FBI Investigates Liberator of Court Records 445
eldavojohn writes "Federal court documents aren't free to the public, they cost $0.08/page through a system called PACER. During a period when the US Government Printing Office was trying out free access at a number of courthouses around the US, a 22-year-old programmer named Aaron Swartz installed a small PERL script at the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals library in Chicago — a script that uploaded a public document every three seconds to Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service. Swartz then donated over 19 million documents to public.resource.org. That's when the FBI took interest in the programmer responsible for this effort and ran his name through government databases. How did he discover this? His FOIA was approved, of course, and he received the FBI's partially redacted report on himself. The public.resource.org database was later merged with that of the RECAP Firefox extension, which we discussed a couple of months back." Update: 10/06 18:22 GMT by KD: Timothy Lee pointed out that the summary as originally posted garbled the Swartz / RECAP connection. Improved now.
What's wrong with this picture? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's wrong with this picture? (Score:4, Funny)
'Cept they (gummint) closed the case, meaning they couldn't make anything stick.
The good thing here is that the gummint realized that this guy did nothing wrong, and their 27, 8x10, color glossy photographs with the circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one, weren't going to be of any use.
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Please tell me I'm not the only one who read your comment and had an 18.5 minute long Arlo Guthrie song [wikipedia.org] pop into my head.....
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Please tell me I'm not the only one who read your comment and had an 18.5 minute long Arlo Guthrie song [wikipedia.org] pop into my head.....
Are your kidding? Of course not!
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Did you miss the part about installing (presumably non-permitted) software on a court computer?
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Re:What's wrong with this picture? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then explain this part: A 22-year-old programmer named Aaron Swartz decided to capture 19,856,160 records by simply installing a small PERL script at the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals library in Chicago.
Sounds like he installed an unauthorized program on the court's computer system to me.
Re:What's wrong with this picture? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's wrong with this picture? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the file :
"PACER normally carries an eight cents per page fee, however, by accessing from one of the seventeen libraries, users may search and download data for free.
Between September 4, 2008 and September 22, 2008, PACER was accessed by computers from outside the library utilizing login information from two libraries participating in the pilot project. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported that the PACER system was being inundated with requests. One request was being made every three seconds.
[â¦] The two accounts were responsible for downloading more than eighteen million pages with an approximate value of $1.5 million."
So he used a login (which wasn't registered in his name according to the report) to access files from a location not supposed to be used by those logins to download so many documents it began to look like a DOS attack. I'd say the FBI are correct to at least investigate.
Re:What's wrong with this picture? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not their value. That is their price. Very different concepts. In a free society, they have much value, but shouldn't have a price. It's information every citizen should have access to.
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Am I the only one noticing a discrepancy between the slashdot summary and the FBI document?
Specifically, the summary claims Swartz ran the scripts from a library computer. The FBI document claims this (I'm quoting the rest of the sentence you quoted first):
Between September 4, 2008 and September 22, 2008, PACER was accessed by computers from outside the library utilizing login information from two libraries participating in the pilot project.
If he merely wrote a script on a library computer, as the article summary claims, then the FBI document must be wrong. I can't say my confidence in Slashdot's summaries is high enough to outweigh the FBI's investigation...
retaliation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:retaliation (Score:5, Insightful)
if you look too closely at the gov't, they'll look too closely at you.
Oh please. Put the tinfoil hat away. If this was 'retaliation' I suspect that it would have gone a lot further than an investigation that was closed after concluding that no laws were broken. Did he really expect the FBI not to take an interest in him after he installed his own code on a Government computer? Frankly I'd be worried if they didn't take an interest when some IT person notices a script running on a Government computer that's uploading hundreds of thousands of documents.
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The FBI is simply protecting the people who give it funding
The FBI doesn't get it's funding from the Federal Courts. It gets it's funding from Congress. The money that PACER charges is used to offset the administrative overhead of running the system. If that concept bothers you then write your Congressman and tell him to give the Judiciary more money so they can offer it for free instead. The Judiciary is regularly short-changed by Congress in the funding department anyway and could probably use the support.
and if you believe the FBI would side with whats RIGHT vs. what serves their best interests then you are a fool.
Your a fool if you think the FBI has nothing better t
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if you look too closely at the gov't, they'll look too closely at you.
It is not fair. They have more eyes.
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No they don't. We have far, far more eyes than they can ever hope for.
It just seems like they have more because they're more willing to use them.
Doesn't the FBI have better things to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, as far as I know, all this material is a matter of public record anyway. It should already be freely available. I've used bulk.resource.org primarily to read opinions of appeals court cases, and it's fantastic to have all that information freely available online. The FBI should be investigating the turrurists instead.
Moral of the story is that if you don't pay 8 cent duplication fees and you know how to use PERL the FBI could come a knockin'?
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You mean like investigating the installation of unauthorized software on a federal government computer?
Oh wait....
Re:Doesn't the FBI have better things to do? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it all depends. The information is "freely" available as in "free as in speech". You can go on PACER any time you want and download anything you want.
However, PACER itself is not (or at least not fully) tax-funded, so it's not "free as in beer". There is a user fee involved if you want to download the originals off the PACER system, which funds the system and makes the documents accessible. Once you have a copy of a document, you are free to do anything you want with it including share the document with anyone you want, which is why groups like RECAP can re-share any documents they've paid for or had donated to them.
This one is an interesting case, because the library access was initially set up so people could do free searches for small numbers of records, expecting a small number of hits. When the number of hits started skyrocketing, the government got suspicious as to who was collecting all of the documents and why. The FBI started an investigation, and it sounds like they discovered that nothing illegal was going on after all and dropped it. I'd say the number of hits on the system was enough to raise suspicion and justify a further look into what was going on, but that's one man's opinion.
While I applaud Aaron's efforts on behalf of RECAP, the net result was the publication of a few million files (good) and the shutting down of the free access to PACER at libraries due to what PACER obviously thought of as abuse (not so good).
If everyone expects/gets access to all PACER documents for free, then there won't be any money going into PACER to pay to scan the documents, organize them, and make them available. Then PACER will either cease to exist, or require additional taxpayer funding to continue since they won't be making any funds from user fees.
I'm not saying that complete taxpayer funding is a BAD idea, only that it is not how PACER is funded at this time. RECAP's initial approach was to collect donations to get "first copies" of a bunch of records from PACER then make them freely available to all (or to ask people to donate "first copies" they'd already purchased). So PACER was making revenue, and everyone was happy.
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They do. That's one reason Chicago won't be hosting the olympics. One cited reason was the trouble with getting people into our country without much trouble.
A great power (Score:5, Funny)
Not at all surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not at all surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
End story: The FBI was doing it's job to ensure a crime wasn't being committed, when something unexpected was occuring on a government computer system.
Close the thread... (Score:2)
...the parent and grandparent post have said everything that needs to be said.
Re:Not at all surprised (Score:4, Informative)
Install unauthorized software on a government
Didn't RTFA eh? What he actually did was access the PACER database using the username/password of the library from his Amazon IP address. One request every 3 seconds (which apparently counts as "inundated"), worth an imaginary $1.5 million. So they investigate the IP address, Amazon helpfully coughs up all the accounts details, with the name they find his web page and from Accurint get his social security number and other details, then gain access to his LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, drivers license, drive by his house and get photos (they suggest surveillance will be difficult), then he gets interviewed by the New York Times [slashdot.org]. After all that, they drop the case.
Possibly the best quote from the FBI: AARON SWARTZ would have known his access was unauthorized because it was with a password that did not belonged to him.
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Ok, there is conflicting information here. Swartz says he ran the script only on the library computer. The FBI report states PACER was accessed by computers from outside the library utilizing login information from two libraries participating in the pilot project.
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Install unauthorized software on a government, or business, computer anywhere and see what sort of response you get. This fellow installed an unauthorized perl script on a computer in a federal court (okay, the library thereof). I'm not surprised that the government decided to take a look at things. I'd be disappointed if they had not done so. DUH.
Two points, how in Hades is there a government computer accessible to the public that a random person can install software on?
The second point is that I agree that I would expect the government to investigate someone who did someone like this even if it wasn't done from a government computer. However, this investigation was a bit of overkill, not a lot, but a bit. Run his name through the various federal databases to see what turns up, sure. Check for outstanding warrants and prior convictions, sure. Check
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I would put things in a different order - education being first. Others would have their own order. I know something needs to be changed, but who decides?
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"social services" really ought to be handled by private organizations like they used to. The government ought to stick to protecting the borders, punishing evildoers (you know, like rapists and murderers and burglars, not "criminals" like stoners and crack heads), and maybe building roads. That's it. Then, the budget problems would go away, and there would be no need for oppressive taxes. Everything can then be funded through import tariffs.
Hey, why didn't our founding fathers consider that? Oh right, that
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"social services" really ought to be handled by private organizations like they used to. The government ought to stick to protecting the borders, punishing evildoers (you know, like rapists and murderers and burglars, not "criminals" like stoners and crack heads), and maybe building roads. That's it. Then, the budget problems would go away, and there would be no need for oppressive taxes. Everything can then be funded through import tariffs.
Hey, why didn't our founding fathers consider that? Oh right, that's what they intended in the first place.
Many if yur founding fathers didn't have a problem with slavery, either, and in this "golden age of liberty" that you describe, being poor didn't mean having to eat in McDonalnds - it meant not having to eat at all, and dying from starvation or disease if you don't have the cash (and surprisingly many people didn't).
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Consider, for someone who is homeless and starving or in desperate need of medical care, if there are no social welfare programs their most logical course of action is to steal whatever they need. If they get away with it, fine. If not then you WILL be supporting them with your tax dollars to the tune of $60,000/year space in jail. Or you could have spent $20,000 and potentially ended up with a productive citizen or at least a 66% reduction in the cost of an unproductive citizen.
Another portion of social we
Re:You know what pisses me off about stuff like th (Score:5, Informative)
bleeding hearts are responsible for the national debt
Actually, you're wrong. [zfacts.com]
"social services" really ought to be handled by private organizations like they used to.
You might want to do some research on the 1880s, and how effectively social services were handled by private organizations back then. Protip: they weren't handled at all. People died in the streets in massive numbers.
Most of the cries of "ooh big government! big government!" that people love to wave around come from an ignorance of how important government programs are to maintaining social order and a modicum of well-being for poor people. Well, that and a gross misconception of how much of the federal purse is spent on social programs, versus the things that the libertarians actually think are worthwhile. (We could just as easily cut almost all of our defense spending, since it's pretty much worthless).
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That counter doesn't track what was spent for those wars, but it tracks additional allocations above and beyond the standing military capable of invading any country and taking the capital (maybe not holding it, but certainly taking it). We could repel an invasion from any one country. Heck, we could probably do a pretty darned good job of repelling an invasion performed by the rest o
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Get used to it, bottom up its this way (Score:3, Interesting)
I love to use my local city, Atlanta, as an example of what is so wrong with government.
When faced with a budget shortfall what got cut? Firefighters and policemen. In fact they went after the stations in areas of most resistance to new taxation.
What was kept? The over loaded with cronies corrupt city hall. Oh, they went after teachers too and kept the huge administrative sections of the school system; again stuffed with friends.
The larger system is just the same.
Instead now its all about how much of so
typical demagoguery (Score:5, Insightful)
false dichotomies, misrepresented reality, etc.
nobody in their right mind is thinking of shortchanging something like defense spending for the sake of welfare recipients. this never enters into any governmental spending calculus as it is blindingly obvious something like police are more important to absolutely everyone involved in decision making. if spending is not at the level you think it should be, it has to do with someone thinking less is needed for that particular spending allotment, in a vacuum of any other consideration, not because someone needs a battered women's shelter instead. you present a false choice in your comment that never exists in the real world
furthermore social services are a bargain: every dollar spent on welfare and healthcare and other social services is one less guy breaking into your house or mugging you on the street, because they can't feed their kids, or because they can't keep their job with a broken arm (that they can't afford to fix). it's cheaper to fix their arm. you will pay for social services one way or another. the idea of not spending on healthcare for the poor means the problem just goes away is ignorance: every untreated case of diabetes winding up in the emergency room, every case of tuberculosis untreated resulting in your children catching it, every untreated case of hypertension resulting in a heart attack for the family breadwinner who now leaves a familty to fend on their own: you pay for that in the form of a sick society, and that affects your bottom line and the balance in your checking account, whether you are blind to how you are not an island in this world or not
when you live in a rich society, you in turn are rich. when you live a poor society you in turn are poor. the money that exists in your pocket is not something devoid of any relationship to everything around you, the money in your pocket is abstract expression of the wealth around you. you pay for basic simple social services, or the money in your pocket is worth less and is less in quantity. that you can't see that is a defect in your perception. unfortunately, so many people take this defect in perception as the basis for an entire philosophy of life that assumes they exist apart from their society
it isn't about individual responsibility and self-initiative, and those who don't have that having less socioeconomic status then you, it isn't about rewarding the undeserving. it is about giving the genuinely undeserving the bottom of the basement standard of living, so they don't wind up a cancer in your society that rots your entire society, which in turn impoverishes you. think of social services as an investment that pays dividends that are indirect. apparently beyond your ability to understand. and not making that investment resulting in the loss of far more of your money than you spend on basic social services
the idea is freedom right? freedom from poverty deciding issues of basic human dignity right? oh yeah... durrr...
but you shouldn't respond to me, you should get into politics. listen to any senator arguing out of ignorant resistance to change, and we see exactly the same sort of false choices and red herrings. you have a bright future in ignorant ideological grandstanding and fearmongering: go for it dude
yes, welfare brings crime down (Score:3, Insightful)
according to any serious study that's ever been done
"So, in other words, I should have to pay people off (through threat of force) to keep them from breaking into my house and stealing my property?"
yes, this statement is 100% accurate. why don't you come to grips with reality?
you have poor people who live near you. you can give them the bare essentials to live, or you can give them nothing, and they will take it from you, because they need to feed themselves. this is reality all over the globe. compare the
Bad English (Score:4, Informative)
AARON SWARTZ would have known his access was unauthorized because it was with a password that did not belonged to him.
Proof-reading. A valuable tool.
19,856,160 records at 3 seconds per record (Score:4, Informative)
((((19,856,160 x 3 sec)/60 sec)/60 min)/24 hours)/365 days = 1.9 years
entirely doable
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Not quite.
Document != page
19,856,160 pages at 3 seconds per court document.
I expect many (most?) of those court documents are multi-page documents.
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The article isn't clear, but I would assume that there are multiple terminals he could have installed this script on.
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Tough to tell from the article, but it sounds like he didn't actually install a script on the terminals. Sounds like he copied the information (cookie?) from a couple of terminals that had access to the retrieval system, then used that login/cookie information to run a script on Amazon's cloud service that sent a request every 3 seconds using the authorization from the terminal(s). Hence the comment in the FBI file that he should have known it was illegal because he didn't own the account he used to access
And where did he get the password? (Score:2, Redundant)
What the /. summary doesn't say is that Aaron used a user name and password of the library to run his script from an outside location. I would guess the FBI closed the case because 1) he got a lawyer and and refused the interview. 2) most likely the librarian had lax password handling that didn't specifically say he shouldn't have use it at home.
On the other hand if he did something like grab the password from a config file or unencode a URL with the credentials embedded I wouldn't feel bad if he landed i
Re:And where did he get the password? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And where did he get the password? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFFBI report, they say that he ran the script from a location outside of the library using the library password. Either the FBI are wrong, or the article summary is.
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The FBI report states PACER was accessed by computers from outside the library utilizing login information from two libraries participating in the pilot project.
Context please (Score:2)
So did he upload the FOIA? (Score:3, Funny)
So, did he have a script that automatically uploaded this FOIA on himself to a public server?
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Maybe not a script, but the information received minus a few redactions the government made are available in the last link, and being information created by the government is not bound by copyright and you may feel free to do with it what you will.
Inquire Within (Score:4, Interesting)
Pacer charges even more than it says (Score:4, Informative)
Pacer is worse than presented. Itâ(TM)s not just 8 cents a page for downloaded, itâ(TM)s 8 cents a page for any page you pull into your browser. They consider any Web page you surf on their site in search of the legal document to be a âoedownloadedâ document.
I work at a newspaper and one of my reporters ran up a $250 bill with Pacer checking many times a day to see if an important local opinion were issued. When it was, it was just 4 pages long; I expected to pay 32 cents. Instead they said we owed over $250. We never paid it and consequently no longer use Pacer.
PERL! (Score:3, Informative)
The federal courts are quite aware of RECAP. (Score:3, Insightful)
PACER has a little RECAP warning (at least as of last week). I forget most of it, but part of it warns users that it is open source and may contain bad software in it. I thought that was pretty funny.
You get the sense that the judges don't like it one bit, but they are being very circumspect in their language.
Maybe the judges are letting the FBI do their talking for them . . .
it was suspicious because... (Score:5, Funny)
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And spare me the "it's a public library and the docs are public" - the fact you can only access them from the library means there are controls in place(pricing, etc) for a REASON. YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CIRCUMVENT THEM. Why not drive around toll-booths on turnpikes then? Hell, there is some grass
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What this script did was bypass the arbitrary $0.08 "reproduction fee" for accessing these public domain works, and make them available free of charge (as they are by signing up to the library service, as I understand it).
AFAIK, he used a script to automate the procedure of accessing each pa
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To use your tollbooth analogy, if there's a free on-ramp and a free off-ramp, why not use them?
There's a particular stretch of highway that I drive, where I can get on at two different places. Both places are free (no toll on the on-ramp). Both have a in-highway toll. #1 is $1.75. #2 is $1.50. I take #2.
Towards where I get off the highway, there are several choices. #3 is free. #4 is $0.25. #5 is free after a $1.00 in-highway toll.
I *could* get on at #1
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courts are private business entities in usa now ?
Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a good thing for everyone.
Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Are government bodies not entitled to charge a nominal fee for services rendered?"
No.
Especially in this instance, as the service wasn't rendered. If you pay for Document X, the money doesn't go to the people who did whatever work went into that document, it goes to the reproduction office. All he's really done is take out the middle man. There's also that whole taxation thing...
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I imagine that PACER fees also pay for archiving of the physical documents, digitisation, etc. It's not just digital storage and retreival (which for the sake of argument we'll say could be done essentially for free; it's not obvious whether that's the case). Either people using those documents get to pay for their upkeep through a retreival fee, or everyone gets to pay it through taxes.
Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:4, Informative)
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You just can not prevent someone from copying and distributing it in the manner that they want as well.
My memory is a little hazy. Could you remind me what the guy did here?
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I imagine the public domain nature of the works is why the FBI investigated him but he's never been charged with anything, non?
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Mod parent up. Maybe those plush federal court offices with all of the grandiose furnishings might be paying for public access to documents which we OWN anyway. Taxes, filing fees, judgments to the government, these all produce revenue.
And by the way: pay judges more money so they're less incented towards feeling other financial influences that skew judments. /highhorse
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All the infrastructure that makes the documents available, scanned them in, store them, bandwidth, power, man-hours, backups, etc. COSTS MONEY. And you know what? They are entitled to it. You don't get to ask people to work for free.
PACER fees are not designed to recover those costs, which are probably just normal operating costs of the court system. After all, it's not like they run the service solely for public benefit - it's a necessity for a functioning justice system. According to the New York Times article from the summary,
But even the seemingly cheap cost of Pacer adds up, when court records can run to thousands of pages. Fees get plowed back to the courts to finance technology, but the system runs a budget surplus of some $150 million, according to recent court reports.
Secondly, the documents are not copyrighted, and were being offered for free at a library. The fact that this guy mass downloaded them and put them up on a separate server is actually probably SAVING the govern
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you truly are trolling :)
if not, advocate for taking away tax money from government.
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Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:5, Funny)
Thats probably because you're 12 andyour pocket money isn't much more. Now go do your homework.
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sigh -and me with no mod points
Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:5, Insightful)
Government services charge a nominal fee that the majority of people pay for services rendered already.
They call this fee, "tax"
Most people don't want to pay again for what they've already paid for.
Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does the current generation of kids seem to think just about everything should be free no matter how little it costs? Are government bodies not entitled to charge a nominal fee for services rendered?
In the first place, this stuff is public information, so the goal of the government should be to make it as widely available as possible at the smallest cost.
Second, the guy took advantage of a free trial period to download as many documents as he could. When the government found out, they shut down the free service.
Third, it's fine to charge a "nominal fee for services rendered," and it makes sense to do so when there is a real cost involved. However, the fee needs to reflect the real costs of retrieving the information. In this case, 18 million pages of documents are not "worth" $1.5 million dollars. They were giving away access to the material at libraries, the search and retrieval mechanism was obviously automatic, so it wasn't wasting people's time or costing more to get the documents.
Re:Wow , at 8 cents a page for a PACER document... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are government bodies not entitled to charge a nominal fee for services rendered?
No. First they didn't "render" and service - these records are available electronically anyway. Second these public records were already paid for by public taxes - the "nominal fee" has already been paid by Joe public (this is clear from having 17 free locations).
The problem is that the poor defendant might not be able to go to one of these 17 locations (because of terms of release, physical ability, cost etc) and might not be able to afford hundreds or thousands of dollars to do the necessary research to defend himself. This gives the government and the wealthy an advantage over the poor and thus impedes democracy.
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Are government bodies not entitled to charge a nominal fee for services rendered?
No. First they didn't "render" and service - these records are available electronically anyway.
No, they are not. You are simply and plainly wrong. That's the whole POINT of PACER: to send people into the vaults with tens of millions of pages of paper records and scan them, and check them and collate them and file them so they can be found by the people who need them. When was the last time you scanned tens of millions of pieces of paper? What makes you think this is not a service rendered?
Second these public records were already paid for by public taxes - the "nominal fee" has already been paid by Joe public
No, they haven't. PACER is not receiving tax money. You and your ilk would be frothing at the mouth about the was
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If you had a private corporation and you charged $FOO amount for $BAR services, and then charged a fee so customers can use $BAR after they have already been paid, you would be charged with crimes for overbilling and/or fraud.
However, since this is the government, it's okay.
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Instead of spouting bullshit, you could get some facts first. From the PACER FAQs [uscourts.gov]:
Why are there user fees for PACER?
In 1988, the Judiciary sought funding through the appropriation process to establish the capability to provide electronic public access services. Rather than appropriating additional funds for this purpose, Congress specifically directed the Judiciary to fund that initiative through the collection of user fees. As a result, the program relies exclusively on fee revenue.
So, in fact, PACER
Re:So, it took 1.9 years? (Score:5, Informative)
> What am I missing?
Document != page
19,856,160 pages at 3 seconds per court document.
I expect many (most?) of those court documents are multi-page documents.
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His Perl script pulled almost 20 million PAGES. It doesn't say exactly how many RECORDS were pulled. I'm assuming most records are multiple pages. Basic math says the script rain for 18 days, so (18*24*60*60)/3 = 518400 possible records to be pulled in that time at an average of 39 pages per record to reach the 20 million pages.
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Favor from Washington...
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I love the american government, where even public information is available at anytime -- for a modest fee. Flamebait aside, but where the hell does your tax dollars go? You have almost no public health care, barely any public schooling, your elderly are crammed inside tuna cans, yet you're one of the wealthiest nations in the world. And if you say "Obama" I will smack you over the face with the European continent.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Proof that lean living nets profits.
Our tax dollars primarily fund a welfare system known as civil service. We don't know what they do, but it requires a lot of them and a whole lot of time to do it.
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy also applies:
"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."
Re:Money (Score:5, Interesting)
...even public information is available at anytime -- for a modest fee.
Just as an aside on that point, this guy found out about this investigation because he issued a FOIA on himself. If you have any inkling that you might have been looked at, file one. It takes a while, but it's easy. In my case, I've filed two. In one case (FBI), they told me that they didn't (yet) have anything that involved me. In the second case, they sent me a document that totaled 88 pages and was terribly interesting to read and included interviews with people I went to high-school with, known aliases (common nick-names), and information dating back to when I was 9.
Unlike the story at hand, all of this was done at no cost to me (surprisingly - the administrative work and postage must have cost something). They did ask on the FOIA form how much I'd be willing to pay to get my information, but I was never charged a penny.
Aside from the aside: I do not currently commit nor do I plan on committing criminal acts in the near future. I also have no criminal record.
Re: (Score:2)
Just as an aside on that point, this guy found out about this investigation because he issued a FOIA on himself. If you have any inkling that you might have been looked at, file one. It takes a while, but it's easy.
Actually that's probably incorrect. If you look at the file you see at the bottom the FBI contacts him and he let's them know to speak to his lawyer. Which is a pretty big tip off they're investigating you.
Re:Money (Score:4, Insightful)
So they had 88 pages on you for no reason? What the heck could warrant that?
Re:Money (Score:4, Informative)
So they had 88 pages on you for no reason?
Not for no reason - I was told by the investigating agency that they were looking at me and I was interviewed twice, thus my interest in acquiring whatever they found. I knew pretty definitively that "they" had something on me. The point is, once they decide to look at you, they really try hard to look at you. So, if you know or suspect that you've got a file, read it - It's interesting.
Part of the fun for me was looking at the various 'Red Flags' that turned up (They turned up the facts that I used to home-brew explosives, make improvised explosives (some multiple pounds)*, and get high all the time** - Those, for some reason, were lesser red-flags than the fact that I've had a common nick-name since Junior High and therefore use an 'alias'). Another fun area was looking at their interview list. For the interview list, my reaction was mostly, "How in the heck did you find him?" or "Man, if you wanted dirt on me you really talked to the wrong people..."
* Stopped within a year after high-school
** Stopped after college
Re:Money (Score:4, Interesting)
Aliases seem to be widely misunderstood by all to many people, and I would not be surprised if even the pros (such as the FBI), have people who aren't clear on the concept. This may have been a case where the agent assigned just thinks there's something vaguely tainted about all aliases.
My Ex had a tendency to sign things using either the middle initial of her maiden name or the one that was originally for her last name interchangably. (Still does, as she never reverted to using her maiden name after the divorce). She also has a fairly sloppy signature, so when a bank first noticed the multiple initials they went back and found what looked like a possible second variant. She also has a first name that is common in spelling, but is pronounced in an uncommon way, and once somebody else at the bank made a note about this in some file. So, eventually, the bank made her sign a form stipulating she had a number of legal aliases and she had to provide no less than 12 variations on her signature to cover all the bases. She wasn't actually using anything like 12 aliases - the bank wanted her to give them a signature for each case where somebody thought a letter was sloppy enough to be misread - "Now write it like you would if that "B" looked more like a "P".
I had a fairly high security clearance for a time, and the FBI checked on why my wife used so many aliases. While the bank record only showed one, actual alias of record, getting all those signatures on the card meant, to the investigator, that every one implied a different alias, so discussing just this one area took about 15 minutes. It was all cordial enough, but somewhere in my file or hers there's probably multiple pages of blather about how she spells and pronounces her first name the way her grandmother did, and so on.
There's a quote from Cardinal Richlieu: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him". That's what's vaguely spooky about all this - I can just see her getting into legal trouble and the FBI painting her as a brilliant, if twisted mastermind who had set up a huge batch of aliases many years in advance of her cunning scheme. If they knew about her secret lair under the volcano, it would probably be even worse...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a quote from Cardinal Richlieu: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him". That's what's vaguely spooky about all this - I can just see her getting into legal trouble and the FBI painting her as a brilliant, if twisted mastermind who had set up a huge batch of aliases many years in advance of her cunning scheme. If they knew about her secret lair under the volcano, it would probably be even worse...
In that vein, there are two youtube [google.com] videos [google.com] about talking to the cops. Basically, if someone wants you bad enough, they can find something.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
OK... No additional direct cost to me. Thanks for chipping in for postage =)
Sadly, in your (accurate) context, I helped pay for them to investigate me...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, which is worst, the fed or the state? It seems to me like they each compete to see who can reach deepest into people's pockets. Take the payment I had to make today.... but lets step back a minute. I have a "fastlane pass" (speed pass in most states). They keep a credit card on file, and use that to refill my account, as I zip through tolls, which I do rather infrequently.
I hadn't used it ina few months, and took a recent trip out to western MA to visit some friends. As I go, the yellow light co
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh the system is perfectly tuned to screw you, no doubt. If you think that's unique to government, you weren't banking in the bad old days, when banks would hold both deposits and checks for days, programatically looking for some order of processing checks and deposits that would cause a check to bounce. But we expect banks and used car salesmen and other such slimeballs to screw us. We should expect politicians and bureaucrats to screw us just as hard but youthful idealism alway seems to turn a blind e
Re:Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Money (Score:4, Insightful)
For the past decade your government has been opposed to liberty, the problem is that your entire country had your head SO far up you asses with thoughts like "We're the best country in the world." or "We have so many guns and the knowledge to use them that the government wouldn't dare take away our liberties." That you have completely missed that huge portions of your population live in 3rd world conditions and that your own government has taken your liberties from under your very nose.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You really think that because you have guns the government is scared shitless? Are you on crack?
Where did I say that the government was "scared shitless"?
on behalf of the government, since you seem to think that government provided services somehow reflect a reduction in liberty
The do reflect a reduction in liberty when they come with a "you MUST use this government service or ELSE" mandate.
You've been spoon fed paranoia and imagined threats for so many years (from the japs in WW2, hippies, communists, terrorists, environmentalists, socialists)
The Japanese were an "imagined threat"? Really? I guess we imagined them blowing up our ships and killing our servicemen?
You know what? It's your call, keep on believing in the delusion that having a gun will somehow make you free and that your government/corporations won't continue in shafting you royally.
I don't believe and never said that having an armed society "makes" us free. It "keeps" us free. Bit of a difference there.
that government intervention in the preservation of corporations and executive bonuses in the face of gross incompetence is ok
Executive bonuses in the face of gross incompetence is an issue for the shareholders, n
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are bad people in the world. Really. They'll come and take your stuff, even if you ask them very nicely not to. Any standard of living you have above being a slave exists only because some military protects your society from these bad people. For many decades, America's military protected a lot of other countries from these bad people. Post-cold war we've scaled back military speding significantly, but there's a minimum amount you need to remain a superpower.
Meanwhile, our social programs are mor