Is Big Brother Watching?

[BocaGirl]

Here's an article I came across today in PCMagOnline. It makes for interesting reading:
*****************
Big Brother Is Watching
By Lance Ulanoff
March 17, 2004
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1550141,00.asp

A recent Associated Press article about the FBI raiding an Ohio-based chat host company's offices and confiscating its servers sent a chill up my spine. The FBI acted on information that someone may have used the service for hacking. It was within its jurisdiction, obtaining a warrant for the search and seizure. But it's what they could do with those servers and the information stored on them that really has me spooked.

I've visited Internet chat rooms. They tend to be useless, annoying affairs where, along with potentially interesting discourse, there are always a dozen or so idiots trolling for online sexual banter. Spend three minutes in any chat room and you're likely to get either a pop-up note or a direct question in the live thread that asks: "ASL?" (Age, Sex, Location). It's annoying and this intrusion usually drives me right out of the virtual room, but others stay.

Chat rooms enjoy wide popularity across the Net, and I doubt we'll ever see them fade away. I think this one, based in the Columbus suburbs, was pretty nickel and dime. Even so, people who visit chat rooms of any size and scope can become a pretty devoted bunch, so I'm sure the servers will show some frequent participants. There are also be hundreds of looky-loos—people who drop in for a time, find nothing particularly interesting and then drop out, probably never to return again.

Now here's where the story gets scary. These chat rooms' servers have IPs and probably e-mail addresses (if not much more) stored on them about both the regulars and the "just-passing-through" users. Since the FBI was looking for someone who may have hacked someone else's computer through the aforementioned chat hosting service, everyone came under scrutiny. In other words, if you ever visited that chat room and participated (or maybe just looked around) you're a suspect.

This brings me back to my concern about the FBI's (heck, any federal agency's) technical acumen. How good are they really about ferreting out the difference between someone who may have done something to attack another user and someone who was just hanging out? What if someone turned another user's system into a zombie and it attacked another computer. Who will the FBI go after then? Right now, I'm envisioning a series of frightening home raids where the FBI confiscates personal computers from anyone they think may have been involved.

This new Big Brother-ish environment is fueled, to some extent, by the Patriot Act, which is giving federal authorities far more latitude in their pursuit of cybercriminals. I have no love for jerks that create viruses and attack or take over other people's PCs, but I worry that the Feds now have more power than they know what to do with. I believe this is primarily because they don't understand just how twisted the thread of cyberterrorism can become and how hard it can be to trace an attack to its correct origin.

Let's, for argument's sake, consider the possibility that the FBI knows exactly how to tell the good IPs and e-mail addresses from the bad ones. What about all that other information that's on those servers? There could be home addresses, credit card info, personal e-mails, you name it. Who gets to draw the line about what the FBI can see? A warrant to confiscate a server is like giving the FBI a warrant to search every house in the state of Maine. The level and kinds of information that could be on the servers is certainly as varied as what you could find in a few thousand homes.

It gets worse.

Now say some employee at the unfortunate chat host company has recently been slammed by pornographic spam e-mail. A user was annoyed by the way he was treated in the chat room, so he signed up the chat administrator (by using an e-mail he got in a reply from the administrator) for a dozen stuff services. He did it so fast that the admin's spam and content filters have actually missed some of the e-mails. Joe Administrator deleted the e-mails as soon as they arrived, but he accidentally left Outlook's preview pane open and a message or two, complete with the porno graphics, loaded into his message window. One message happened to contain a kiddie stuff shot that had been passed around the Net so many times that no one, including the stuff company, realized it was an illegal shot of a 12-year-old.

The FBI, in its analysis of the servers, stumbles across this image in the admin PC's cache and finds that it was stored as part of his mailbox. Now he's under scrutiny for trafficking child stuff. This can actually happen.

See how scary it can get? My words of warning to you are this: Think twice, even three times, before visiting a chat room, message group, or any site where you are interacting with hundreds of people you don't know. We all love community, and making connections with other people is what drives this world. But as long as Big Brother is watching, we're all at risk.
*****************

Your thoughts, please?

BocaGirl
Barbara

[streetsoldier]

This is one very GOOD reason why I don't go into chat rooms, other than Storm2K, and even that rarely.

I've tried to instill this into coppertop, but he "jus' don't git it"...

[ColdFront77]

The majority of the Storm2K Chatroom group are from this site, so you don't see "a/s/l".

I don't see why there is a problem knowing someones age, gender and location... after all you are chatting with someone, they could be of any age or male or female. Location is interesting when you want to know where geographically someone is located and/or what time zone they are compared to you; and in the case of weather related contacts what weather they are and are expecting.

It is a great opportunity for me to interact with people beside instant messenging, e-mail (not much) and this and a few other message boards.

I haven't had any problem, e-mails I may get I just delete if I don't know who they are from or where they are from.

[coriolis]

Always good to be careful. Not only because of big brother, but spouses who wonder what the heck we're doing!

[vbhoutex]

Very good points Barbara!!! I've seen the effects of someone visiting and/or storing stuff on my computer. It has to do with the son. Took forever to get the stuff spam stopped and that was finally done by going in and finding every pic etc. we could and permanently deleting them. Like the post says though-what is still there even innocently that could get you in trouble-that in my case I don't even know about. The son is 21 and is going to do some things I don't like and I can't control(nor do I want to)his every move. AND BELIEVE ME BIG BROTHER HAS BEEN WATCHING IN MANY WAYS FOR MANY YEARS!!! I have seen it with my own eyes and been one of their targets in my younger days(a whole other story!!!!)

[BocaGirl]

[quote="vbhoutex"]I have seen it with my own eyes and been one of their targets in my younger days(a whole other story!!!!)[/quote]

Wow, this caught my eye! Inquiring minds want to know.........IF it's not too personal.

BTW, how are you feeling these days?

BocaGirl
Barbara

[vbhoutex]

I was involved in some demonstarting in College. Suffice it to say when you are running around with the likes of Mickey Leland and others you are going to be watched and recorded. We could see them out in the parking lots with their long range lenses snapping photos and everytime we would salute them they would disappear only to reappear later somewhere else.

My phone was also apparently tapped(all the sounds you hear about were present)and we(this is totally seperate from that above) would deliberately set up scenarios and low and behold we could see the cars following our every move. This was not just young vivid imagination because some of what we would do to "bust" them would make it very obvious we were just running in circles.

I AM NOW MUCH WISER!!!!

I am felling better and better slowly. I am amazed at how "injured" I was for not having much in the way of outward signs of it. But if I move wrong or too fast or simply do as much as I was used to doing my body tells me quickly to stop or slow down at a minimum. The house is starting to get back to "normal" since the carpeting is now back down and "restored". They will have to give us all new carpet in our den since that one couldn't be cleaned enough(and it was less than a year old!!!). I figure between new baseboards, painting, buying new contents once insurance pays us we could be near "normal" in about a month or so if we are lucky.

[GalvestonDuck]

I've always wondered why a terminal at Bush Intercontinental Airport was named after Mickey Leland, who died in a plane crash. Isn't that a bad sign?