[HN Gopher] Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being reta...
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Counterterrorism internet surveillance is being retargeted at sex
workers
Author : mathandstuff
Score : 95 points
Date : 2023-07-29 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| beebmam wrote:
| > "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.
| Natsu wrote:
| 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?
| Hizonner wrote:
| > 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.
| Natsu wrote:
| Someone going after people keeping child sex slaves doesn't
| really seem to be stretching the definition of human
| trafficking.
| scrum-treats wrote:
| Wow. Who could have guessed that "evangelical military vets" who
| are programmed by cults of sexual repression, exploitation, and
| human/sex trafficking would use surveillance tools to target
| vulnerable populations (i.e., sex workers)... Just like the
| FBI...
| gagged_s_poster wrote:
| [flagged]
| foota wrote:
| I don't think this is factual, see:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-
| stu... or the current controversy in the methodist church as
| an example.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| Who could've guessed that when we give law enforcement or the
| military leeway in violating civil rights in the name of a
| specific societal concern, they will take that power and start
| broadening its scope
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| As always, first promise promise only for the biggest crimes,
| terrorist et al.. then suddenly it used for someone consuming
| weed. And then we are all excited to see what happens when
| the next ruler with dictatorship ambitions comes into place.
|
| All for the good, "I had a bad feeling when voting for it but
| it was against the bad guys, right?" blablahblah, "noone
| could have ever expected it", "why do people always assume it
| goes that way" - bah.
| slashdev wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| BasedAnon wrote:
| >vulnerable populations (i.e., sex workers)
|
| got a giggle out of me
| pestatije wrote:
| they need all the support we can give them
| BasedAnon wrote:
| i honestly can't tell if this is a joke
| zer8k wrote:
| Their wages should be tied to inflation, certainly.
| fwungy wrote:
| [flagged]
| fwungy wrote:
| [flagged]
| ChoHag wrote:
| [dead]
| Animats wrote:
| 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...
| rayiner wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| That happens at schools too:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oversight-failures-allow-
| sexual....
|
| This happened at my kid's (not religious at all) school:
| https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2019/01/29/key-
| sch...
|
| It's obviously easier to uncover this when dealing with
| large national or supra-national organizations like the
| Catholic Church or Boy Scouts than tens of thousands of
| individual school districts.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| Of course--congregations are much bigger than classrooms.
| But the figures above are cited in terms of complaints
| (corresponding to number of victims) not number of
| perpetrators. Thus the better comparison is how many people
| attend school versus the number who attend Catholic Church.
| Catholics are 1/4 of the population, and over the relevant
| timeframe (back to 1950), probably half or more attended
| church regularly.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| John Jay Report also found that the sexual abuse has largely
| been a problem of homosexual pederasty, not pedophilia.
| zer8k wrote:
| > Why focus only on the religious organizations?
|
| Likely because OP hates religion. Their post was a reddit
| tier hot take on an issue that transcends religious bounds as
| you've pointed out. It's a common trope about child-abusing
| priests but people forget the vast majority of these cases
| occur in schools. Anything to take a shot at the church and
| paint it as a pedophile training camp, I guess. OPs sources
| are absolutely garbage.
|
| For the downvoters here's some evidence: a 55% increase in
| sexual assault from 2016 to 2018 in schools [0]. They
| estimate it is likely undercounted.
|
| We'd do a lot getting groomers out of school as quickly and
| as forcefully as we can.
|
| EDIT: Seems I upset the groomers on HN with this post lolz.
| It's funny OP's trash sources are getting upvotes and I'm
| getting downvoted to hell. Perhaps HN needs to cull it's own
| groomer population.
|
| EDIT 2: Stay mad groomers.
|
| [0] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-
| nea/sexua...
| Supermancho wrote:
| Perhaps posts that lead and end by hurling childhood
| insults, paired with vague statements presenting as obvious
| facts, is always going to be considered noise.
| weaknit wrote:
| A weak nitpick, no substantial responses to the
| inconvenient facts provided, instead make it go away is
| the typical hn style, just like joe biden, just pretend
| it doesnt exist, censor, deny, and lie lie lie.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-07-29 23:01 UTC)