[AgentR11]

If you read up a few, you'll see that I do not find the situation likely. For the reason you give and others.

An "If A then B" logic statement does not make any claim concerning the likelihood or possibility of A.

So; I think it is extremely unlikely po would be taken down; however, IF it were taken down, that would be sufficient evidence to me that those running the show had lost their marbles, botched it badly, and were about ready to go flailing about vainly trying to recover control. In such a situation, my preference is to avoid the flailing.

[SeaGypsy]

That's as good metaphor as any. I see this as like a brain game, a cross between scrabble and chess with mystery players anywhere in the world. I know the people running the intelligence gathering end of the show keep an eye on everything in the public domain and apply attention according to funding priorities. I also know they hire MENSA and fast track accomplished grads for the undisclosed purpose of working with us right here on the net. I also know that a 120 WPM with 140+ IQ could easily maintain a pretty active presence in a number of domains. There are very few highly active oil depletion discussion sites.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'M')an if you are gonna bug because po.com goes black you'd have bugged already!

While messing around with his water bed heater one time, Admin accidentally unplugged the server and we were offline for a week!

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'M')an if you are gonna bug because po.com goes black you'd have bugged already!

While messing around with his water bed heater one time, Admin accidentally unplugged the server and we were offline for a week!

[SeaGypsy]

Everything has it's purpose to those who control the machine.
Perve all you like, then we know what you are 'into'.

Participate in any chats you are interested in, drug or bomb manufacture, methods of dissent, conspiracy theories, then we know how you think.

Now that we know what you enjoy and what attracts you, we have a pretty good chance of controlling you. "Now can some bastard get that Skype on a leash!!!"

[GoIllini]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'T')hat's as good metaphor as any. I see this as like a brain game, a cross between scrabble and chess with mystery players anywhere in the world. I know the people running the intelligence gathering end of the show keep an eye on everything in the public domain and apply attention according to funding priorities. I also know they hire MENSA and fast track accomplished grads for the undisclosed purpose of working with us right here on the net. I also know that a 120 WPM with 140+ IQ could easily maintain a pretty active presence in a number of domains. There are very few highly active oil depletion discussion sites.

[SeaGypsy]

Or scoping for talent.

[Mesuge]

The primary issue here is that in any large .gov or private vertical organization there are several layers of involvement, know-how sharing, int./ext. alliances etc. Simply, often times even the mid and upper management, senior case officers, know very little about the whole game picture. They are being played like puppets or toy soldiers, not there is necessarily some grand master plan to follow. But the top dogs usually have to fight various office tribal wars about the territory, priviliges, power, real or imagined patriotism, money, ego and what have you. It's a giant mess, with only one predictable outcome, it always comes to a stressed moment of implosion, induced internally or externally (sometimes both), where comming to a point the whole machine is just freewheeling, while still sucking enormous input in people and energy. After that it has to radically reinvent itself or collapse, be it slowly or in expedient fashion. True, you can rinse and cycle this process numerous times but you can certainly gauge the temperature or health, if you will, about particular society at least throughout the prism of decades and centuries.
As of now, this civilization is clearly running out of tricks.

[SeaGypsy]

Which all goes back to defense being far more difficult and expensive than attack. Monetarily and psychologicaly.
I have 2 friends who work as intelligence analysts in the USAF in the mid ranks. Of course, they are not permitted to disclose any detail of any work task to anybody. Get them drunk and prod them, they are very disciplined, but still human. Mesuge is right. Their brief is POLITICAL VIOLENCE as defined by the government and it's agencies on the day. This can be about individuals, companies or countries. That is both the big and small picture of National Security. Lesser matters are either passed over to relevant state or national police; child porn, human trafficking, drug distribution; or buried/ warehoused. A gray area emerges where lesser crimes are suspected of being used for political subversion. In this gray area, NSA's can be accused of non disclosure/ cooperation with regular police. This is where the politics come into it and where the opportunity for corruption is rife. The pollies don't want or need the analysts to be concerned about what happens to the information they collect/ process and pass on according to the relevant policies and procedures. It is more in their interest to have as close to possible free and all pervasive internet, as this is now their eye into the mind of each of us using the system. Shutting down important/ less important political sites runs counter intuitive to intelligence gathering for this exact reason.

[SeaGypsy]

Which brings up another matter:
This site being run under a mostly self imposed censorship (see Code of Conduct), enforced as much by consensus as by actual moderation, truly psychotic/ psychopathic/ sociopathic/ paranoid political ramblings are quite rare here. By comparison, I read a lot of MSM news sites, with varying editorial policy on the comments posted. Man there are really a lot of very angry Phukers around abouts, some of whom are quite ok with posting pretty extreme threatening stuff, some of whom are known violent criminals and or armed to the teeth. Largely posters here are very much pro constitutional representative democrats with an anti authoritarian/ libertarian twist or flavour. Average IQ here is up a bit also. The likelihood of this being or becoming a terrorist cookoos nest are quite slim.

[AgentR11]

SG, I've seen those comments too, and I'm like, "surely this is just some cop fishing for a loony to track down", but then there are so many of them that superficially at least seem fairly individual. Hard to swallow that they're all police sanctioned intel hunters. So there really must be a sizable number of nutbars that would willingly type such unwise things in a public forum!

Of course, how better to keep tabs on them, than to let them keep posting, not to mention how pervasive the facebook and facebook assisted logins have become; like a giant instant intel system just sitting there letting people register themselves. ick!

Sometimes I get concerned that by opting to not have anything to do with facebook and other multilinking, social networking systems, I'm actually providing a pretty good profile as is. (I'm harmless, I promise! lol)

[SeaGypsy]

I think my 65 y.o. mother has written a couple of thousand mostly business emails, whilst working for a variety of government departments in Australia, since when she refuses to use the internet except to look at photos of her grandkids. I bet if I had access to all those emails and he facebook account, I could get enough of a picture to get some serious leverage. Compared to me or you Agent. We are blabbermouths, they don't need to even think about interrogating folks like us, busily baring our souls in public.

[SeaGypsy]

One subject aside note to this which I have found amazing/ bizarre/ unexplicable. Certain people are able to get stuff to disappear off the net. Personal stuff. For instance, my Jewish son's grandparents have been able to make every news article about his various sporting and academic achievements disappear within weeks. My mother, a senior public servant for 30 odd years, barely ever existed according to the net. I know other people with similar stories. Seems that if you can get your request to wipe records high enough up the food chain, it can be and is often done.

[2012 Survivalist]

If the owner of a site like this keeps backups, then it's really hard for the authorities to stop the site existing - it can just be uploaded at a new URL, and then you email all the members and tell them the new address.

It's commercial sites that have the most to lose - their URL is their brand, and if they lose search engine rank, they lose business.

[SeaGypsy]

Back at Uni this week, asked some people about this, My source told me the authoritah sends a formal request to the IP holder to delete the original and any copies they control; simple as that. If it's something viral, noway known to fully delete it and the IP provider has the right to refuse to delete non-criminal material. Anyone can make these requests, but unless the ordinary criminal or civil codes have been violated/ emergency laws carried out in secret are in the domain of the intel services which of course have a mandate to silence. I doubt intelligence services are involved in petty digital disappearances or sensorship. The amount of seriously hard core porn downloadable anywhere in the world (including China if in the right office) shows that zealotry and perfectionism are not in control of the internet.

[Graeme]

Einstein's 'spooky' theory may lead to ultra-secure internet

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')instein's scepticism about quantum mechanics may lead to an ultra-secure internet, suggests a new paper by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and Peking University.

Associate Professor Margaret Reid from Swinburne's Centre for Quantum and Optical Science said Einstein's reservations about quantum mechanics were highlighted in a phenomenon known as "'spooky' action at a distance."

In 1935 Einstein and researchers highlighted a 'spooky' theory in quantum mechanics, which is the strange way entangled particles stay connected even when separated by large distances.

"Until now the real application of this has been for messages being shared between two people securely without interception, regardless of the spatial separation between them," Professor Reid said.

"In this paper, we give theoretical proof that such messages can be shared between more than two people and may provide unprecedented security for a future quantum internet."

In the 1990s, scientists realised you can securely transmit a message through encrypting and using a shared key generated by Einstein's strange entanglement to decode the message from the sender and receiver. Using the quantum key meant the message was completely secure from interception during transmission.