
Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits To Discredit 'Radicalizers' - joshfraser
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html
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brymaster
This reminds me of a link I found while browsing Woz's tweets several months
ago.
[https://twitter.com/stevewoz/status/364464427736633344](https://twitter.com/stevewoz/status/364464427736633344)

It was a video about a possible attempted 'setup' of someone named Luke
Rudkowski who runs an investigative/dissenter/truthseeker blog.

Someone claiming to be a whistleblower had emailed Rudkowski's personal
account from an anonymous Tor address supposedly having information that might
interest him but attached were graphic images of CP. He was overseas at the
time so if he had happened to get detained in customs while reentering the US
and had his browser cache searched he'd be in some serious shit. Apparently
he'd been detained in the past and had his computer searched.

A nefarious organization could use this method and tip off customs or local
law enforcement to discredit a 'radicalizer.' Very scary stuff.

~~~
sdoering
This reminds me of the German, so called "State Trojan", a Trojan used by the
German domestic state police to search targets computers, that has the
capabilities to alter the and upload to the targets computer in a way, that
the messing with this computer cannot (in reasonable time) be found in court.

So the police could plant evidence, it then uses. This was the reason our
supreme court forbid the usage of these tools, as contra to our constitution.

Non the less, the police and right-wing politicians lobby very hard for the
use of these tools.

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Amadou
Remember the unfortunately named us congressman Anthony Weiner?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandals)

Ever wonder if maybe _he_ didn't accidentally post that dick pic to his
political twitter feed? That maybe someone else who knew he had another
private twitter account which he used to perv out with women online was
responsible for putting that pic out on the public twitter feed?

Weiner lost his congressional seat in the fallout and his replacement, Robert
Turner, is a republican. The first republican to hold that seat in roughly 80
years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_9th_congressional...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_9th_congressional_district#List_of_representatives)

~~~
keevie
Yeah I'm afraid that doesn't make any sense. Why would he admit to it? And
then admit to it again....
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandals#2013_mayoral_race_and_second_scandal)

~~~
TheCraiggers
Because oftentimes denying it just makes people think you did the act all the
more.

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Amadou
Everyone should remember how the FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King.

[http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-
bl...](http://studentactivism.net/2012/01/15/the-fbis-attempt-to-blackmail-
martin-luther-king-into-suicide/)

~~~
RexRollman
And that's what they do. They are supposed to be guarding us against threats
but then they start to preceive everything as a threat, including lawful
political activitism.

~~~
a3n
I think it's even more mundane and evil than perceiving us as threats.

They perceive us as a resource of arrests and prosecutions, for good job
performance evaluations.

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paul_willis
Let's examine who they're targeting:

One that stands out has the cause of targeting as "The U.S. brought the 9/11
attacks upon itself", a view Ron Paul holds - I'd hardly call this appropriate
targeting of terrorists.

The second one that is perhaps more inappropriate than the first: "The US
perpetrated the 9/11 attacks." Who said this? A "well-known media celebrity".
There are many far right-wing media celebrities who espouse this view. While
it's an absurd view, I'd hardly call labeling them as terrorists and targeting
them (with intent to discredit) an appropriate reaction.

Pretty disgusting behaviour from the NSA.

~~~
alan_cx
It shows that, like its British equivalents, the NSA is not an intelligence
service who purpose is to protect American people, its a propaganda tool of
the sitting government used against its people.

Never forget, the one single thing governments are afraid of is the
electorate. No terrorist group has toppled a western government as far as I
know, but voters do it all the time.

~~~
M2Ys4U
> Never forget, the one single thing governments are afraid of is the
> electorate. No terrorist group has toppled a western government as far as I
> know, but voters do it all the time.

For a certain definition of "government", sure. The elected _leadership_ may
change, but think of the (hundreds of) thousands of civil servants who survive
in their jobs in the executives and legislatures over the lifetime of many
governments...

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salient
If someone would've said this before, they would've definitely been seen as
paranoid/conspiracy type people. I mean it's ridiculous to even think that a
government agency would concern itself with stuff like this - and here we are.
It's like you can think of the _worst_ stuff NSA could do to
blackmail/discredit someone - and now you can bet they are already doing it.

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Gustomaximus
I can see why this is a useful tool but this has such potential to be part of
the slippery slope. After reading this I thought I would Google the NSA wiki
page. I was surprised that illegal domestic wiretapping issue is not new but
going back to the 60's.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MINARET)

~~~
a3n
Back in the 20's, and probably earlier:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Chamber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Chamber)

The American Cipher Bureau was just another government agency doing then what
the NSA does today.

Note that the page describes the Bureau as spying on negotiating partners:
"Its most notable known success was during the Washington Naval Conference
during which it aided American negotiators considerably by providing them with
the decrypted traffic of many of the Conference delegations, most notably the
Japanese."

Sound familiar? I see no reason to think that they weren't doing everything
else that today's NSA has been caught doing.

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digitalengineer
So, this made the first page even with the word 'NSA' in it. Let's see what
happens when it reaches 40 comments.

~~~
alan_cx
Well, it didnt take too long.

Interesting that now "controversial" means "popular".

~~~
sentenza
I find it funny that the comment police seems to think the NSA scandal is
over, when it is in fact very much alive and kicking over here in Europe.

Mainstream press is reporting and new things come to light every day. On top
of that, the scandal is completely devouring any trust people had in US cloud
companies.

~~~
1337biz
I suspect that the comment was more a critique on hn ranking algorithm. NSA
seems one of the headline trigger words that makes a story decay a lot faster
than other stories.

~~~
digitalengineer
Correct, this was the first story to pop up after the hn ranking algorithm
article yesterday.

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jmadsen
My first thoughts on reading this:

1) Looks like (perhaps) one step short of where we all said it was going -
"collect what we can now, never knowing when & how we might need to use it
against someone later"

2) Wouldn't it be easier/cheaper/better/whatever to simply fake the data &
frame someone?

~~~
lotyrin
As far as #2, they are still people, no matter how
authoritarian/establishmentarian, so they still need to convince themselves
(and each-other) that what they're doing is right (even though, seemingly, the
bar for achieving that may be lower than for a typical person).

~~~
a3n
At the risk of violating some internet law, the people (they were still
people) of Nazi Germany convinced themselves and each other to commit mass
evil, or at least to go with the flow and not rise up against it.

The people of Nazi Germany were not special, they were no different than any
other group of people.

We are all our own worst danger. When we restrain our government through laws
and constitutions, it's not to protect ourselves from some "other," it's to
protect ourselves from ourselves.

~~~
TheCraiggers
You could always not bring up Nazi and just use the Milgram experiment:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment)

~~~
malandrew
Besides the Milgram experiment, Soloman Asch's conformity experiments,
Zombardo's Stanford Prison study, the innocent bystander and the fundamental
attribution error should all be required for politicians writing laws, police
enforcing them, prosecutors bringing charges against people using them and
judges meting out the final judgement. Possibly even jurors should be required
to learn about those basic psychological principles before sitting in on a
trial. You could cover all of them for the jurors in 2 days I reckon.

------
freejack
I read this story and I couldn't help but think about the actual extent of the
pressure that was brought to bear on Aaron Swartz and whether or not there's a
lot more to that story than we've been made aware of.

~~~
malandrew
TBH, even though these details aren't used to prosecute, I wouldn't be
surprised if they are used to intimidate during an interrogation in an effect
to force cooperation via a plea bargain. I reckon its very valuable info when
trying to get people to rat each other out (or fabricate information about
each other).

The entire interrogation process AFAICT is infected by detectives and other
LEOs committing the fundamental attribution error [0].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error)

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digitalengineer
Okay, so you're someone that doesn't want them tracking your every move. How
much would a VPN, scripts like Ghostly/NoScript and encripted mail help?

~~~
savszymura
If they have identified you as a target, and they really want to get you, have
time and the resources - probably not much, e.g. they could break into your
house, and install a hardware keylogger in your machine - a VPN wouldn't help
much!

~~~
digitalengineer
But isn't their method of operation: Collect Everything and see if we've got
something on someone later if they're going 'rogue'? (E.g. against the
establishment)

~~~
a3n
Yes, but that would be worthless without the next step of targeting an
individual identified by the dragnet. I imagine all you need to be a person of
interest is to have communicated with someone who is a small number of hops
away from some other person of interest. Or later, when they really get going
on their data mining, all you'll need to have done is to have said something
particularly interesting and negative about the NSA or the government; they'll
have to start doing that, because they'll run out of actual terrorists and
they'll have to find a way to keep racking up "successes."

------
arprocter
Wasn't there a story that they 'found' smut in OBL's hideout?

~~~
Amadou
That is indeed what anonymous US officials have claimed.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/porn-found-osama-bin-laden-
evi...](http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/porn-found-osama-bin-laden-evidence-
trove/story?id=13599025)

------
efoto
Finally, something about NSA that I can hear without disgust and horror. This
is actually the kind of job I was expecting them to do. Unlike dragnet
surveillance, breaking internet protocols, etc.

Although the problem remains: the same methods can be used to silence
dissidents...

~~~
yread
Do you think that jihadis will trust a press release from NSA? "Oh, The Great
Devil (US) says you're browsing kinky pictures, so we're not gonna trust you
anymore and we're gonna take whoever The Great Devil recommends us instead"

~~~
Amadou
Obviously it wouldn't work that way. They would arrange to have the
incriminating information show up in a way that wasn't obviously linked to the
great satan. Then they would have a double-agent positioned to take control
once the main guy was discredited. It isn't like the great satan would be
publicly endorsing the double-agent.

~~~
yread
Cool. So how can the double-agent prove that the guy is browsing porn?

------
blahbl4hblahtoo
We are all doomed.

