I often look at open forums like this and wonder if an intelligence organisation is attached or do they have a link to one.
Such forums establish themselves with "some" description of who they are and what they hope to achieve... but I can never find any real deep reason for their existance.
Names and e-mail addresses constantly flow through these sites and many personal attitudes and affiliations get viewed by who knows who.
What do you think?
Is the Forum clean?
Is the boss brave enough to permit such a question?

Hi Gibo
Forums always have been useful for intelligence rganisations and usually an intelligence organisation has few registered members in a forum at the same time.

You think they would pay someone to read this?

Well, the boss had the courage. I like that. I looked at Wikianswers and it worried me. Once in New York, it moved to Jerusalem with Mossad just down the road somewhere. If the right questions were put on their site, just maybe, some of the right answers might come back to much wanted questions. It could also be a notice board for communications one agent to another. Everybody wants knowledge these days and after the National Security Agency's echelon satellite system...anything is possible.
Thanks for your bit of information P_Dox. I dont know if ASIO is fully connected to do much observation but they may. Ive grown up seeing them as a bit backward, poorly funded, distracted with diplomats, etc.
They might freedriver. They have to be seen doing things at least to themselves.
I wonder what the CIA is doing on Australian soil and how much ASIO helps them to spy on us.

I imagine that somebody would be reading all this. Try putting any profanity onto your post and see what happens.

It's also a good way of 'staying in touch' with what people are thinking. Especially on social and political issues.

And isn't this what this Forum is all about - Social and political issues?

I just hope that Noel Pearson is invited so as to bring some common sense and authentic concern for the indigenous issue.

p-Dox Said

Hi Gibo
Forums always have been useful for intelligence organisations and usually an intelligence organisation has few registered members in a forum at the same time.
Posted by P_Dox, Tuesday, 5 February 2008 10:57:53 AM

pale comments

Well if there is any 'intelligence' registered as members they go a expert job at hiding it because I havent noticed much intelligence (smile)

Any forum owner would have to comply with basic requests for info from authorties.
After saying that I would suggest GY would not hand out details willy nilly

He values IMOP his inderpendance and I think its fair to say hes basically honerable and would defend others too. ( Even if he didnt particulally like them)

Some times hes too tolerant.
This thread is proof.

you can be sure nsa scans this site regularly. no big deal, they look everywhere. they won't find any intelligence here, that i can see.

Probably a means of gathering intelligence when there's not much around for the intelligence gatherers to gather, instead of navel gazing or getting at those really hard coffee stains on the keyboard. No, I don't think there's much intelligence to gather from the intelligent people on these forums. Radical sites are more likely to get attention.

No lie! one poster who questions the intelligence of us who post here has seen me rolling on the floor laughing!
Would have put ROFL but true it may not be understood.
My heart seems ok but in truth it was a cheap shot glass houses and all that.
We would be watched sometimes , just the way life is think about all those cameras in the world we never see.
While it is of subject my youth, a long time ago, saw me get a mention from the office of national assessment a federal spy mob.
My crime? anti Sir John Kerr, even now I had to make myself spell it as it should be.
Some of us who are zero threat would have files and yes the forum would have visitors to see who is about and others who want to push ideas.
Threads about race, religion, terrorism, bet that activated something, import export issues are bound to bring a quick look, true.

GIBO MATE....

If I was in the 'intelligence' business the FIRST thing I'd do is have an 'open forum' :)

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer"

My problem was that I looked at the Forum, having looked at Wikianswers, and it looked little different from Wiki. I know Graham has put a lot into the effort of running a forum, many others too I suppose (we rarely work alone) yet, I wanted to know more. The front is computerese/techno-blurp. Promo that says almost nothing.
Terrorism (since 2001) has changed much.
Spooks are nosing into everything. Using whoever they can. My suspicions are always aroused. I dont mind some of the peeping the Toms do in the window, but what about later.
I remember back in the late 1980's when news of a great secret global computer called THE BEAST leaked out of Brussells... one vast data base in the EU that was collecting information on every citizen on the earth from birth to death. Many christians thought it was the instrument of the Beast of Revelation. Though he hadnt appeared at that time and still we wait from him. What happens if some Adolf Hitler gets hold of that info in a time of global chaos. Good men and women will be forced underground.
I would be happy if Graham Y just made a statement that he has no connections to any intelligence service that he knows of. Im sure I'll never hear one from Wikianswers though they were good enough to allow a question on a possible Mossad connection. That might have been cover-up though once the question got on the site. Say nothing and it will go away.

That would have to be the dumbest question I have very heard.

If you are a person of interest, and if you carry, use, drive, or operate most things with a computer in or on it, there is nowhere to hide!
Everyone know this, so what are you worried about?

As soon as you buy a computer, you have just said, welcome to my thoughts. and for mobile phones, you saying, here I am.

Again as population grows, this is the easiest way to keep an eye on us all. GET USE TO IT!
Intelligence gathering has been around since civilisations began. Now days they are telling us they are there, just so you behave yourselves a little more.
But thats not the only reason why. It also helps the government to improve and protect us from a whole range of threats.

All I can say is, they are welcome in my systems anytime.

P/S WHO WANTS ANARCHY?

Gibo are you inferring Graham may be in contact with the devil?
Friend not all of us await a second coming or think in terms of an imminent end of the world.
It is not crime to come under review by government spy organizations.
In truth we demand governments protect us from terrorism and such , and would want them to look for them in any place they may be.
Your 666 may be the chip in your credit card or mobile phone but do you truely want Graham to pat you on the head and say its ok?
Put it this way today a sneaky boss went broke , he took a total of 106 weeks pay and much superannuation with him.
I asked the prime contractor had he assured them he was contributing to super.
Oh he filled out a stat dec each month they said.
No grantees Gibo, that stat dec was a lie any one can assure you of anything in may not be true.
No I do not think Graham is spying on us

Rest assured - someone IS reading this. They would be fools not to read it.

Belly.I wasnt suggesting that G was spying on anyone.
I just wanted to know if there was anything behind the forum other than what was on the frontpage. So I asked the question.
I dont know who G has spoken to over the years or who has spoken to him.
I was just curious to possibilities.
Its not with this site entirely.
I used to be in security so I look at things from the security point of view. Spooks sniff around anything they think might help their war. They approach many people with many ideas. The Forums lack of in-depth information of why it is here and what the original vision of its owners was...still escapes me. Site like this are the same all over the net. They could be owned or affiliated with anyone. Id like to know about the original vision. Dont suck up to G Belly. Its childish.

http://portal.nationalforum.com.au/about.asp

"The National Forum, publisher of this site, was incorporated as a not-for-profit company to be a vehicle to promote democratic uses of the Internet in Australia. The National Forum site is a virtual Town Square designed to provide free democratic space on the web for our citizens, and shop fronts for our institutions.

In our first years of operation we have concentrated on building a community through our publication, On Line Opinion. In the last 18 months we have built our legislature – the iParliament; our speaker’s corner – The Domain; an area for conversations – On Line Opinion Forum; – an area for deliberative democracy – On Line Focus; and the first volume of our library has been put on the shelf – Issues Briefs. We have a lot more interactivity planned for the next 12 months. "

That is from the "About TNF" button on the top of the screen.

R0bert

Just seeing the title, I thought that it would be nice if government started to pay attention what people are talking about. They would then make better decisions.

But reading many of your posts, I saw that you mainly think negatively how government can turn our opinions against us.

I've been raised in communist country in central europe, but I do not think that way. Surely any government of any ideology can do either positive or negative to you regardless if you have done something right or wrong and it is actually decision of people if they want to harm you or not.

Perhaps if we just concentrate on discussion and not on planing or harming anyone, than does it matter if anyone observes us?

Aren't we trying to share our ideas with others? So forget if they observe us. But if you know that they do something wrong, let us demand correction. But if they do good job, good on them.

To you dear friend from Central Europe ... How can you suggest that
we're negative about our Government? A lot of us are negative about
many things - and positive about others...

As for our feelings concerning our Government...

In this country if we don't like
them - we vote them out.

As the last election has shown.

Does it really matter if intelligence are accessing this forum? Personally, I wouldn't care if they were bugging my phone ... I am aware, however, many people would deplore such action ...

During the cold war, a number of communist newpapers were financed by the CIA. Now! - this was a way of gathering information on who, and what and why!

Yes, we now for our own collars; to be spied on by the police state. There is legislation in Briton and America trying criminalize thought. Since 9/11 its become worse. Every American president engaged in crimes against their constitution and other countries. One could say they learned from the mother country that colonized the English speaking mind. America is a Trojan Horse of the West, a failed society that suffers from social schizophrenia: a world forever built upon fractured psychologies and harsh realities of humanity's own making; a society in the throes of change driven by paranoia; yet unchanged in a social character that suffers itself with fear and greed. And fear and greed which caused democracies to fail and the paramiltary state to flourish has created an unethical impoverished world of desperate people driving governments into a race to secure scarce resources through the barrel of a gun.

Miami, Florida

Sorry Belly. I was a bit on edge the other day. It was hot and sticky and it could have been caffeine thuggery as well. I do apologise.

Thats ok Gibo no offense taken the bloke from the USA has a problem however.
The world has much that is wrong about it , we however, all of us try to do what we think is best.
Including country's, just think about how we would be treated if we spoke so freely in most middle east country's, or China.
We are spy-ed on, and it would be us who complained if a bomb went of and some one should have known but did nothing because of fears it would break some right of privacy law.