The US authorities have studied online sexual activity and suggested exposing porn site visits as a way to discredit people who spread radical views, the Huffington Post news site has reported.
It published a document, leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, identifying two Muslims said to be vulnerable to accusations of “online promiscuity”.
An official said this was unsurprising.
But campaign group Privacy International called it “frightening”.
“Without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalise others to violence,” Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for National Intelligence, told the Huffington Post.
Privacy International said: “This is not the first time we’ve seen States use intimate and private information of an individual who holds views the government doesn’t agree with, and exploit this information to undermine an individual’s message.”
The report came shortly after a group of United Nations experts adopted a “right to privacy” resolution.
The UN’s Human Rights Committee said it was “deeply concerned at the negative impact” the interception of data “including extraterritorial surveillance” could have “`in particular when carried out on a mass scale”.
The resolution will be passed by the UN’s General Assembly before the end of the year, but is largely symbolic since it is not legally binding.
‘Sexually explicit’
The latest of Mr Snowden’s leaked document is dated October 2012 and says it was distributed by the office of the director of the NSA to other US government officials.
It names six Muslims whom it describes as “prominent, globally resonating foreign radicalisers” about whom surveillance efforts had revealed potential “vulnerabilities that can be exploited”.
It says the information is largely based on gathered “Sunni extremist communications”, including material sourced by the FBI.
“Some of the vulnerabilities, if exposed, would likely call into question a radicaliser’s devotion to the jihadist cause, leading to the degradation or loss of his authority,” it says.
One example is evidence of the target “viewing sexually explicit material online or using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls”.
BBC has the full article