NSA collected porn visits data to discredit Muslim 'radicalizers' … The National Security Agency has been collecting a mountain of dirt on the online sexual activity of individuals, all of them Muslims, whom the agency seeks to discredit due to their 'radicalizing' efforts. The expression 'all's fair in love and war' just took on a whole new meaning in the ongoing debate that pits national security against personal privacy. Yet another top-secret NSA document – one of many whisked out of the United States by whistleblower Edward Snowden – revealed that the agency sought to discredit the "credibility, reputation and authority" of six Muslim 'radicalizers' through their online sexual activity and visits to pornographic websites, according to Huffington Post. – RT
Dominant Social Theme: If it makes society safer, use sex to embarrass the terrorists!
Free-Market Analysis: This article makes some good points, but it doesn't go far enough. State promulgated sexual revelations are indeed a form of low-intensity warfare, but by no means are the tactics restricted to a shadowy overseas enemy.
What Western intel certainly does is use sexual proclivities as a methodology of control and intimidation increasingly on the home front. Here's more:
The targeted "exemplars," whose identities are not revealed, are purportedly attempting to recruit and radicalize followers through "incendiary speeches." The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, aims to exploit the "personal vulnerabilities" of its targets through their online tendencies, including "viewing sexually explicit material online" and "using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls."
The Huffington Post said it is withholding the names and locations of the six targeted individuals, whose alleged online activities "cannot be verified." The Director of the National Security Agency ("DIRNSA") distributed the top secret document to a number of government agencies, including the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and US Customs.
… Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the NSA, supported the idea of practicing what essentially amounts to character assassination against individuals who are believed to pose a risk to US security interest.
"If people are engaged in trying to recruit folks to kill Americans and we can discredit them, we ought to," Baker said, as quoted by HP. "[D]ropping the truth on them," as opposed to a drone missile attack, for example, is "fairer and maybe more humane."
Although the NSA document only mentions Muslims on its list of targets, critics of the clandestine data mining system worry that such tactics could be used against ordinary Americans for any number of reasons. "This kind of dragnet surveillance is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was meant to prohibit," said ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer, who presented arguments against the NSA surveillance in a US federal court last week.
The demonization of sexuality of certain images has ramifications that go far beyond the image itself. And it is not a theoretical concept. In England, the government is apparently taking the first steps to criminalize the consumption of any kind of violent sexual image.
Now, some may approve of such state interference. But the tenuous relationship between state action and private consumption has to do with the idea that if one consumes, then one is encouraging the marketplace – and its various "perversions." And this is surely a kind of logical fallacy – at least in some instances – that can be applied to almost any activity, criminal or not.
Ideally, a criminal activity is one that OCCURS, not one that is confined to passive observation of a graphic image. But once one criminalizes consumerism, there is no end to the possibilities. In fact, one ends up with "hate crimes" using this logic. And this is seemingly what's taking place now.
This is not what the RT article deals with, of course, or not directly. The point it is making is extremely circumscribed. It seems to ask only whether it is moral or even practical to expose the sexual foibles of "the enemy" if such exposure can destabilize potential violent or terroristic plots.
The short answer is, of course, that the original terrorist incident – 9/11 – is evidently and obviously not what it has been characterized as. What it is, is not yet known … but it is not along the lines of the official story. And thus the war on terror itself must be questioned as well. And the "remedies" – including sexual ones.
Routinely, the FBI and other Western intel outfits – if they are allowed by law – make the most intrusive accusations about individuals who, in the US anyway, are entitled to a consideration of innocence until declared guilty. The reality of this sexual smear campaign is thus to provide law enforcement with additional methodologies of control.
Sex provides the authorities with an excellent means of civilian manipulation because biologically speaking, people are programmed to compartmentalize desires and the physical expression thereof. The deliberate breeching of these compartments causes a kind of uncontrollable shock that tends to demonize the unfortunate target no matter whether the accusations are true or not.
RT focuses on the idea that the weaponization of sex is a matter of warfare. But any unbiased view of how sex is being used by officials within domestic contexts would likely lead to the conclusion that this is probably part of a much larger problem – and a deliberate (perhaps desperate) strategy, as well. One that the Internet era unfortunately will likely see more of.
