Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargeted at sex workers

https://theintercept.com/2023/07/29/skull-games-surveillance-sex-workers/

by mathandstuff • 3 years ago

154 44 3 years ago

beebmam2• 3 years ago

“I fought the worst of the worst: ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban,” Skull Games president and former Delta Force soldier Jeff Tiegs has said. “But the adversary I despise the most are human traffickers.” Tiegs has told interviewers that he takes “counterterrorism / counterinsurgency principles” and applies them to these targets.

I agree with this. Human trafficking is a nice way of saying slavery. Human traffickers are some of the worst criminals on earth and I'm very happy that the counterintelligence techniques we've developed are used against them.

The attempt to merge computerized counterinsurgency techniques with right-wing evangelism has left some Skull Games participants uncomfortable. One experienced attendee of the January 2023 Skull Games was taken aback by an abundance of prayer circles and paucity of formal training.

However, this is cultish stuff. It seems to me that Tiegs' statement above is cover for what seems to be a religio-political organization with overarching goals. It co-opts the good intentions of decent human beings who oppose slavery and sexual abuse into a situation that seems pretty exploitative on its own. Despicable.

Natsu4• 3 years ago

This article is weird. It goes on an on about things like QAnon, 9/11, etc. that are simply not connected to anything and exist only to flavor the article. It says this harms people... but provides one random quote and no real substantiation of that. And the 'harm' seems to be that... someone might get punished for breaking the law?

It's also not clear what they think the solution is here, ignore a child being prostituted online because they might not be a sex slave to a cartel? Sure, advertising under certain emojis or whatever may not be "statistically significant" according to some report in terms of whether someone is trafficked, but if there's a child prostitute, maybe it's not a bad thing if someone helps the police go make sure she's not literally a child sex slave?

Hizonner4• 3 years ago

Human traffickers are some of the worst criminals on earth

... which is why it's so valuable to some people to expand the definition of "human trafficking" beyond ACTUAL human trafficking.

Right at the moment, if you hear the phrase "human trafficking" in some random place, especially used by somebody who's asking for money, power, or support of whatever kind, there seems to be about a 95 percent chance it's being used to refer to something that is NOT human trafficking as understood by normal people.

Natsu4• 3 years ago

Someone going after people keeping child sex slaves doesn't really seem to be stretching the definition of human trafficking.

Terr_• 3 years ago

Kind of like how the slander of "groomers" is being hurled at any gender/sexual-orientation the speaker finds distasteful.

In many ways it's a repeat with different packaging of the "all homosexuals are pedophiles" from a generation or two ago, sometimes from the same people and interest-groups.

Spooky23• 3 years ago

Yup. It’s a great way to get federal grants for the vice squad and buy cool toys to fuck around with pimps.

Losing weed as a source of easy convictions is leading to new opportunities.

za3faran• 3 years ago

He has quite the gall as well. What did he expect the Afghanis to do, roll over and let a foreign invader come in an wander in their home lands free without consequence, with his gang raping, stealing, and killing? What a load of ...

Animats• 3 years ago

Retarget them at religious pedophiles. The biggest pedophile problems seem to come from religious officials with the backing of their organization. There's been Catholic priest scandal after Catholic priest scandal.[1] The Boy Scouts of America turned out to be a nest of pedophile scout leaders.[2] Brooklyn's haredi community [3] and ultra-orthodox in Israel [4] had their own organized pedophile rings.

Quit worrying about sex workers and porno. It's those well-organized religious conspiracies with their claim to moral authority that are the real problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boy-scouts-america-have...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_cases_in_Brooklyn...

[4] https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/22-haredi-sex-offenders-ar...

rayiner6• 3 years ago

Any evidence for your implication that sexual abuse is more common in religious organizations than secular organizations that deal with children? There’s about 15,000 sexual abuse complaints every year in schools: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/15/sexual-violence-rep.... Every year CPS agencies receive 4.4 million referrals for child mistreatment, about 10% of which relate to sexual abuse: https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubpdfs/canstats.pdf. About 1 in 6 of the referrals overall are substantiated, suggesting 50,000+ child substantiated sexual abuse complaints annually.

For comparison the John Jay report found about 11,000 sexual abuse allegations against catholic priests over a 50+ year period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report. There are estimated to be about 12,500 victims in the Boy Scouts in total: https://abcnews.go.com/US/12000-boy-scout-members-victims-se....

That is not to say religious organizations should be off the hook for failing to deal with the pedophiles in their ranks. But estimates suggest 1-5% of the male population is pedophiles. The evidence suggests that abuse is actually a cross-cutting problem. It arises whenever you put adults in proximity to children. Why focus only on the religious organizations?

enterprise_cog• 3 years ago

The school stat is not limited to complaints about school personnel, it includes child on child violence.

The abusers in the church were part of the power structure. That same power structure systematically covered up and protected the abusers. Same thing for the scouts.

Retric5• 3 years ago

The number of adults in the school system is vastly larger than the number of Catholic priests.

There are 37,302 diocesan and religious-order priests in the United States vs 3,500,000 full and 500,000 part time teachers in the US + even more support staff.

You can look into the past demographics, but it looks like there is dramatically more victims per priest per year than per teacher per year.

mavelikara• 3 years ago

The evidence suggests that abuse is actually a cross-cutting problem. It arises whenever you put adults in proximity to children. Why focus only on the religious organizations?

Focus should not be exclusively on religious organizations. But focus should be disproportionately on them because of their track record of using moral superiority to explain away and stop abusers.

thefz• 3 years ago

Current "oh-so-progressive" pope is known to be a pedo enabler, having saved his own brother from accusations by moving him to south America, and generally conducting a words-only war against pedophilia. See the Emanuela Orlandi case.

halJordan• 3 years ago

Love it, love that the retargeting is fine as long as you control the new targets. Love it.

Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargeted at sex workers

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