well I can not state for a fact about this site * but I can for a fact state that facebook is def monitored * some time back my niece (about 15 at the time ) foolishly posted a photo off her cell phone of her and her girlfriend of about the same age finding 3 pot plants in some plant containers in the woods behind my cousin's house .... a few days later a "swat team" dressed batch of cops showed up at my cousins house "demanding" that she show them where the POT FEILD was located on threat of jail if she didn't ---of course she complied and showed them --thankfully it was not her plants and she wasn't charged --but they as "proof" that she knew where the plants where showed her --- her "posting' on facebook. --so yes indeed they are watching..
The question is, did the police figure that out all on their own, or did someone see this on Facebook and call them? I suspect that the latter scenario is what actually occurred.
Imagine an organization where a human being looked over every piece of electronic communications that I generate each day. How many people like me could this person track? Twenty? Thirty? I don't text as much as most people do, so let's say thirty. Hell, let's bump that up to one hundred to get a nice round number, even though I don't think that's possible. But that's an eight hour shift, so you'll need two more people to cover the rest of the day. And because those people don't work seven days a week, you'll need a few more people to cover weekends and holidays, plus a few more to cover sick days and vacations and such. You're now looking at six or seven people to monitor the hundred of us, so about one monitor per 16 people being monitored. Let's crunch the numbers: 314 million people in the US (give or take a few thousand either way), divided by sixteen...yeah, they're going to need 19,625,000 monitors - and that's just to cover US citizens; never mind the terrorists overseas that they're supposed to be watching. This would pose a problem for the federal government, as they only employ about 2.7 million personnel. They could ask the state, county, and municipal governments for assistance, and if we added up all of them, we might just have enough monitors...but then we would have no government at all, as everyone from the president to the guys that mow the lawns at the city park would be too busy reading my emails to do anything else.
A more reasonable expectation would be that most electronic communications are logged (as astonishing a feat as that is), with certain criteria utilized to determine which communications are worth looking at; remember, there's no way in hell that they can look at them all, so they have to be selective. Is there a list of words that generate flags? Undoubtedly. Maybe the points of origin that those communications come from, or the people who receive them? Absolutely. I'm sure that there's more than that. But to think that everyone is always being watched is just...I don't know, far-fetched. I wouldn't expect anyone not on their radar to be actively monitored, and remember, that radar by necessity cannot be all that large. There are too many people to watch, and not enough people to watch them.
And who are they watching? Terrorists. People with certain political or religious beliefs here at home, which they also brand as terrorists. Heads of state. Basically, people who are or who can potentially be a threat to them. That's why I don't think that anyone is scrutinizing me to any degree. Aside from periodic background checks due to my job, I'm just not that interesting.
I really don't think that they're watching treasure hunters. As I said earlier before the thread was derailed into conspiracy theories, they have bigger fish to fry. (Yes, even the IRS. And if they were watching me, again, they would have known not to audit me that year, as it resulted in their having to pay me several hundred dollars. That's not a smart way to run an agency that's supposed to generate revenue.)
YMMV. I only ask that people look at it critically before they get too worked up over it.
Yup ok
.I never stated that all transmissions were looked at by humans.I know very well how data is gathered.Its all keywords and key phrases,when one rings a bell then its looked at,or,its stored away waiting for other keywords or phrases to pop up.Fusion centers arent just for threats,theyre for everything.Right now we're probably getting this thread on the border line of being locked,no politics allowed except in the political section.Remember this,the average american citizen is considered the enemy.Dont doubt it.
