The Emacs command “M-x spook” would insert a couple of dozen these words into your post automatically.
Defend themselves from . . .?
Not only would this plan be a huge waste of time, but it would ultimately be counterproductive. It would work IF you could get a substantial fraction of Americans involved and they’d have to do enough so that their own actual signal of communications that would make outside of the plan is drowned by their artificial signal, otherwise, they’re doing little to actually infere. Regard it would ultimately have the opposite problem of strengthening the connections between the people involved.
Consider that you start an internet campaign to do this. The first people to get involved would be you and the people you know, calling people they know and getting them involved, thus strengthening the connections with you all. Even if it grows large enough that people you don’t know get involved, they’re people that are still part of the network of people that would get involved in such a campaign. In reality, what you think is “random” noise, really isn’t because someone has to volunteer their information and someone else has to volunteer to contact it.
If you want to try to do a noise approach to fighting back, you’d need to have a way to randomly generate contact information, which isn’t that hard with wardialing or generating email lists, but then you’d still need a substantial number of people to randomly use those lists. And, that would end up being as intrusive to the random people you’re contacting as spam, perhaps worse because now they’re potentially tied into that network unwillingly.
So, really, the best way to fight back is to stay off the grid as much as possible and provide as little contact information to them as possible because that will be what ultimately will make building the networks the most difficult. Or, better yet, get the government to unfund it by writing your congressmen and using your vote.
Yeah, I was thinking of adding that this would be a bonus to such an operation, but since I specified suspected Al-Qaeda operatives, it seemed just as likely that they would be pestering some poor schlub with a fondness for mid-eastern food.
More details, please, I’m pitching ideas to the studio on Monday.
On what pretext? It is no crime to discuss an imaginary crime over the telephone.
This.
Plus, I could imagine this leading to the government becoming convinced they need to step up their efforts and do more effective (i.e. intrusive) spying, to weed out the genuine threats from the trolls.
Of course, it is always very easy to get a new email address and cell-phone number.
Is this a joke, or did it really happen? And if so, could you provide more details, like what exactly you did, and what the Secret Service agents were upset about? It sounds like quite a story.
I was in a chatroom on AOL and the conversation had turned to “The government is reading everything we’re typing right now”. I disagreed with this assertion. In an attempt to prove that the claim was not so, I made statements which implied that I intended to commit bodily harm against a person who is afforded protection by the Secret Service, my intent being to demonstrate that if the government was listening in, then they’d hunt me down and get me.
According to the agent who interviewed me, they weren’t listening in on AOL chatrooms - but someone who was in the room at the time had reported my statements to AOL, which passed them on to the Secret Service. The agent informed me that she didn’t believe I was a threat, and that the information they’d gathered would be passed on to the US Attorney who would decide whether I should face any charges. That was the last I heard of the matter, so I assume I’m in the clear. What the agent told me at the end of the interview was basically a very polite form of “We have to investigate everyone who says things like this, and we really hate having to spend our days talking to people like you instead of chasing down people who would actually be a threat, so don’t do it again if you know what’s good for you.”
So… I guess I was right?
Ah, but if they got a thousand such cases a day, what could they do then with any of them?
Being prosecuted either for being a terrorist that they’re not or from being the obstructionist they might actually be. It is illegal to deliberately interfere with a police investigation in any way. Deliberately feeding the police false information about a crime, real or not, is illegal.
They’d asked for more money and I expect they’d get it. And that’s not PRISM anyway.
I think this is just about the best time to go for the super cynical solution:
Get a congress critter to propose a bill to use the spy systems to look for money laundering, tax evasion and other financial issues inside the banks and Wall Street.
I think we will get whiplash by the sudden change of course that will be demanded by the powerful once they are affected more directly.
Oh, I’d love to see them try to make a case that discussing an imaginary crime in a private telephone conversation is an instance of that!
In which part of the judiciary are you employed?
Naww, that all sounds like a lot of work. I recommend the xkcd approach:
Big Brother Realizes He’s Trapped in the Most Tedious Possible Hell
You can’t stop them from watching you - but you can make them watch you play ascii rogue-likes while picking your nose for 16 hours straight.
I’d be surprised if the number they deal with was that low.
In order to protect us all, we must nip this in the bud.
Clearly, we need to set BrainGlutton’s house on fire to teach him a lesson. I’ll text you with details.
I imagine it involves going further into debt.