I’m curious… in these times of increased monitoring of individuals and fear of “groups” of people (i.e. 1 person is loitering, 2 people are a conspiracy and 3 people are a riot)… what do you think the chances are that sites like the SDMB is being monitored by the FBI (or MI5 or the RCMP or whatever spooks you have in your country)?
Seems to me strings like the “what would you do if you were a terrorist” one (sorry can’t find the thread now) might attract attention from people looking for subversives… while threads like the pants crapping one might serve more of a getting “dirt” on people type purpose (they have gone after information this trivial before).
How easy would it be for police agencies to find out who the actual users of this board are?
Am I being too paranoid? Not paranoid enough?
Actually, anyone who starts a thread or participates in one about say bomb building, or how to be a terrorist 101, or where will the nest strike be are already flagged by the FBI. Especially if they appear to know a little too much about the topic. All the FBI or CIA does is contact the moderators, and the moderators just send them the information you used to sign onto the boards. They then profile things you have said, and track you down. It is common practice on boards such as the SDMB…
Just Kidding 
But this has been discussed in depth in other threads…
“I have in my hand a list of 205 adults who have crapped their pants!!!”
(gasps from audience)
I don’t think that the FBI (or any such agency) would be actively monitoring the SDMB unless they have sufficient reason to do so. It’s more likely that keyword monitoring of the Internet might bring them to specific threads on the SDMB, but that’s different from them monitoring the SDMB as a whole.
But let’s assume for arguement that they are indeed monitoring the board and decide to zoom in on a specific individual. They could get the SDMB/Reader to hand over whatever information they have about the poster. This wouldn’t be so hard for them since the SDMB is situated in the US itself (assuming ofcourse that all other criteria are met).
Once they have your… er, i mean… said poster’s… details, they could attempt to track down the poster. One method to do this is to track the IP address of the poster. Every post on the SDMB is tagged with the user’s IP address. Note the link on the bottom right of every post called IP. Moderators have access to this information. Once your IP address is known, your physical location can be traced (in theory atleast). IP addresses could be masked/faked etc., but we won’t get into that.
Another method would be to try and link the information gleaned from all the poster’s threads/posts to create a profile that leads them to a real life person. Relatively harder, but not entirely impossible.
Oh, and one more thing… you are coming for the next DopeFest right ? We’ll see you there then… er, i mean… they’ll see you there then.
There are monitoring tools such as Carnivore that snoop for keywords in ever bit (or rather byte) of data that streams through the World Wide Web. Get enough keywords in any specific message or string of messages, and DING! it triggers closer scrutiny. In these days of heightened awareness to terrorism - both foreign and domestic - that closer scrutiny may even be the current norm. It’s not completely unrealistic to believe that the SDMB is being watched. Why not? It’s a fairly large collection of smart, free-thinking people gathered in a very public forum on a daily basis. I think they probably do watch a lot closer than anyone really thinks. I’ve actually gotten calls from them (just the FBI, actually) to check power to their monitoring equipment, to let technicians into or facility & server rooms, and once to power cycle one of their modems. In the almost three years I’ve been at my current job - at a big telecom company - I’ve heard from them 6 or 7 times. That’s what made me a believer.
They say the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
I believe that they are more likely to be monitoring message boards which have a fanatical tilt, rather than the SDMB.
Coffee all over the monitor, Legomancer. Thanks a load. 
Bit of irony with your username and the content of your post, Winston Smith.
Reminds me of a guy I used to work with. He was told to write a program that monitors keystrokes on all the workstations in our lab, and he named it “Winston”. It was supposed be only used to gauge workstation use, and it probably truly only was, but he couldn’t resist the “1984” reference.
How can you all be so naive? Of course this board is monitored by any number of intelligence services. Do you realize what a feather in your intel cap it would be just to get a photo of our leader? Luckily for us, Cecil Adams’ international information gathering service is led by the world’s smartest human being, a man as inscrutable as a wisp of smoke from a burnt page of whited-out erasures…
It can’t hurt to say hi though:
Q9DEJ FEZGG NQC95 BDUJ8 646G5 RC9Y8 KS— -WW8D CK26Q 1K7KP SJ1MM ML9V9 MNATA LJSB7 L9PPC INR3D JL46L -W8TL 3MAHE S9K24 S8NF- T7LED MIP9R EIOG4 SW1-V WBVAR V3E4S E4PVE HL6UE 6ZWYR 1VAS9 H-UVZ WFTO5 8YMYO P1WVM 9QOZE 4UGLP RGTS9 MS4I4 G–5S JVVEV 1SEZR FSC41 -ISIS 4IUTF 8EMWZ R6Z-5 WVPZY WQKVM EI7DP XCM7Q 2IPPC V5HTG CI3A4 JLUJF S1PKJ 3MVEP DRHON 7YU4Q BRK0T CJ9W6 UZIG2 35QAG C2FAH 46JF4 P4SAJ D3P1O LU2ME VN—
I know for a fact that members of the Dept of Defense monitor this board regularly.
Tripler
“Veee have vays of making you taalk. . .”
Indeed. Heh-heh.
Yeah, those keystroke recorders are really something. I alternately tell my boss I’ve installed Keystroke Recorders and Keystroke Generators on his computer.
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It’s funny - I’ve been posting to another message board - a smoking cessation forum - that’s populated by about 6 active posters (including myself) and two mods - and none of them seem to recognize the literary reference of my user name. They all think it’s really ironic that someone posting to a Quit Smoking Message Board has the same name as a popular brand of cigarettes. I don’t do this much, but
:rolleyes:
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