[ExI] Wikileaks.

[Dan]

I don't think that's true. Sexual preferences have often been used to blackmail 
people -- and, in terms of security, has often been seen as a liability because 
someone might be blackmailed. In other words, if you were gay and in the closet, 
this might be seen as a way that foreign agents might manipulate you -- even if 
you were not, say, on their side ideologically, in their pay, or perhaps had a 
desire to change history.

Regards,

Dan


From: Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Thu, December 9, 2010 12:36:32 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Wikileaks.

Anders wrote:
>No, nutters are common. It is just that most of they do not matter. (proud 
>recipient of two crazy missives today)< 
>

Since 2001 it's been very difficult to determine who may be nutters and who may 
not. Someone mentioned the likelihood of people on this group being on enemy 
lists (can't find the post now but I know I read it.) I can say from experience 
it doesn't take much to make them. After the U.S. invaded Iraq I began writing 
some unflattering essays on U.S. foreign and domestic security policy and 
published some of them in a book of essays released in 2005 in Canada. It was 
then that I began to notice some unusual traffic on my .ca website -- U.S. 
government agencies, including the FBI, were regularly crawling it. Hardly 
anyone read or bought that book, but someone apparently noticed it. I took the 
site down eventually.

A few years later when living in California I became friends with an infamous 
gay pornographer who had been called by a Tuft's University professor in a 
lecture on 21st century morality "the embodiment of the post-human." Because of 
this friendship, I again went on the U.S. intelligence radar. I am now the proud 
owner of an FBI file. I would not even have known this much if I hadn't been 
introduced in San Francisco to an ex-FBI agent who was a friend of a friend. I 
really don't understand the world of intelligence and enemy lists and national 
security anyway. The lines between what is considered subversive activity, and 
even thinking, and what is civically acceptable are so blurred that the whole 
thing has become one big, sinister mess. 

It was easier in the old days, when you could be black-listed for carrying a 
copy of Das Capital across the border but the kind of sex you preferred would 
only affect your chances for getting elected to public office. 

 
Darren


      
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