Interesting.

All communications, from email to Skype - are digital, which makes them by definition highly vulnerable to tracking, tracing and interception.

Forrest put his finger on it, as usual.

>>Twitter! It could be anybody's undoing. Twitter wasn't for twits as Pericles had proclaimed. It was an intelligence gathering tool for the US military-industrial-congressional complex, for sure.<<

An intelligence-gatherer's goldmine.

But there's a problem with volume.

Five billion tweets. Four billion of those in the last eleven months.

That should keep those guys in the green eyeshades busy, sorting out Osama's call to action from the philosphical musings of Ashton Kutcher.

Then they need to keep track of emails

247 billion per day

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2009/08/8-email-statistics-to-use-at-parties.html

Let's assume that your analytic software is able to refine your investigations to eliminate 99.9% of dross from, say, 0.1% "items of interest".

That still leaves your team of analysts 247 million to get through every day. That's 10.3 million every hour, 24/7. If they worked 8 hour shifts, and were able to analyse and make a decision on, say 100 suspicious emails every hour - that's less than a minute each - you'd need a team of around 400,000 people.

But think of the job satisfaction.

Of course, that's only two avenues of opportunity. Osama is probably on Facebook somewhere, complete with his friends, all masquerading as thirteen-year-old girls and communicating their secret plans through detailed commentary on the latest Twilight movie.

Without a tweet or an email in sight. Track that, CIA.

And we haven't started on phone calls, text messages or surveillance cameras...

So I think that BrianHowes might be exaggerating the dangers a little.

>>do you as OLO users think wholesale monitoring that extends to the whole world acceptable?...If unchallenged there will be no privacy in your own family life<<

I think "family life" is quite safe, Brian.

The sheer volume of information that is flying around makes it literally impossible to extend surveillance to "the whole world".

Coupled, of course, with the obvious: if you really have something to hide, there are still a zillion ways you can do that.

To all OLO users,

I received this as a .pdf emailed to me from a trusted source. It is a warning issued by the Australian Federal Police. Below is its entire text.





PLEASE READ BELOW AND PASS ON AS
SOON AS POSSIBLE.
TREVOR SMALLWOOD
BRISBANE OFFICE
Tel +61(0) 7 32221347 Ext 17347 Fax +61(0) 7 32221219
http://www.afp.gov.au
PLEASE INFORM EVERYONE
Emails with pictures of Osama Bin-Laden hanged are being sent and the moment that
you open these emails your computer will crash and you will not be able to fix it!
If you get an email along the lines of 'Osama Bin Laden Captured'
or 'Osama Hanged' don't open the attachment.
This e-mail is being distributed through countries around the globe .
Be considerate & send this warning to whomever you know.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS:
You should be alert during the next days:
Do not open any message with an attached filed called
'Invitation' regardless of who sent it.
It is a virus that opens an Olympic Torch which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your
computer.
This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her
contact list, that is why you should send this e-mail to all your contacts.
It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.
If you receive a mail called 'invitation', though sent by a friend, do not open it and shut
down your computer immediately.
This is the worst virus announced by CNN, it has been classified by Microsoft as the
most destructive virus ever.
This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind
of virus.
This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information
is kept.

End of AFP Warning.
BTW I inserted the 'http://' in front of the AFP web address to make it into a link on OLO. That wasn't in the .pdf text.



Its moments like this I'm glad I run Ubuntu Linux. I think.

I wonder?

Forrest, that Osama bin Laden hoax e-mail has been around since at least 2004.

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/osama.asp

I don't suppose you've phoned "Trevor Smallwood" of the AFP to establish the veracity of the spam e-mail you've reproduced?

Gullible?

Good to see someone has noticed, CJMorgan!

Yes, I was (yet again) shamelessly exploiting the 'Dick Smith' principle, that 'all publicity is good publicity, even bad publicity'! Dick's not a bad bloke, and one could do worse than to emulate him. And it was a slow Saturday afternoon.

I was, of course, quite sincere in my concern for all OLO'ers in republishing this, as it turns out, mischief. Better that than that one should protect one's reputation by hanging back and doing nothing, thought I to myself, thought I. I mean, that's such a politicianist-supremacist attitude, hanging back and doing nothing while protecting the reputation, isn't it?

So I went where few had trod before: to the Ubuntu Forums! Nowhere can one get a quicker answer. And did I not rapidly get edificated as to what was what re the "Olympic Torch" 'virus'. Behold: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1307356 I was even called a troll! Me, Forrest Gumpp! By golly, was it not fortuitous that I had a history upon that Forum that belied that claim! See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4547019&postcount=95

It was all so very well presented in the .pdf. All complete with the 'inverted' Commonwealth star. And from such a trustworthy source. Yet I feel an inner glow of utter righteousness that I was prepared to smash the glass and press the button, so to speak. It was all good. And I already knew that, because I had already done it before, here and there. And will do it again if circumstances dictate!

For better or worse, I felt it was a very appropriate time to extoll the virtues of Ubuntu Linux, what with the Swiss FDFA having just found a (very heavy) 'trojan horse' in their proprietary OS, and OLO having had lots and lots of 'Server error' problems recently. I can assure you that mine is a very canonical viewpoint, in this respect.

BTW, I notice you haven't posted to the 'OLO pop-up survey' topic yet. Do you have any constructive ideas for OLO in this troubled time?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3174&page=0

Forrest, I haven't participated in that thread because the 'pop-up' survey hasn't popped up for me yet. Clearly, it's a conspiracy.

Maybe I should take my tinfoil hat off.

CJMorgan,

Before this server was brought down by technical problems you called me Forrest's page boy.

Why do you feel so threatened by others having something more interesting to write about?

So much so that you resort to attacking by any means including libel and defamation against myself and others.

For me this forum serves little purpose when it may be gone even faster than it arrived with all history with it of all posts including your libel comments.

Repeating false accusations over and over again does not make them true.

I sit here while my wife is watching James Bond, My eldest Daughter 12 checking her Bebo farm and my other 3 girls in bed and my baby on her mother knee having her last feed as it is past 10PM.

Just to make it clear to you Morgan, you are the very type of person that ensures people do not get fair trials. If you were the head of any Jury I was being tried with, I would have no chance of being found not guilty.

Your mind is so closed to corruption or anything that you clearly do not understand you go on the attack rather than use reason.

I don't need you! you probably need me more. Maybe you never received a pop-up as the server is only programmed with people who have donated in the past.

Morgan can you repeat the allegations made against Forrest the night the server was taken over?

Morgan, I fear you will be fighting for the other side if internet war breaks out.

Wake up Morgan you might even be useful to the real arguments that you have evaded on my threads, but not in the near future.

Are you sure Morgan that it was just a technical problem that stopped the server from working? and only that?