NSA 'spied on porn habits to target radicalisers'

[depp]

"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"

NSA 'spied on porn habits to target radicalisers'

• Snowden document 'shows NSA porn trawl'• EU threatens to freeze US data-sharing• Indonesian president 'angry' with Australia• UN moves closer to calling for end to surveillance• Read more: NSA 'collected details of online sexual activity' • New to the NSA revelations? Catch up here

www.theguardian.com

According to the Snowden leaks, the NSA here in the greatest country on earth are collecting your kinks so that they can publicly shame you if you threaten the interests of the United States. Up until recently most of web traffic was unencrypted. Even today, who knows if they may have found a way to somehow decrypt parts of it. The question is, what would you do in the face of such blackmail? Could you own up to your kink in public?

 

[DeedeeDay]

George Orwell (1984) was right, he saw it coming just got the year wrong.

As most people in power in all countries are corrupted and self serving they have always been spied on anyway by those that serve the serve greater and by those that wish to manipulate them to their own agenda.

But to answer the question, personally I couldn't give a flying fig if people knew I was kinky or not, most do now on a personal level. Kinky is fast becoming mainstream and soon the people with strange sexual habits will be those that do it in the missionary position with the lights off.

Having said that I am disgusted by the about of surveillance we have to put up with now days

 

[Doctor Pervert]

In general you can take back some control using basic measures, I only use Opera browser which has a built in free VPN service and ad blocker for my online kink. This prevents almost all tracking of activity which I find is great as it provides a clean, almost totally ad free experience. Any added messing with surveillance efforts is simply a bonus.
For my work I have PC's loaded with QubeS OS https://www.qubes-os.org which locks down everything and is super secure from the ground up. I do this not because of the NSA or any other "security" organisation (they get locked out too) but for commercial confidentiality of my work and to ensure I do not fall foul to worms and viruses etc which could compromise years of research.

 

[soundwave106]

The question is, what would you do in the face of such blackmail? Could you own up to your kink in public?

Well, Jeff Bezos (while not kink) did just that a couple days ago. And it's far more effective to do what he did, that is, out who is blackmailing. Because, at least in the circles I run in, no one frankly gives a shit about what you do behind closed doors. (I will say that if you read the Huffington Post article, they were targeting Islamic extremists, so the tactic might be effective there. )

It's fine to get riled up about the NSA, but there are too many countries that are just as bad or worse these days. Most major social networks also engage in similar sorts of things (that way, when you, say, buy a refrigerator, they can use their super-duper artificial intelligence to flood your social media timeline with refrigerator adverts. ). So, a bit of a minefield all around. Fortunately, the Internet has plenty of minor-level social networks which are probably not even in the NSA's radar. The main thing I personally would do is keep your kinks off places like Facebook which are way too public and data-mined (I'd even keep any vanilla sex stuff off there as well). If you're worried about things even outside these grounds, a VPN is a good idea.

 

[DeedeeDay]

In general you can take back some control using basic measures, I only use Opera browser which has a built in free VPN service and ad blocker for my online kink. This prevents almost all tracking of activity which I find is great as it provides a clean, almost totally ad free experience. Any added messing with surveillance efforts is simply a bonus.
For my work I have PC's loaded with QubeS OS https://www.qubes-os.org which locks down everything and is super secure from the ground up. I do this not because of the NSA or any other "security" organisation (they get locked out too) but for commercial confidentiality of my work and to ensure I do not fall foul to worms and viruses etc which could compromise years of research.

I use firefox for most things sex wise, they say they are more private than most but I know if any are really that private.

 

[Doctor Pervert]

I use firefox for most things sex wise, they say they are more private than most but I know if any are really that private.

Firefox does a good job blocking ads and stopping website tracking from a commercial sense but doesn't include a built in VPN. The VPN in Opera is what gives you anonymity by masking your real location as well as your IP address. This can throw a few odd things up, for instance currently if I check it seems my connection is from the Ukraine!