“Recently, the FBI became part of the Bush adminstration’s War on Porn, and the Bureau’s Washington Field Office began recruiting for their fledgling obscenity squad. Ten agents were selected. What follows is my interview with one of them, who of course prefers to remain anonymous… [FBI Agent:] To tell you the truth, the guys I had worked with, they all thought it was just a big joke. This was in an FBI field office where there are really important projects — involving national security, high-technology crimes and public corruption — but I was feeling burnt out. I needed something less stressful. So I applied for the Hard-On Hunters, which is how my old buddies refer to it. They still razz the hell out of me. One guy says, ‘Hey, I thought there was supposed to be a war on terror going on…’” — Huffington Post (US)

It is true that the FBI recently initiated an anti-porn squad, one that will work in addition to its already existing unit dedicated to fighting crimes against children. However, given that the author of this “interview” is Paul Krassner, a self-proclaimed “investigative satirist” and longtime gadfly, you can be pretty sure that this “FBI Agent” is actually a little homunculus in Krassner’s own brain. Besides which, it’s not very likely an actual agent would speak in such casual terms to a man known for his over-the-top critiques of governmental authority.

If an agent wouldn’t speak to Mr. Krassner, however, he might consider speaking to the Washington Post. And in fact much of the humor of Mr. Krassher’s piece pales when you realize that its best lines are pretty much cribbed from comments made by anonymous sources in a Washington Post story about the new anti-porn unit. For example: “‘I guess this means we’ve won the war on terror,’ said one exasperated FBI agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity because poking fun at headquarters is not regarded as career-enhancing. ‘We must not need any more resources for espionage.’ Among friends and trusted colleagues, an experienced national security analyst said, ‘it’s a running joke for us.” The Post article goes on to give a few of the “printable” one-liners among the intelligentsia set.

Inside jokes aside, no doubt many are worried about being surveilled or harrassed. This is especially true since the anti-porn unit was explicitly informed that convictions are most successful against pornography that “includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior.” Read that statement again. Notice two things. First, it says nothing about child pornography, which is already covered by the FBI. Second, the kinks that it lists are mostly legal, with the exception that bestiality laws vary from state to state and obscenity laws could be used to crack down on any sort of pornography. Obscenity laws are slippery, after all, because they rely on “community standards,” and in the internet age, it’s tough to say what exactly constitutes a community.

In that sense, odd as it might sound to say it, the good thing about this anti-porn initiative might be precisely that it helps to clarify what those “community standards” are. Most people want to remain on the right side of the law, but this isn’t necessarily easy if the law is unclear. For example, a Florida man was recently convicted of obscenity for running a web site that gave free porn to GIs in exchange for gruesome pictures of Iraqi casualties. Neither of those things is clearly illegal. There are sites that distribute porn. There are sites that distribute gruesome pictures. Apparently it was the conjunction of the two that crossed the line. Somehow bringing tits-and-ass together with collateral damage defied “community standards.” But what community? People living in Florida? GIs? Netizens? Who?

Odds are you won’t be finding any federal agents lurking in your underwear drawer or pulling fingerprints from your sex toys. Odds are that some webmasters will get hassled or arrested — and odds are that those webmasters may well be involved in things that, to most people, cross the line. “To most people” — is that the new community standard? Really the government will only help us all by defining the statement, if such a thing is even possible.

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