Is the FBI Reading Your E-mail?

Architect said:
I suspect that the selection criteria will be rather more sophisticated than simply looking for incidencences of (say) BOMB NUKE LONDON SECRET TOMORROW. One would anticipate an engine which looks at the incidence of associated words, cross-refers it back to previous e-mail from the same user, identifies any consistent patterns, and only then flags it up to a someone.

But I'm an architect. I really am only speculating!
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As the part of me which is a web-programmer, I can see how that can work. At least partially. The part I'm having problems with is still the amount of information if we are talking about a group of people the size of eg. the complete number of residents in the US.

The pattern recognition of specific sentences could work, but in order to cross reference it back to previously sent and possibly deleted email, one would have to have one hell of a data storage warehouse. We are talking about more than terrabytes of old data here.
One would basically have to backup EVERYTHING ever sent or published on the internet to prevent deletion of possible relevant data. Not to mention the fact that you would need backup facilities for those data. And that's before adding possible recorded phone calls to the mix.
Again: To make it plausible (read: practical) one would need to narrow it down to persons of interest.
 
Dear naive anti-truthers, the FBI loves you and wants the best for you. They are there to protect you and serve you, and would never spy on you, never invade your privacy, and never lie to you ..... unless you were a mere citizen.
 
Davidjayjordan said:
Dear naive anti-truthers, the FBI loves you and wants the best for you. They are there to protect you and serve you, and would never spy on you, never invade your privacy, and never lie to you ..... unless you were a mere citizen.
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Dear delusional internet poster:
The FBI is not interested in you, unless they want to test headache remedies.
 
Davidjayjordan said:
Dear naive anti-truthers, the FBI loves you and wants the best for you. They are there to protect you and serve you, and would never spy on you, never invade your privacy, and never lie to you ..... unless you were a mere citizen.
Click to expand...

I doubt the FBI actually gives a s*** about me one way or the other, seeing as how I'm an Australian.
 
Davidjayjordan said:
Dear naive anti-truthers, the FBI loves you and wants the best for you. They are there to protect you and serve you, and would never spy on you, never invade your privacy, and never lie to you ..... unless you were a mere citizen.
Click to expand...

You're right. Your only option is to get offline, off the grid, and head for the hills. Go! Now! RUN!
 
The FBI doesn't have the time, nor the resources to scan everybody's emails.

They would simply use the powers to scan the emails of suspected terrorists if they were suspected of being involved in terrorism, and not your average citizen. It's illogical for them to do so, and they don't have the man power or system power to do so.

I couldn't care less if my emails were read by the FBI. I have nothing to hide, and I don't consider it giving up my civil liberties.
 
Belz... said:
Let 'em.
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Wan o' the 'hings whit ah wid want tae keen aboot unner sich circumstances wid be how they wid be able tae understan' screivins o ither leids, especially them whit arnae sae common - like this yin!

Agus ghaidhlig. Cymreg. Etc etc.
 
One of the advantages of being an ECHELON member state is that it's my own government scanning anything I'm sending (even assuming they're scanning everything).

Our Government announced ECHELON existed, and what it did, two decades ago, so there's nothing overly secret about it.

I agree with others however. The system may have the capability to scan every communication (maybe). I seriously doubt it is capable of processing even a fraction of communications.

I would be pretty confident their efforts would be focused on known "persons of interest". Otherwise discussions like this one on the internet would waste valuable resources.

-Gumboot
 
For what it's worth, most emails are sent in easily readable format across multiple networks to get to their destination. Any number of people can potentially read them; it's an inherently unsecure communication medium. If you are concerned with privacy there are a number of encryption methods that would make it more difficult for someone to read your email.

Course, I almost never send anything in an email that I would worry about being read by a third party, so I don't bother. But if you're discussing your plans for world domination, PGP might be right for you. If you think filtering terabytes of data on a daily basis is daunting, imagine trying to decrypt chunks of it, most of which will be either computer geeks or paranoics without any more interesting content than the rest. :)
 
Could this be why the FBI agents following me have such noticable "bulges"? Reading all the special discount pharmacy and male-enhancement stuff I get?
 
Of course it's not the FBI that does it anyway... ECHELON for the USA is run by the NSA.

-Gumboot
 
Davidjayjordan said:
Dear naive anti-truthers, the FBI loves you and wants the best for you. They are there to protect you and serve you, and would never spy on you, never invade your privacy, and never lie to you ..... unless you were a mere citizen.
Click to expand...

Wow I feel loved. You mean, you mean they care all about little old me? There I was thinking that nobody cared for me only to find out that lots and lots of people care.

Dear Mr. FBI email reader, thank you for caring, it means so much to me.

Yours state.
 
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sersiouly though ive always figured echelon scans a percentage of all communications and never really worried about it, if i want security ill send a regular letter or just go talk to someone in person, or as aoidoi suggested PGP is a great email encryption program (need to use outlook though i think)
 
I thought the whole controversy about Echelon was that it circumvented the US prohibition on spying on it's own citizens by getting a partner nation to do it for them.
 
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