NSA classifies Linux Journal readers as extremists (opens in new tab)

That is one way that thought control works.

Religion uses this, "don't think naughty thoughts, God will record it and you'll pay for it later". NSA is God except that NSA exists and is real.

Here your search is a bit like your thoughts. Any of those things you listed, possibly could have landed you on the "naughty list". So now you start to really worry about what you search for. If you can't research or find info about, well might as well not think about things at all at some point.

Before you used to go to the library. Except that they can monitor that too and it is terribly inefficient.

I grew up in Soviet Union and I remember being told by my parents not to mention or talk about certain things (criticizing the party, telling jokes about politics around strangers, ..., and so on). But at least you knew, if you are in the country side with your family you could crack jokes at the stupidity of bureaucracy. And then when I came here the big "selling" point of the country was "you have all this freedom, and this is something you really need, want and is the best thing in the world". But just like you, I started in the last 3-5 years to kind of think for a second before searching for things. Or when I write an email to a friend, I am careful if I am a bit too sarcastic or making a joke about the president or whatnot.

Not saying we'll end up in a labor camp anytime soon, but the tragedy is that this kind of control and monitoring so disturbing vis-a-vis propaganda and the expectations of what this country should be. In totalitarian regimes at least it is clear and understandable what is going on and what is expected of people. Here it is "freedom, dreams, realize yourself, pursue your happiness" but effectively what we think about is restricted.

Well you're in the same club as most of us.

Reminds me of: http://youtu.be/-PSeAfSKQe4

> NSA Report: "User noir_lord has an interest in privacy, weapons, insurgencies and excellent technical skills, user noir_lord should be monitored"

You've got the right profile to be a "collateral damage" in case something goes wrong around you.

A few months ago, I spend a good hour or so googling and reading about Anthrax strains, dispersal, etc. after seeing something about it on TV and getting curious.

I realised afterwards it might look a tad suspicious if NSA/GCHQ/etc. picked up on it. Oh well.

Well, a good side of it - the more false positives they have, the worse for them.

This is censorship by terror.

You're nuts if you think there's significant overlap between yours and the activities of the people responsible for things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_20...

specifically:

    // START_DEFINITION
    /*
    These variables define terms and websites relating to the TAILs (The Amnesic
    Incognito Live System) software program, a comsec mechanism advocated by
    extremists on extremist forums.
    */

    $TAILS_terms=word('tails' or 'Amnesiac Incognito Live System') and word('linux'
    or ' USB ' or ' CD ' or 'secure desktop' or ' IRC ' or 'truecrypt' or ' tor ');
    $TAILS_websites=('tails.boum.org/') or ('linuxjournal.com/content/linux*');
    // END_DEFINITION

... assuming this file is even what it purports to be.

I understand Hacker News users aren't likely to think critically when it comes to stories about the NSA but you would expect more of them could actually read code.

> NSA will suddenly have a ton more "extremists" to look at.

Let's say that in NSA's dictionary, extremist means "Anyone with even a small potential to alter the course of society, the economy, or technology."

Those people, plus a comfortable margin, might be 5% of the population. The NSA probably has the resources to examine all the electronic communications and do high-quality transcription of verbal communications of that 5%.

Even trying to make that targeting more selective would be, in the NSA's worldview "counterproductive."

So now they can legally do targeted investigations of even more people, or was that the FBI who needed their victims to fulfil one of a set of specific criteria? (Such as being n social steps from another victim.)

I briefly met a guy who worked for US intelligence (can't remember specifics). I asked him about the NSA. First, he told me he couldn't say much. Then he said "Well I don't wanna brag, but the NSA really has caught a lot of terrorists, and is way more competent than the media makes them out to be." This leads me to believe that either: all these press articles paint a distorted picture; or the level of rationalization is pretty high.

You're right, they just monitor and log everything and everyone on Linux Journals forums.

We really should stop saying the NSA's targets are considered extremists. They watch everyone.

Your employees have probably already been screened as risk averse nerds without a social life outside of the near area. Sure, you'd monitor their movements and those of their family members, but statistically it'd be unlikely they'd move too far from a pretty boring norm. After all, they're prohibited from visiting interesting countries and are probably watched or flagged if they visit even other US states. Is it unlikely that their movements are not routinely monitored by cellular site presence and/or numberplate recognition?

I think you would target high ranking politicians... because the option to blackmail them ensures you an uninterrupted and growing black budget.

You would target communications businesses... because compromising a properly placed employee grants you access to the sum total of customer and peer communications through their networks.

You would target media... because a jump on a popular change in public sentiment is very actionable intelligence, both to multiply funding (through investments prior to predictable market response), and to further control politics.

You would target diplomats... both for tradition's sake, and because borders are the most easily grasped us-and-them (divisive) tool in the post 20th century semantic playground, giving you options for powerful public sentiment manipulation through selective media generation. However, realistically for most embassies worth their salt you'd know these groups are largely not going to do anything remotely surprising that you can pin to them through pervasive communications intelligence gathering.

Probably also, you would target multinationals, because almost all of them are doing something dodgy, somewhere, and that gives you tremendous leeway for behavioral modification.

But in reality, the majority of these can be monitored very effectively on an automated basis with near zero effort once you have full visibility of various domestic financial networks, the SWIFT international financial network, credit and debit card networks, electronic information on intended travel (passenger name records) and border crossing (whoops! I-lost-my ... new passport number, anyone?), and the public switched telephone network.

Email, social network and general web use are cute extras, and probably greatly useful just for delving in to people's character and actions, communicative profiling (grammar, typing style, languages known), interest profiling, waking hour and social network profiling (beyond just phones), etc. But I don't think it's necessary to go to that point most of the time ... the broad metrics are already available and probably extremely reliable unless people are making a concerted effort to bypass dragnet surveillance activity. (eg. By avoiding all of the above networks... damn hard these days, it would seem, for any length of time)

I could see a group of analyst deducting that people interested in traffic privacy fall into two groups. Technology intent and nefarious intent. If you were looking for people with nefarious intent, then that would lead you to monitor the tools that those in the nefarious group would use. This article feels very much like link bait for the technology activist.

You don't put a DUI checkpoint outside the library you put it outside the pub.

My point being that they tasked intelligent people with finding "terrorist" and this search pattern is a natural evolution of that task. Policy aside.

You made sense until the "...definitely puts you in..." part