetrated the 9/11 attacks." It makes one wonder if the NSA believes it would be justified in targeting any 9/11 truther. The chart* shows another target whose "writings appear on numerous jihadi websites" (it doesn't specify whether the writings were produced for those websites or merely posted there), and whose offending argument is that "the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself." That could be a crude description of what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright or Ron Paul thinks about 9/11.

...

read more:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-nsas-porn-surveillance-program-not-safe-for-democracy/281914/

[FSU63]

How exactly would telling some random people that I jack off to hot girls discredit me? I'm pretty straight-forward and would not deny it if anyone were to ask IRL.