Has the NSA matched our Fluther nicknames and avatars to our real identities?

My screen name on Fluther is my email address is my Facebook URL.

I’m not exactly hard to find.

Don’t worry about it @elbanditoroso .

BTW, has the plutonium arrived yet?

I firmly believe that government agencies are only interested in determining patterns in communication that might lead to protecting us from enemies. They have absolutely zero interest in the average taxpayer.

@filmfann – not yet. Did you send it out of Tangiers or Benghazi??

@YARNLADY – I wish I were as optimistic as you are.

It’s not only optimism, it’s also the law of diminishing return. How could they possibly justify spending money to investigate a harmless, 70 year grandmother?

Somewhere in the Sierras a white goose mediates. If they would like to speak to the gooswami they must first find her royal pillow hidden in these hills.

Just in case they are, “fuck you & fuck your mama!”

I’m she they have the data to figure it out if they ever felt the need to. I doubt they take the energy to put the pieces together unless a post raises a flag.
Does anyone else think the timing of the TV show “Person of Interest” is eery considering the Snowden revelations?

I wouldn’t worry. They are looking for specific words like terror, plot, radioactive, dirty bomb, detonator, explosion, and jihad in close proximity to each other and that’s very unlikely to happen on a site like this.

@flutherother oops?

@rojo Oops indeed unless someone in the NSA has a sense of humour.

Well, Fluther records your IP and from there it is pretty easy to get your email and so on.

You know, I’ve wondered about that too. I look up so much stuff, weird stuff, dark stuff, on Google, to try to get answers for folks on Fluther, that it would appear that I’m up to no good, or that I have a lot of serious problems.

I’ve looked up suicide hotlines, drug interactions, how to treat depression, poison antidotes, how to deal with abusive husbands, how to explain to a parent that you are gay, how to contact the authorities regarding stalking on Facebook, how to tell a school counselor that you have a bad home life, you name it. If anyone thought all of those inquiries were for me, I’d look pretty effed up.

The only stuff I look up on Google that is just for me is This and This and This

But maybe some of you think that those ^^ subjects would suggest that I need to be taken into protective custody. LOL.

They could if they tried. I could if I tried. I don’t think it would be worth their time, however, as this website is probably nothing more than another dot on the map.

Already got it. They had you when you signed in using your ISP and device.

But why bother? Booorring!

And here we thought our only worry was the CIA…

As if Fluther, or any other website, has ever been truly anonymous.

For most folks that have been here for any length of time, you don’t even need any “secret” info or IPs to track them down.

We tell enough already.

I’m incredibly nosy and love knowing everyone else’s business. I wonder if I can get a job with the NSA? Hmmmm… Maybe they’ll read my post and head hunt me. ;-)

@Juels Or you could get a job with them the easy way and simply send in an application.

@YARNLADY How would you spin nosy to make it sound job worthy? Curiously motivated?

What on earth would the NSA DO with the information on fluther? I mean.. what use is Which fluther members have piddled themselves? for national security?

The whole point of the huge data mining apparatus is to build profiles for everyone they can. So to connect the dots between your phone calls, your emails, your bank accounts, your online activities, your whereabouts, and the patterns you have in your life. Equally they want to connect those activities to other people you know and have contact with. To a lesser extent maybe your influences or those you influence. They slurp it all up, distill most of it down to a few data points, throw it in your profile, then store the details “just in case”.

This isn’t tinfoil hat stuff, it’s essentially been acknowledged that the US does it to all non-US citizens. So some people in the US feel better, and they keep assuring us that it’s nearly impossible for this information to be used in regards to US citizens.

Then they admit separately that allies like Britain’s GCHQ have the same capabilities, and since those allies only limit surveillance of those outside their laws and agreements, and US citizens aren’t covered by their laws, it’s pretty hard to imagine you don’t show up on something somewhere.

My feeling is if they were only interested in national security about 95% of that data isn’t ever needed. So why store it all?

For anyone who is interested The Guardian has put together a feature on their site with a lot of the leaked information that isn’t especially contentious.

The format is interesting and takes a little bit to get used to, but it wraps everything up in one place and you can see what’s been released over the last several months in about 20 minutes along with discussions on both sides. It’s a well done page.

I just saw this after the previous post, so I apologize for doubling up. The journalism and research here says everything better than I could.