I know a guy whose movie collecting hobby has evolved into full blown movie hoarding to the extent that he now rents two 8’ x 12’ storage lockers just to hold the overflow of boxes of movies that no longer fit within the garage, closets and media cases at his house. Only about a tenth of his collection is porn, but it still ranks as the biggest porn video collection out of anyone that I know – at least where porn on physical media is concerned, that is.

That’s one of the biggest differences between porn consumption these days and back when I first screwed up the courage to get my hands on some porn, back in the late 80s. Back then, I had to actually go to an adult shop – or if I was feeling particularly shameless, slip into the adult movie section at a regular video rental place — peruse my options in a darkened room that smelled of air freshener, mildew and sperm, pick out a movie to watch, endure the mildly alarmed look from the clerk, who no doubt assumed I was part of a sting operation of some kind (why else would a lone female be in his dank, filthy smut shop after 11pm, after all?), make the quick dash back to my car, drive my porn home and hope that my roommate kept her usual schedule that evening so we wouldn’t have to experience the immensely awkward moment of her catching me masturbating to porn (again).

The above must seem insane to porn consumers who came of age after the advent of broadband access to the Internet, where the convenience of porn viewing makes a trip to the neighborhood 7-11 seem like a barely tolerable imposition on your time by comparison. These days, anybody can assemble a massive porn collection, with no boxes, storage lockers or befuddling of pasty-faced video store clerks necessary.

I have no idea who the largest private collector of Internet porn might be, but I have a pretty good hunch which organization has assembled the greatest glut of gonzo: None other than our highly-vigilant friends over at the NSA, of course.

Why on earth would the NSA hoard Internet porn, you ask? Well, because they currently appear to be hoarding damn near everything, for starters. Plus, just like any other manner of image file, porn images can be used as a vector for encrypted data, something that members of Al Qaeda are apparently hip to, as well.

Oh sure, the NSA and others will tell you that they are only collecting relevant, useful information that helps them better target terrorists and other “threats to our national security,” but that’s a load of BS and we all know it.

What the NSA does, whether it’s images, emails, text messages or other forms of data, is indiscriminately collect a shit-ton of raw digital crap, then distill from that shit-ton of digital crap a few ounces of possibly pertinent information that might actually have some relationship to the stated purpose of collecting all that raw digital crap in the first place. But if you think they’re just deleting all the unused crap as they go along… well, that’s just not the way they do business over at the NSA.

You see, the NSA just can’t throw away all that anal porn and nudie pictures until they’ve been thoroughly and properly investigated, and even then, they’d better keep the stuff archived – you know, just in case. After all, if there’s even a slight prospect that the next 9/11 can be prevented by an NSA analyst poring over every frame of Game of Bones a few dozen more times, isn’t it worth the risk that all the investigation produces is more semen stains on his boxers? Facial recognition software has its limits, so it’s important that human judgment be involved, lest we accidentally send Seal Team Six after Ron Jeremy instead of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Some might be alarmed by the idea of NSA operatives wasting their time watching porn, but look at the bright side: at least they don’t work for the SEC.

Coleen Singer is a writer, photographer, film editor and all-around geeky gal at Sssh.com, where she often waxes eloquent about sex, porn, sex toys, censorship, the literary and pandering evils of Fifty Shades of Grey and other topics not likely to be found on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. She is also the editor and curator of EroticScribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Singer is an amateur stock-car racer and enjoys modifying vintage 1970s cars for the racetrack. Oh, she also likes porn.