War on Terror merges with the culture war! FBI’s staff increases due to terror are now resulting in more porn prosecutions, and fewer crime and terror prosecutions, as priorities change.

See the following set of links for analysis and charts derived from the government’s own numbers produced under the Freedom of Information Act. Libertarians fear that governments rarely give up power: True to form, the staff increases that we gave the FBI after 9-11 seem to be permanent, and are being turned to culture warrior work, now that the need for terror prosecutions seems to have lessened.

• Intro to the study of FBI enforcement trends, special focus on FBI’s changing emphasis on Terrorism since 9-11.
• FBI Enforcement Trends by Type of Prosecutions Filed FY 1986-2006, with Porn chart at the bottom. .

Why did I say above that the need for terror prosecutions has apparently lessened? Because it apparently HAS lessened, according to the FBI’s own numbers.

Surely the FBI would not take essential anti-terror resources and convert them to fighting porn, unless the need for anti-terror resources had dropped ….. why, that would be idiotic!

And so, I think we can conclude that the FBI believes that it is doing enough to fight terror (and crime), and so it can devote more resources to porn now. (BeginSnark)There’s absolutely zero chance that the FBI is focusing on porn merely to please the GOP base, for surely the FBI would not endanger public safety merely for political purposes by diverting resources from the terror war. (/EndSnark)

Here’s what’s wrong with the GOP’s emphasis on Porn

The war on Porn is not a necessary step to protect the American people from being harmed by criminals and terrorists. In order to attack porn, the GOP seems to be choosing to reduce its attacks on terrorists, white color criminals, and drug smugglers (as the charts suggest).

Those of us of a more civil libertarian bent fear governmental power. Years ago, we feared that the government would use the War on Terror to vastly expand the police force (which it did) and then turn that police force against our civil liberties (which it is doing). We don’t need our government to use the police to try to win the “culture war” - we need the police force to keep us safe from our real enemies, and preserve our liberty.

Just to be clear, I am only questioning the value of prosecuting people for creating or distributing consensual adult porn.

Credit to this DailyKos diary: What Is The FBI Doing? An Essay in Pictures.