

NSA 'collected details of online sexual activity' of Islamist radicals - summerdown2
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/27/nsa-details-online-sexual-activity-islamist-radicals

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summerdown2
I can just imagine the conversations inside the NSA - about how this is a
bloodless way to destabilise their enemies and bring down those who might hurt
America. It's certainly kinder than blowing people up with drones, and
probably produces less blowback. After all, you're using people's own
hypocrisy against them.

But this isn't necessarily a weapon restricted to foreign soil or only bad
people. The fact is that a lot of famous people have different public personas
to their private selves. Who's to say elections can't be rigged this way, or
election winners blackmailed?

I think this is increasingly an issue about how we regulate the watchers. In a
media-centred age, being the gatekeeper of privacy is a position of immense
power.

There's also another, parallel question, of course: should society continue
blaming people for having hypocritical private lives? Maybe after a lot of
NSA-led outings, Facebook photo exposures, sackings for what people write on
bulletin boards, etc, we'll one day allow people to be complex and
multifaceted.

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a3n
I think it will certainly be used against citizens for non-security purposes.
They're already restricted by the Constitution from doing what they're doing,
they're already violating their charter to only spy on foreigners and mass
collecting domestic everything. Of _course_ they're going to turn this against
non-threatening citizens; they're probably doing it now.

> should society continue blaming people for having hypocritical private
> lives?

No, we all have something to hide, from someone's point of view. I'm an
atheist, which probably wouldn't have played well in John Ashcroft's Justice
Department. He did, after all, order a curtain to cover the statue of Lady
Justice and its somewhat traditional single bared breast:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Department_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Department_of_Justice_Building#Spirit_of_Justice)

