The NSA's Porn Problem

I have often lamented the domestic spying that has been engaged in by the NSA and the invasion of citizens' privacy that has been a direct result.  The usual suspects who rally around the flag and support anything alleged to be helping in the "war on terror" simply don't want to admit that such spying can be - and not seems to have been - misused to smear those the NSA decides it doesn't like.  A case in point: the NSA has been monitoring the use of Internet porn by Muslims who the NSA labels as "radicalizers."  No proof of wrong doing by the targets seems to have prompted the spying.  Rather, the targets merely have said things the powers that be do not like.  And the details of porn usage was intended to be used to destroy the targets' credibility in their communities.  Using this standard, the NSA ought to be spying on the porn use of fundamentalist Christians in the Bible Belt who support Tea Party calls for secession and who at the same time use more Internet porn that nearly anyone else in America.  Slate looks at the NSA's porn problem.  Here are excerpts:

In the Huffington Post today, Glenn Greenwald, Slate contributor Ryan Gallagher, and Ryan Grim have an investigative piece reporting that the NSA has been tracking the online porn-viewing habits of several Muslim leaders whom it views as radicals. A top-secret document shows that the agency was considering exposing these firebrands’ Internet dalliances as a way of discrediting them. Whether it followed through on that proposal is not clear.

At first blush, this seems rather ho-hum as spying scandals go. Gathering dirt on an enemy’s sex life is one of the oldest tricks in the spying book. That the NSA carried out its surveillance via the Internet does not inherently any better or worse than bugging someone’s bedroom ceiling fan. And it’s certainly less messy and ethically troubling than trying to ensnare someone by sending a sexy double-agent to seduce him. . . . . The unstated subtext: Remember, we’re talking about people who are trying to kill us here.

 But are we really? It’s one thing to crow about Osama bin Laden’s apparently extensive library of explicit content. But from the Huffington Post’s report, it’s far from clear that the objects of the NSA’s latest porn-hunt are “valid terrorist targets.” Of the six people mentioned in the secret document, none were accused of being personally involved in any terror plots.

Yet the NSA document justified targeting all of them on the grounds that their audience “includes individuals who do not yet hold extremist views but who are susceptible to the extremist message.” Well then!

Will the NSA be publishing their peccadillos next?  Of course not, insist government officials, brushing aside reminders that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI once infamously collected quite similar dossiers on the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The abuses that involved Martin Luther King occurred before Edward Snowden was born,” snorted Baker, the former NSA general counsel. He said there’s no reason to believe the agency would overstep its authority by spying on U.S. citizens for political reasons today.

Actually, there is. The whole cascade of Snowden revelations amounts to a glaring reminder that secret agents with broad access to people’s personal information and little to no public oversight have little incentive to err on the side of caution or respect for privacy. The scandal here has little to do with the agency’s methods—snooping on people’s porn habits via the Internet—and much to do with the trouble it has distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate targets.
Ask yourself this: Would you be shocked if the next expose revealed that the NSA had also collected records of porn sites visited by some U.S. citizens with no connections at all to militant extremists? If so, then you and Stewart Baker can rest easy. If not, it’s clear we have a bigger problem here than the NSA and its apologists would care to admit.

I for one would not be surprised or shocked by anything the NSA might do.  It seems to see itself as above the law and entitled spy on anyone it wants, be they foreigners or American citizens.