Instead of the article I had planned on posting today, I want to talk to you about something that The SurvivalBlog shared on Friday. James Wesley Rawles, the owner of The SurvivalBlog, made a post called The FBI’s Cookie Caper and the VPN Imperative.
Here is the first paragraph from that post:
“It has come to my attention that from August of 2011 to November of 2011, the FBI secretly redirected the web traffic of more than 10% of SurvivalBlog’s US visitors through CJIS, their sprawling data center situated on 900 acres, 10 miles from Clarksburg, West Virginia. There, the Feebees surreptitiously collected the IP addresses of my site visitors. In all, 4,906 of 35,494 selected connections ended up going to or through the FBI servers. (Note that this happened several months before we moved our primary server to Sweden.) Furthermore, we discovered that the FBI attached a long-lived cookie that allowed them to track the sites that readers subsequently visited. I suspect that the FBI has done the same to hundreds of other web sites. I find this situation totally abhorrent, and contrary to the letter of 4th Amendment as well as the intent of our Founding Fathers.”
My Take
This saddens me. I agree with Mr. Rawles that this is an infringement on the 4th Amendment. This is not the first time the government has spied on prepper’s. Some examples can be seen in the article FBI & Homeland Security Caught Spying on Prepper Sites.
My guess is that the government is viewing prepper’s as the “fringe” that might be in our niche. The truth is that the vast majority of us are not extremists, ready to take action against anyone or anything. Most prepper’s and/or homesteaders are simply people who want to be prepared to take care of their families in times of trouble. We are patriots who love our country and do not want to depend on our government.
Mr. Rawles gives some examples of things you can do to increase your privacy when on-line. I will be doing some, if not all, of these things. If you take his suggestion of using the “VPN”, it will be an added expense. I intend to look at it as another preparation and hope you will too.
I checked my analytics and found a few visits from The Department of Homeland Security, as well as a few other government agencies. PreparedChristian is a pretty small fish in the preparedness site niche, so I don’t know that any of you were tracked, but there is a chance.
Some of you may decide to go “off grid” and no longer visit preparedness sites. I decided before I started PreparedChristian that I might draw attention to myself. I felt called by God to start this site and will keep posting for those who want to read and keep this community growing.
Some of you might be thinking “So what? If you have nothing to hide, let them look.” I have heard this argument from many on other infringements before. I used to have a similar argument. I then studied our founders and the spirit that our nation was created under. Our founders rebelled against an over-reaching king. I am not saying we should rebel, but I am saying that this is over-reaching by our government. I also agree with Mr. Rawles when he says:
“How you vote and how you “vote with your feet” (physically or virtually) are both of tremendous importance. Pray hard. Choose wisely. Act accordingly.”
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