The Smear Matrix

Porn has a new hotshot, and I fear for Larry Flynt’s financial future now that Big Brother is challenging him for market share. Who needs HUSTLER Magazine when you have the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)—in cahoots with America’s National Security Agency—setting “honey traps” to snare or blackmail individuals by enticing them into sexually compromising situations?

That’s just one tawdry revelation from the files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The classified documents also exposed the GCHQ’s “Optic Nerve” operation, which netted a treasure trove of amateur porn from millions of Yahoo Chat users. Thanks to whistleblower Snowden, you know that the U.S. and United Kingdom have teamed up to subvert the Internet as a tool for sexual repression.

The GCHQ’s intercepts of video purloined from Yahoo customers was fed into equipment supplied by the NSA to develop a vast facial-recognition library with photos of every Yahoo user as a potential criminal. “The best images,” a GCHQ report specified, “are ones where the person is facing the camera with their face upright.”