Intimate Violation: the NSA Is a Giant Pinkmeth Full of Creepy Peeping Toms

Why women, most of all, must learn to encrypt their private communications.

Snowden on “the fringe benefits of surveillance positions”

[...] Although Snowden is politically correct with his singular “they”, this really is a women’s issue.  In what sounds like a stereotypical locker-room atmosphere, those 18- to 22-year-old enlisted men won’t, just won’t be passing around some dude’s penis pics:  They will be getting their jollies off violating the intimate communications of women.

This is why I say that the NSA has degenerated into a giant Pinkmeth.  For those who don’t know—Pinkmeth was an underground site, which did unauthorized publication of sexually explicit material.  Some of it was so-called “revenge porn”, uploaded by ex-boyfriends and the like; but much of it was hacked and stolen from the email accounts of ordinary, non-famous women, from photos set to “private” on photo-sharing sites or on social media, and so forth.

Before it was taken down in a series of police raids that also hit some other nasty things, I used to show Pinkmeth to women, to illustrate for them in graphic terms why they should care about their communications security.  It was a highly persuasive argument.  Then, I realized that the NSA is much worse:  The NSA is a Pinkmeth with a multi-billion-dollar annual budget, above the law and immune to police raids, which for safety’s sake you must assume has access to all unencrypted communications everywhere all the time.

And asking what particular kinds of photos you do or don’t have in your own communications stream is missing the point:  Do you want those kids of perverts to snoop on any of your private communications?

The NSA is creepy and disgusting.  Use end-to-end encrypted communications, so that you can stay out of its dragnet!

[...]

Edward Snowden:  A simple example that everybody can relate to is:  You’ve got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old.  They’ve suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility, where they now have access to all of your private records.

Now, in the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense.  For example,—ah, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation—but they’re extremely attractive.  So what do they do?  They turn around in their chair, and they show their co-worker.  And their co-worker says:  “Oh, hey, that’s great.  Send that to Bill down the way.”  And then Bill sends it to George, George sends it to Tom—and sooner or later, this person’s whole life has been seen by all of these other people.

It’s never reported.  Nobody ever knows about it, because the auditing of these systems is incredibly weak.  The fact that your private images, records of your private lives, records of your intimate moments have been taken from your private communication stream, from the intended recipient, and given to the government without any specific authorization—without any specific need, is itself a violation of your rights.  Why is that in a government database?

Alan Rusbridger:  And you saw instances of that happening?

Mr. Snowden:  Absolutely, yeah.

Mr. Rusbridger:  You saw—

Mr. Snowden:  It’s routine enough,—depending on sort of the company you keep, it could be more or less frequent.  But these are seen as sort of the fringe benefits of surveillance positions.

Mr. Rusbridger:  You said that the auditing is not that good, [inaudible] to pick up on the sharing of that kind of information.

Mr. Snowden:  A 29-year-old walked in and out of the NSA with all of their private records.  What does that say about their auditing?
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