Poll: Are you concerned?

[edison bulb]

This is a poll. Answers are not public.

Q Are you concerned that the U.S Government (CIA/LEO/and or "known unknown" surveillance entities) are watching "preppers" or "survivalists"? This could either be electronic monitoring, physical, or both.

If you wish to discuss your vote, how has your suspicion or concern altered your behavior if at all? For example, do you take steps to anonymize your internet browsing? Are you more or less cautious about participating in comments on prepping type blogs/this particular subforum, etc?

Read More

 

[U201491]

Not at all suspicious or concerned, because I know they are ! Not much we can do about that.
We watch them too.

 

[lowly monk]

I have nothing to hide, It would bore the heck out of anyone to spy on me. As for prepping, My wife and i have a good pantry.

 

[Caveman Jim]

Only the paranoid are suspicious...

 

[ZA_Survivalist]

Eh. Even if they came in without knocking Ill take out a few of those bastards.

 

[Just Jim]

I follow the law so no I am not concerned.

 

[mjbskwim]

You forgot "Very suspicious /not concerned" as an answer.
I understand they could or probably are, watching what we browse, but I'm not concerning my life with what "they" are doing.
Heck if you are,delete your NWFA account right now.
Or have Redcap come over and put some clouds in for you lol
On a side note...just think of all the personal info they can use to 'profile' people that post selfies all the time.
They tell their whole life to all that will look.What thy eat,with who,what they wear,what they don't wear,(promiscuous are we?health care) all of their life in the open.

There is WAY too many people for the gummbent to watch. They will keep track of those that attend rallies and such. Just like they do in the UK now.Cameras everywhere,watching everything.
Throw up some red flags and get more time on the list.Keep mundane in public and slide under the radar

 

[The Heretic]

Very suspicious - i.e., I know they monitor anybody that fit into a given profile.

Not very concerned though (beyond the general concern about such surveillance being a bad thing in the wider sense, regardless of who they monitor). They don't act on this info unless they think there will be an imminent crime or terrorist act.

Also, the level of monitoring for most people is automatic - i.e., they don't have people working up dossiers on individuals unless they believe that individual may soon commit a crime or terrorist act.

 

[Doc In UPlace]

Most of our non-privacy is in the private sector, so to speak: our credit card purchases, our cell phone locations, health records.
The part I WAY do not like is the illegal unconstitutional copying of emails and harvesting of cell phone data and conversations. If there is any saving grace to this, it is the enormous quantity of the data that must be processed and stored.

I suppose that's why No Such Agency built that huge facility out in Utah. It's not because they needed to impress the locals with big buildings.

 

[Just Jim]

They can gather all they want but they don't have enough people who are smart enough to understand what they are looking at.

68 gun control act made stores register all ammo sales in handgun calibers, including 22lr. After millions of records and years of collecting them they discovered not one crime was solved useing said records. They stop the record keeping.

They will store data for decades and one day realize 99.9% was for nothing. That .1%will be something a political party said and will be used against that party.

 

[Doc In UPlace]

Well actually no, they can't, or should not be allowed to.

This is not OK whatsoever because it is illegal. It violates the constitution which is the supreme law of the land.

IMO an attitude that says breaking the law doesn't matter because the thieves are incompetent is enabling the crime.

Boiling a frog one degree at a time. Bork.

 

[mjbskwim]

They can gather all they want but they don't have enough people who are smart enough to understand what they are looking at.

68 gun control act made stores register all ammo sales in handgun calibers, including 22lr. After millions of records and years of collecting them they discovered not one crime was solved useing said records. They stop the record keeping.

They will store data for decades and one day realize 99.9% was for nothing. That .1%will be something a political party said and will be used against that party.

People smart enough? HA they do have people smart enough to run programs to filter all the BS collected now.
Watch,I'll use "Catcher in the rye" and this thread will be shut down and all in the thread will have knocks on the door in minutes.
Really they do have those programs I read on the webbernetter
Like doc was saying,I looked at something to buy a couple weeks ago and minutes later there was adds all over my dash for said product.Quiet,it was something on Amazon and it slips my mind.Shemags or sunglasses, I believe.
They ran ads as soon as I left the sight? Works pretty good...for them.
Yeah that's the stuff that kinda bothers me

 

[whiskeybill]

After 9/11, one of the main concerns was that the different intelligence agencies, military and civilian, were not communicating amongst themselves. No shared intelligence. Instead of streamlining the whole intelligence structure, more layers of bureaucracy were added, with bigger and better agencies. The "We need more stuff!!" mentality. The result is, they are even more secretive and not able to discern the world around them. There is so much information now they have no idea how to manage it nor interpret it. The left hand still has no idea what the right hand is doing. Politicians think the answer is bigger is better, when in reality bigger is that much more difficult to manage. I worry not so much that they are looking at us, (they wouldn't know what to do with that information anyway) but that they are NOT looking where they should. It would appear ISIS caught them flat-footed in the Middle East. We're leaving Afghanistan in less than a week. What will be the January surprise there?

 

[Just Jim]

They haven't got enough time or eyes to read all they have nor enough smart people to comprehend it all. Most information will be used for prosecution after the act in my opinion.

 

[Joe13]

Concerned? Nah, it's a given.

Prepared? Yup.

 

[The Heretic]

They don't need a bunch of eyes to read it all.

The software makes connections from the data and any irrelevant data is discarded.

I used to work on software that the government (among others) uses as one of the "cogs" in the big system that works on this kind of data (I worked on a metadata repository that is used to help with the "semantic web" among other things).

One of the guys I worked with, the head architect, had worked on some of the software that makes the "connections" between people/entities based on their actions such as finances, phone calls, where they live, etc., so that, among other things, it shows analysts their social network.

If you are within a certain number of "hops" (usually 3 or less) from someone of interest (such as a criminal or terrorist or their associates) then you get included in their network and you will probably become a person of interest too.

The problem I have with the whole mess is the wholesale collection of the data and the lack of checks and balances. For the most part, the gov. doesn't care about 99% of us - yet. But if someone got into a position of power that had a bent towards persecuting a category of people, or certain persons, then they could direct the intel agencies to collect all kinds of info about them and the mechanisms are already in place.

I suspect the whole thing about the IRS targeting certain political groups was such an effort and just the tip of the iceberg.

In short, it is pretty simple - it is a MASSIVE intrusion of personal privacy and ripe for abuse. It also puts a LOT of power in the hands of government and has a very chilling effect on dissent - dissent being a very important part of our political process.

 

[7SFCW4]

Everything with two legs or four needs a place to get some rest, take a lesson from Santa and Bruce Willis in RED. "...he's makin' a list, checkin' it twice gonna find out who is naughty and nice..." free will works both ways, once you are given that gift of clarity you can challenge your fundamental belief system and change or embrace it and go spray pepper spray in folks faces on TV, in any event, Santa will be watching...

 

[John H]

Tor and Tails

 

[maxisback]

It was determined way back in the 80's by the Supreme Court that intercepting electronic transmissions from the air was not an intrusion of privacy nor unconstitutional. No-one owns the airwaves. At that time, No Such Agency (thx Doc! ) was a little-known wing of the gov't (started in the 50's IIRC) that ran a multi-acre building(s) at Ft Huachuca, AZ that processed BILLIONS of intercepted signals from multiple sources. Basically keyword searches of the worldwide communications web. The computers then flagged conversations/xmissions that had these keywords for human examination. Look up KH-11/Project Keyhole for a very eye opening read.

One of the newer toys they have (this includes corps) are the data miners. One I know of takes as much data known about a subject, then mines for data across all the world and comes up with a threat number for that person. What The Heretic was referring to.

I won't try and pretend I'm something I'm not (never been in the Intel Community) but in a previous life, if we wanted a thorough background on somebody, we could come up with a 2" stack of papers in less than a day....

Paranoid? No. Believe it or not. I keep it legal, and pretty much above board.

On the other hand....if you want to prove to yourself that you are being monitored, just make a direct threat against the Prez and see how fast you hear a knock on your door...

 

[CoastRange57]

I mind my own business and keep a low profile. I feel drawn to join other individuals, such as Oathkeepers, but I think they will be watched closely, so I do not.

I am all ready in the Federal system, one of my sons had a very high level clearance in the Marine Corps, he was cleared as part of a Marine detachment that carried loaded weapons in the presence of a certain high level official, if you get my drift.

They ran background checks on his entire immediate family, and extended family for inlaws and cousins. Pretty extensive checks, we never knew until a family LEO ran across the inquiries.

I am a boring old man, who considers himself a patriot. I am about as big a threat to this country as my dogs laying on the floor are. Look at my boring life and if you find something, knock yourself out.