So, the DHS (via the FBI) announced that cracking down on obscenity on the Internet will be "one of the top priorities" going forward. To tackle this top-priority initiative, they've got a dumptruck full of funding, at least 10 headcount, and a mandate from the top.
That's right, you heard it here - on the top of the DHS priority list is... porno. Just to be clear, we're not talking child porn, we're not talking about non-consentual sex, we're not talking about illegal sex acts. Nope, those things are already on the FBI radar. This new squad is only concerned with censoring media associated with consenting sex between adults...
The agents aren't happy about it - according to them the department is a "running joke". Here's my question: why are our tax dollars funding a "running joke"? What about fixing the significant disaster recovery issues highlighted by Katrina or fixing the continued failure of DHS to complete their required auditing measures?
Shouldn't we wait until the terrorists are behind bars and the DHS works its grades up to something like a D (or better still a C-) before we start funneling money into anti-smut campaigns? Seems to me that loss of life (terrorism, katrina, etc) trump dirty old men in almost every case. Granted that the FBI still claims terrorism is a "higher" priority than the war on pr0n, but - each agent working the "red light detail" is an agent not looking for terrorists and each FBI web search looking for porn is a web search that could have been looking for terrorist groups... When is the DHS going to get a clue?
Thanks for Alan for passing this along...
Posted by Ed at September 26, 2005 08:50 AM