Tinfoil Tuesday: Are you sleeping with a spy?

Is it so hard to believe? In True Lies Arnold Schwarzenegger was a kick-butt super spy who flew all over the world hunting down the Crimson Jihad terrorist organization, and his wife, Jamie Lee Curtis had no idea. We already have roving wire taps, GPS tracking devises and surveillance drones keeping a close eye on suspected terrorists in the Homeland. Is it really such a leap to think they might embed an undercover agent in your social network? And is it so difficult to believe that agent might sleep around to get close to people of interest? I say no. And I’m prepared to take you down a rabbit hole that will have you casting a suspicious glance at your significant other.

Let’s establish from the outset that if you’re reading this you’re already a suspicious person. In a recent FBI warning to local law enforcement “anti-government extremists” often “believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.” So, that’s the Silver Underground all over. And if you’re reading suspicious blogs you might be a terrorist yourself. So, you’re guilty, I’m guilty, we’re all guilty. Moving on.

According to Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division, anti-government extremists also oppose taxes and environmental regulations. So, let’s be generous and say that’s half the country. But the other half of the country is suspicious too. In a recent DHS list of behaviors that may indicate you’re a potential terrorist, yawning made the list… no seriously. So, if you’ve ever tried to actually read the tax code or the environmental regulations you probably found them so boring that you’re a suspicious person now. In fact, if yawning is potential terrorism C-SPAN is probably the most successful terrorist recruiting tool in the world. Also on the DHS list was repetitive touching of the face, excessive fidgeting, clock watching, perspiration and goose bumps. They also listed cameras, computers, maps and GPS devices as tools terrorists use during surveillance. I don’t know about you, but my Blackberry is all of those things. So, let’s just take as given that every man, woman and child in America is a suspicious person from the FBI’s perspective.

So, how do they treat suspicious people? Well, they start with roving wire taps, GPS tracking devises and surveillance drones, but we already know that. The question is, how far they will go to get close to us. The story broke recently that a 25-year-old police officer posing as a high school student used her feminine wiles to trick her prom date into buying her some marijuana. These stories aren’t so uncommon. Here’s a similar sting operation with a male police officer. Rest assured, if local cops are seducing teenagers to make drug busts you can bet that federal agents are seducing adults to entrap them.

Craig Monteilh spent a year as an FBI informant sent to infiltrate mosques. After a change of heart he joined the ACLU in a lawsuit against the FBI, so now his story is coming to light. Craig posed as a muslim named Farouk Aziz and was tasked with befriending mosque goers and recording their conversations about jihad and Bin Laden and whatever. Now you may be thinking, “Muslims? Well that’s different. I want the FBI spying on muslims.” Ignoring the obvious Pastor Martin Niemoller reference that can be made, consider that the response from the muslim community was to get a restraining order against “Farouk Aziz” and ironically report him to the FBI. So, did the FBI back off? No… they changed the strategy. They sent Craig back in with a new mission. He was tasked with posing as an eligible bachelor and seducing muslim women. Craig told the Guardian, “They said it would enhance the intelligence if I go ahead and have sex. So I did.” The goal was to use recordings of his encounters to blackmail the targeted women into becoming FBI informants themselves.

So, let’s bring it all together. We know federal agents use seduction to gather intelligence. And we know investigating actual violent terrorism is not the only pretense because those muslims had rejected that ploy. Maybe those women had yawned too much. So the very real possibility exists that if you’re reading this suspicious blog they consider you a suspicious person. Now you have to ask yourself, how well do you know your significant other? Craig was undercover for over ayear. And CIA Director David Patraeus recently told Wired they intended to “create the digital footprint for new identities for some officers.” So even if your significant other has a Facebook timeline backdated for ten years it may still be an alter ego. But even if they aren’t an agent, the strategy is to use blackmail to recruit other informants. So, sexual surveillance could theoretically spread through the population like a sexually transmitted disease. It starts with one undercover agent, and then it spreads to their sexual partners. Once they become informants it spreads to their partners and their partners and their partners. In that case, is it really so hard to imagine that you’re sleeping with a spy.