Author Archives: GordonGellert

CIA Tells “King of the Bros” He Can’t See Bin Laden’s Porn Stash

by GordonGellert Posted on June 10, 2015

Mother Jones

If you were hoping to score a peek at Osama Bin Laden’s pile of smut, arguably the most salacious stuff collected when Navy SEALs raided his hideout in Pakistan, it looks like you’re out of luck: The White House is keeping good on its word to keep the reported porn stash under wraps.

Last month, David Covucci, the self-proclaimed “King of the Bros,” sent the CIA the following FOIA request to view the X-rated spoils of the war on terror:

We at the men’s general interest publication BroBible dot com (one of the nation’s largest websites for men), would like to know what pornographic materials Osama Bin Laden had in his possession at the time of his death.

We are adults. We can handle it. We would like to know what kind of porn the world’s most wanted man jerked it to. Does being under the constant threat of capture require extra stimulation? I imagine it would be hard for him to focus on his dick, so I figure he had to watch some really nasty shit.

Uncovering Bin Laden’s pornography is a matter of great importance to Covucci. The government’s refusal to disclose it, is “fucking bullshit nanny state bullshit,” he recently wrote on BroBible.

Alas, the CIA denied his valiant effort because the porn—if it even exists at all—is classified as “operational,” according to a letter it sent Covucci. Oh, and the agency insists it can’t send “obscene matter” through the mail:

With regard to the pornographic material Osama Bin Laden had in his possession at the time of his death, responsive records, should they exist, would be contained in the operational files. The CIA Information Act, 50 U.S.C 431, as amended, exempts CIA operational files from search, review, publication, and disclosure requirements of the FOIA. To the extent that this material exists, the CIA would be prohibited by 18 USC Section 1461 from mailing obscene matter.

Fist-bump for actually getting a response from the CIA, though!

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CIA Tells “King of the Bros” He Can’t See Bin Laden’s Porn Stash

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Will the Washington Post Destroy "Incidental" NSA Intercepts When It’s Done With Them?

by GordonGellert Posted on July 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago the Washington Post published an article based on a cache of thousands of surveillance intercepts that it got from Edward Snowden. That produced the suggestion—not widespread, I think, but still out there—that the Post was now violating privacy just like the NSA has been. Glenn Greenwald thought this was pretty dumb, but Julian Sanchez wasn’t so sure:

Doesn’t seem TOTALLY frivolous. I hope you & WaPo are destroying copies of intimate communications once reporting’s done.

This is actually….a good point. The charge against the NSA isn’t just that it ends up surveilling thousands of innocent people who are merely innocent bystanders in court-approved investigations. Even critics concede that this is inevitable to some extent. The problem is that once the NSA has collected all these “incidental” intercepts, they keep them forever in their databases and make them available to other law enforcement agencies for whatever use they want to make of them. At the very least, privacy advocates would like these incidental collections to be destroyed after they’ve served their immediate purpose.

So will the Post do this? Once they’ve finished their immediate reporting on this, will they destroy these intercepts? Or will they keep them around for the same reason the NSA does: because, hey, they have them, and you never know if they might come in handy some day?

There’s always been a tension inherent in Edward Snowden’s exposure of the NSA’s surveillance programs: Who gets to decide? You may think, as I do, that the government has repeatedly shown itself to be an unreliable judge of how much the public should know about its mass surveillance programs. But who should it be instead? Snowden? Glenn Greenwald? The Washington Post? Who elected them to make these decisions? Why should we trust their judgment?

It’s not a question with a satisfying answer. Sometimes you just have to muddle along and, in this case, hope that the whistleblowers end up producing a net benefit to the public discourse. But in this case, we don’t have to muddle. This is a very specific question, and we should all be interested in the answer. Do Greenwald and the Post plan to destroy these private communications once they’re done with them? Or will they hold on to them forever, just like the NSA?

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, there’s a difference here. On the one hand, we have the government, with its vast law-enforcement powers, holding onto massive and growing amounts of incidental surveillance. On the other we have a private actor with a small sample of this surveillance. We should legitimately be more concerned with possible abuses of power by the government, both generally, and in this case, very specifically. But that’s a starting point, not the end of the conversation. Sanchez is still asking a good question.

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Will the Washington Post Destroy "Incidental" NSA Intercepts When It’s Done With Them?

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