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FBI Target Puts His Life Online

After the FBI mistakenly targeted him as a terror suspect five years ago, art professor Hasan Elahi began recording his entire life online for the perusal of government agents or anyone else who wants to look in. "I've discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away," he says, grinning. "It's economics. I flood the market."

15 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Killing time? by farkus888 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm picking my nose right now. this post written in the interest of keeping my ass out of jail.

    --
    thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
  2. How to defeat the CCCP by F34nor · · Score: 5, Funny

    This was my friend's idea of how to destroy the CCCP. You take every classified document in the US, shuffle, and ship. They would have bankrupted the economy trying to find the gems in the huge piles of useless shit.

  3. Not paranoid by TheSciBoy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, it's not paranoia if they're actually after you.

    --
    Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
  4. Re:New religion by bedonnant · · Score: 2, Funny

    we *have* to fight to protect it. otherwise the world will be a big MySpace page.
    God forbid.

    --
    ~~~ Paf. Le chien.
  5. Re:New religion by mlk · · Score: 5, Funny

    Good Goddess no. Real life animated gifs.

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    Wow, I should not post when knackered.
  6. Re:Come on... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    If his site gets slashdotted due to your link, the FBI might think he's turning it off so that they don't see what he does at that moment. You are responsible if they send him to Guantanamo because of it!

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  7. Re:Here is to hoping... by LordLucless · · Score: 3, Funny

    At least he'd be easy to perform a body cavity search on. In and out in a matter of minutes, so to speak.

    --
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  8. Correct headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    would be "FBI gives attention whore perfect excuse"

  9. Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    In the case of "Hasan Elahi" that's close enough to "Hassan Elashi" that it's probably "close enough for government work".
    I have zero sympathy for these foreigners with complicated Islamic-terrorist-sounding names. If you don't want to be harassed by the government then change your name from Muhammed Al-Assad Il-Bin-Kumani to Michael Smith or something. African-Americans would be the first to back this up. Who is going to get harassed more by the police if you're black, Joe Jackson or Duwante Fahrakan? There's no way in hell they'd have the balls to put Jeff Jones on a terror watch list, they'd be banning 100,000+ people with that name.
  10. This won't work! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I work for the FBI and I say he's a terrorist!!!

    Of course he's doing photos to proove differently. (Bin Laden made whole movies(!) and made channels show them on TV.) But what does he between the photos? Does he force women to hide their faces. Does he force children to hold and use a rifle?

    We, the FBI and CNN, will find out.

  11. Re:Sorry, no. by value_added · · Score: 3, Funny

    The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?'

    AFAIK, I'm not doing anything tomorrow. Until the new Google service shows up in beta, anyone got any good suggestions?

  12. Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin! by value_added · · Score: 2, Funny

    In the early 80s Bayan, Ghassan and Hassan Elashi had a little company that made computers for the royal Suadi family. My boss was Jewish and he and I were the only white guys there

    I guess the term white guys could include Jews for large values of white, but some people might disagree. Then, again, Arabs and Jews can both be characterised as Semites, but that might upset other folks and offend the sensibilities of the politically correct who really don't know WTF they're saying (if anything).

    Either way, you're screwed. You'd appeal to larger groups if you use more specific terminology or, as an alternative, use ethnic humour to make the point. If it was me, I'd opt for ethnic humour route, and offend everyone you possibly can. ;-)

  13. Re:Nice, clever, but still not right by HostAdmin · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm actually kind of worried about this guys diet. I don't see many actual grocery store receipts. From the look of the meals he eats, he has a rather high fat / calorie dense / junk food diet. Maybe he should add a feedback section so we can send him lifestyle advice.

    His wardrobe probably needs to be updated as well. I see no transactions at any nice mens clothing stores ...

  14. Re:Let me tell you a story by wesborgmandvm · · Score: 2, Funny
    People always forget the most obvious privacy invasion. A stranger walks up to you and tells you the names of children, their date of birth, what schools they go to, what classes they are in, their grades, what time they go to school and what time they come home and how they travel between home and school, the names of their friends and to top that off hands you a series of recent photographs of them. Honestly, how would you feel. You don't just protect your privacy, you protect the privacy of all those people around you, especially your family.

    The laws should really be changed...

    No the laws don't need to be changed your teenager just needs to stop posting to MySpace.

  15. Re:Let me tell you a story by carpe_noctem · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let me tell you a story. An "in Soviet Russia" kind of story.

    Wait a minute, I thought that in Soviet Russia, the story told you!

    --
    "Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K