100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk More than 100 US spies have been fired, and their security clearance revoked, after an internal NSA messaging system was used by staff to chat about their sex lives. After the NSA – the National Security Agency, that is, not the other meaning – confirmed on state media it was "aware of posts that appear to show inappropriate …
If its an internal chat board provided by your employer, you have zero expectation of privacy unless they specifically guarantee it. And even then they could revoke at any moment and legally they'll be on solid ground.
What's more, if you work for an organization like the NSA, CIA, MI6 etc. you sign away a lot of your right to privacy when you take the job. Those people are entrusted with information critical to national security, and they need to know those people aren't vulnerable to blackmail so they need to know everything someone else might find out about it. You have to provide them all your financial information, health information, and lots of other private stuff. If you care about "keeping your private data out of the hands of the government" you CAN NOT work for the NSA or any similar agency!
There was some method of long-distance communication, heavily encrypted, easily set up on private (that is, not work-owned) devices which could be used by large numbers of like-minded people in perfect secrecy (as long as the software required didn't touch work systems, including work networks)...
Hmm. I can think of about three possibles without even trying. No, Twitter/X, FarceBook, and What'sEasilySeenByThePRC aren;t among them.
And, if you can live with security by obscurity, USENET still lives (barely) and there are lots of semi-dead newsgroups where quiet conversations may be held while making it difficult to track who said what where and when. Especially now that Google has stopped archiving USENET.
Perhaps they should keep such chats to outside the workspace? Same for everyone: NSFW does mean 'NOT Safe For Work' so why engage in it while at work?
I can get that most of us have internet access while at work, especially if we work from home, but on company equipment, via company infrastructure: Any such access is restricted at least to some extent and there's usually policies in place to warn people of what is acceptable and what is not. Seems these got caught ignoring that and have paid the price. And I do hope such rules are fairly applied to all staff.
It's just a bit of smoke and mirrors to show just how important it is for the new regime to uphold "traditional values".
For somewhere like the NSA I'd actually be reassured to know that employees were discussing these things using agency software – makes it much easier to keep tabs on them!
...the U.S. has a department (or several) dedicated to spycraft, which, if robust documentaries like "James Bond" and "Mission Impossible" are accurate - and clearly they are, just look how long we've relied upon them for truthful information - seduction, sex talk, and actual sex in all their versions and variations are among the most reliable means of gaining access to foreign intrigues, discovering secret plans, exploiting or removing other spies, and acquiring your very own President of the United States in part by marriage to a totally not Russian operative...
...why in the world would they fire their own spies - in volume, and publicly - for chatting within secure, inside channels about varied and possibly kinky sex?
It's so weird!
It's almost like a foreign influence campaign working from within the U.S. government.
HAH! Just kidding. It's definitely about workplace rules and moral fiber.
Clearly.
Getting rid of the staff who abused their message system to discuss things related to their own sex lives, worse, their trans- sex lives, is the most important place to start.
And after them will be, hmm,
> "Racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic, and misogynistic speech was being posted in many of our applications ... On top of that, there were many employees at CIA, DIA, NSA, and other IC agencies that openly stated that the January 6th terrorist attack on our Capitol was justified."
No, no, those are all fine, they can stay, nothing there that anyone in power would ever think was offensive or a misuse of government systems. After all, boys will be boys, eh.
Yeah, Chris Rufo, Hannah Grossman, and the Manhattan Institute ... what a nauseating bunch of nazi wankers!
Bet we'll soon hear from the Orange Orifice that "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides" of the "Racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic, and misogynistic" chat sessions ... and thinking otherwise would be "frivolous"!
"For now we're going to have to assume non-LGBTQIA workers weren't also having the same sort of naughty conversations on Intelink; if they were, one would hope they would be just as much in the firing line."
Doubtful. If the hate speech spewing users didn't get the sack, it's unlikely that had this been hetero sex talk, the users in question would have gotten more than a warning and a slap on the wrist. It's pretty clear given this administraton's actions so far that these people were fired because it involved DEI and the LGBTQIA community...
Not that I condone their actions of having such discussions in a professional work environment in the first place whether it involved the intelligence community or not. As others have stated, there are plenty of better and less public (well, relatively speaking) communication methods they could have used instead. But I still think had it not involved anything DEI, they'd probably just been warned and told to stop at most, rather than being fired.
Must be living under a rock but hadn't groked the "other" meaning.
If it were referring to English nookie I would punt "No Socks Allowed" bit of a passion killer - socks - but sky blue leggings ...
Native Sparse Attention - not some gormless local but AI tripe although the distinction is likely academic.
I suspect "No Strings Attached†" was intended.
When it comes to those "unusual tastes" normally thought of as the preserve of a Tory‡ cabinet, what is it with spooks? Is it the intrinsic voyeurism of espionage engenders the kinkiness? Or that intrinsic voyeurism that attracts the kinky?
Seriously I would have thought as a security service having your operatives openly expose their preferences, placing their proclivities on the table as it were (Frankie Howerd left us too early) would remove much of the risk of subversion through blackmail.
† but if ligatures and bondage do it for you...
‡ just learnt derives from Irish tóraí < tóraidhe (outlaw, robber) Would never have guessed. ;)
Nah. Not fired for sex talk, nor for stupidity. It's a reduction in headcount of those who could spy effectively against the current regime.
<Arbitrary number of people> can keep a secret if <arbitrary number of people minus one> are dead...or removed from service.
Sex talk is trivially unimportant, but titillates the masses and distracts them from other events and actions. Fewer skilled spies, however, reduces the likelihood of whistleblowers and other revelatory actions.
Of late, news like this should suggest we look at everything else except the news. What's actually happening in the background while we gossip, gasp, and giggle?
Hint: it's a coup d'état.
coup d'état /koo͞″ dā-tä′/
noun
The sudden overthrow of a government by a usually small group of persons in or previously in positions of authority. The sudden overthrow of a government, differing from a revolution by being carried out by a small group of people who replace only the leading figures.
Maybe because the Nazi regime kept all that Institute's confidential records and passed them on to the Gestapo who began tracing individuals for transfer to concentration camps.
The lesson being that "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" lasts only as long as the current regime.
I can't help thinking that the current NSA affair is a "canary" flag. You're not paranoid - there *are* people out to get you.
The chats in question were LGBTQ employee resource group chats, not "kinky sex". This is an excuse to fire LGBTQ NSA employees. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/queer-trans-federal-workers-fear-lgbtq-purge-lavender-scare/
This Reg article is harmful.
Well, I don't particularly find the sex that folks have, within the group that I'm not a member of, to be generally kinky. Most of the folks I know, both straight and LGBTQ, have such regular old boring sex that it's not even funny. It's like they value talking, sweetness, affection, relationships ... it just plain sucks, and I'm not interested in going out with cocaine-snorting all-night rave partygoers either (even if they're the kinky ones, Wall Street types, lawyers ...).
The question of kinkyness just has nothing to do with being gay or straight in my experience. That cursor slides on an altogether different axis.
Agreed. Anything that Ruto posted/leaked should be considered fruit from the poisonous tree. There's no guarantee that stuff hasn't been misconstrued or edited.
ERG groups in government departments are all under fire, although I would have to say that there is probably stuff there that probably would've been best posted outside the NSA (or the CIA, or any other of the secretive 3-letter agencies). But given how DEI is the shorthand equivalent for "blacks, gays and women" (for some reason the Latinos are ok, but even they're not safe) in the Trumpet administration, *anything*, and I do mean *anything* to do with any of the not-cisgender-white-male people is fair game, especially under Gabbard.
And this is just month one. There are still so many people who are in shock and claim "surely the Trump administration won't..." when what they claim will never be reversed/undone is just still coming... It's going to get a *lot* worse, folks, a *LOT* worse.
The actual chat logs Rufo showed in his twitter thread (I'm unsure if there's more but i really dont care to give that guys website any traffic) do not sound as salacious as he makes it out to be. It's a bunch of queer people discussing their experience with gender affirming surgery and other gender affirming care, pronouns and non conventional relationship structure. Discussing what it feels like to pee after bottom surgery is not a "piss kink". It certainly didn't seem like it was some degenerate pit, it was like any LGBTQ+ discord server I've been in or in person discussions at an employers LGBT support group. Rufo has form as an agent provocateur after all, he was the architect of the "Critical race theory" panic.
Firing a bunch of engineers in the NatSec space because of their identity (According to this article: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-new-mccarthyism-lgbtq-purges all participants in the chatroom were ordered to be fired) is simply moronic and a return to when Alan Turing got murdered by the British state for being Gay.
Are they going to find and punish whoever leaked internal chatlogs to Rufo? One must imagine far more sensitive things get discussed on this platform than people's experience getting bottom surgery in Thailand and having some wildcard feeling vincidated in leaking this information is probably not best for american national security
Scooter Libby comes to mind: Title 50, United States Code, Section 421 (disclosure of the identity of covert intelligence personnel); and Title 18, United States Code, Sections 793 (improper disclosure of national defense information), 1001 (false statements), 1503 (obstruction of justice), and 1623 (perjury) ...
"These drugs" is at best an oversimplification, at worst an intentional misinformation.
Puberty blockers are GnRH analogues and relatively new (1980s).
Synthetic oestrogens like stilboestrol were what Turing was administered under coercion. It's disingenuous to say they are only testosterone suppression or chemical castration; they are also feminising.
Save the disbelief quotes, too. Whether something is life-saving or not is not something I'm prepared to leave to the judgement of someone who is openly prejudiced about the very people it treats.
see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/transgender-us-military-personnel-pentagon-memo-stood-down-trump-administration
Transgender service members will be separated from the US military unless they receive an exemption, according to a Pentagon memo filed in court on Wednesday – essentially banning them from joining or serving in the armed forces.
Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that took aim at transgender troops in a personal way – at one point saying that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.
This month, the Pentagon had said that the US military would no longer allow transgender individuals to join and would stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members.
Trans military members on the feared ban: ‘I would meet Trump to show how we’ve served our country’
Read more
Wednesday’s late-evening memo went further. It said that the Pentagon must create a procedure to identify troops who are transgender within 30 days and then within 30 days of that, must start to separate them from the military.
“It is the policy of the United States government to establish high standards for service member readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” said the memo, dated 26 February.
“This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria or who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.”
There is no requirement for transgender troops to self identify and the Pentagon doesn’t have a precise number.
The Pentagon said waivers would be granted only “provided there is a compelling government interest in retaining the service member that directly supports warfighting capabilities”.
It added that for a waiver, troops must also be able to meet a number of criteria, including that the service member “demonstrates 36 consecutive months of stability in the service member’s sex without clinically significant distress”.
The military has about 1.3 million active duty personnel, according to Department of Defense data. Transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members. Officials say the number is in the low thousands.
The move, which goes further than restrictions Trump placed on transgender service members during his first administration, was described as unprecedented by advocates. “The scope and severity of this ban is unprecedented. It is a complete purge of all transgender individuals from military service,” said Shannon Minter of the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR).
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Agreed! Unless (maybe) the chats were from Intelink-U, that is sensitive but unclassified. Either way, the first order of business for the Director of National Intelligence is normally to investigate the leak, plug it, deal with the leaker, deny to the media that the leaked info is truthful, downplay the value that the leaker and co-conspirators have assigned to it, and NOT, under any circumstances, outright fire the victims of the leak.
But, as Tulsi Gabbard is not only a major tool of Russian propaganda, but also terrible at basic math, she can't possibly process the following data on major Intelligence leakers (however partial):
Jack Teixeira (2023) - straight
Reality Winner (2017) - straight
Daniel Hale (2015) - straight
Edward Snowden (2013) - straight
Chelsea Manning (2010) - LGBTQ
Scooter Libby (2003) - straight
Daniel Ellsberg (1971) - straight
Which suggests that less than 15% of major security threats come from the LGBTQ worker population. If She fired 100+ LGBTQ persons in an attempt to secure her Agency, Tulsi Gabbard now needs to also fire 600+ straight persons to properly account for the corresponding leakage probabilities!
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