SEXINT is the practice of monitoring and/or characterizing/indexing the pornographic preferences of internet users in an effort to later use the information for

blackmail Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...

. The term is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsintelligence service An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of informatio ...

target and was first used by

Jennifer Granick Jennifer Stisa Granick (born 1969) is an American attorney and educator. Senator Ron Wyden has called Granick an "NBA all-star of surveillance law." She is well known for her work with intellectual property law, free speech, privacy law, and othe ...

, Director of Civil Liberties at the

Stanford Center for Internet and Society The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a public interest technology law and policy program founded in 2000 by Lawrence Lessig at Stanford Law School and a part of Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School. CIS brings togethe ...

Uses

The term was first used specifically in reference to the practice by

Five Eyes The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in sign ...

member, the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

of the United States of America. It is unclear how often these programs and methods are used in comparison to other Five Eyes initiatives such as

Optic Nerve (GCHQ) Optic Nerve is a mass surveillance programme run by the British signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), with help from the US National Security Agency, that surreptitiously collects private webcam still images from ...

, and

XKEYSCORE XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for searching and analyzing global Internet data, which it collects in real time. The NSA has shared XKeyscore with other intellige ...

. A leaked NSA document from October 2012 identified six people, all

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

s, whom the document termed "radicalizers" and presented as potential targets of this method. The document does not accuse any of the six targets of involvement in terrorist plots, but rather states that "the NSA believes the targeted individuals radicalize people through the expression of controversial ideas via YouTube, Facebook and other social media websites".

References

Mass surveillance Signals intelligence United States government secrecy Human rights Law enforcement Human rights abuses Surveillance scandals Privacy in the United States Privacy of telecommunications American secret government programs National Security Agency {{law-stub

Uses

See also

References