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."

Comments

New religion

[Romwell]

Privacy nowadyas is like a religion. Some people believe in it, some don't; some fight to protect it. But it is still as intangible and unattainable as deities from other religions.

Re:New religion

[m1k3y121]

The attempt is what matters, at least to me. I currently am a member of the Army and it makes me realize that privacy is important to most people. Some people don't have a problem with people knowing just about everything about them (small towns), but people like me and alot more hate having a roommate and our whole life being watched. When I get out, it will be like heaven for me for that reason. p.s. other than that it's not a bad job

Nice, clever, but still not right

[mcvos]

It's great that he's created the perfect alibi, and keeping himself out of accidental incarceration on Gitmo, but the real message here is that government institutions are way too sloppy, and that if you do not give up your privacy like this, you may be risking all sorts of harassment and worse. Innocent people do get locked up because of mistakes, malice, or a combination of both.

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[Simon]

The difference is that in the US, there's plenty of evidence that it is already being abused. In Netherland it's still only the risk that it may happen.

Well, the article gave a couple good examples of how laws are being abused.

Een dakloze liet Rick van Amersfoort laatst een stapeltje van dertig boetes zien. De oogst van een maand op straat leven: oversteken bij rood licht, in het openbaar een joint roken, hangen op een bankje voor het Amsterdamse Muziektheater. Van Amersfoort werkt bij het bureau Jansen en Janssen, dat geworteld is in de kraakbeweging en politie- en inlichtingendiensten kritisch" volgt. Jij en ik zouden er geen boete voor krijgen, maar deze dakloze is lastig, dus pakt de politie hem zo aan."

"A homeless person showed Rick van Amserfoort his collection of 30 fines. The harvest of one month on the streets: crossing against a red light, smoking a joint in public, loitering on a bench in front of the Amsterdamse Muziektheater. Van Amersfoort works at the bureau Jansen en Janssen, which grew out of the squatting movement, and critically follows the work of the police and the intelligence service. You and I wouldn't receive a fine, but this homeless person is difficult, so the police are always on to him."

and another example:

De legitimatieplicht is volgens Brenninkmeijer een goed voorbeeld. Waarschuwingen dat de politie hem zou kunnen misbruiken, werden weggewuifd. "Nu zie je dat politie betogers vraagt om hun legitimatie. Dan is het een repressiemiddel geworden."

The legitimatieplicht (=law requiring everyone to carry ID in public) is according to Brenninkmeijer a good example. Warnings that the police would misuse this law were waved off. "Now you see that police ask protesters for their ID. It has become a tool of repression."

--
Simon

Killing time?

[cb_is_cool]

Sounds to me like he's just made it into some wierd pseudo-hobby. I don't think I could ever be that comfortable posting my every move.

Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin!

[rs79]

There are sometimes more than one way to spell Arab surnames. For example "El Ashi" could be "Elashi".

In the case of "Hasan Elahi" that's close enough to "Hassan Elashi" that it's probably "close enough for government work". I'd be willing to bet this is the source of his trouble.

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; we did all the software. All the Elashi's are in jail now on what appears to me to be trumped up charges. Trivia: the Elashis paid for the only decent UUCP node in LA at the time; they held the .IQ tld for a while Bayan called Jon Postel one day and Jon just gave it to him by virtue of an Arabic accent. Bayan told me while giggling he was holding it hostage from the Iraqi government. I still have a watch Bayan gave me that I posted about in alt.horlology in 1988.

Let me be less subtle. We ran their computers and were nosy. If they're terrorists then I'm Stephen fucking Hawking.

Noise = good hiding place

[drgonzo59]

You might be joking but that is actually a very good way to hide something -- just cover it with lots and lots of noise. I do that with our beloved friend -- Google. You see, it likes very much to gather my browsing history so in case of a court order it can quickly give it to any lawyer out there, so what do I do? I run the TrackMeNot Firefox extension. It sends a fake query to Google about once in 5 or so seconds. Let Google figure out which one is me browsing and which queries are submitted by TMN. TMN is actually pretty smart while I was typing this it asked Google for such things like "describe dept that", "Chinchilla Farm Investigation", "officials representing diverse views" and "each selective router" -- not bad, just as crazy and random as my own queries would be...

Nazi Germany

[Savage-Rabbit]

Even if you realized that in such a low tech setting they can't know _everything_, you didn't know exactly _what_ they know, and exactly _what_ and _when_ they'll use it against you. Maybe they'll do nothing. Maybe they'll send you to Siberia. Maybe you just won't be allowed to travel abroad any more. Maybe your kid won't ever get a high paying job because his dumbass father got drunk once and complained about the party. I can't speak about Soviet Russa but I do know a bit about Nazi Germany from people who lived through that time and basically the same was true there. You kept your mouth shut because there was a very good chance of even a single moment of carelessness biting you in the ass sooner or later with dire consequences. Even though everybody knew that the State couldn't know everything they still kept their mouth shut because:

1. The Gestapo offered quite handsome bounties for tips on people who exhibited treasonous or regime critical behavior or uttered any derogatory comments about the 'Führer' the party or it's policies.
   
2. Even if the Gestapo didn't get tipped off by one of it's professional informers they would probably eventually learn about any such details the moment they shook somebody down for some minor infraction and that person named you and a couple of dozen others to save his own skin. These tips could range from subversive activities, such as being a communist or social democrat to having once been seen reading a communist leaflet or having been overheard telling a treasonous joke.
   

Basically the Nazi system wasn't all that dissimilar in it's inner workings to the tactics employed by Senator McCarthy and his goons except it went much further. Those who got named weren't merely socially ostracized as they were in the USA, in Nazi Germany and the cooupied territories they got sent to a camp and executed. There was actually a group of people both in Germany it self and the occupied countries who made a tidy business out of regularly informing on anybody that acted even mildly suspiciously. Once the Gestapo did lock in on you they were practically guaranteed to find _something_ to hang you with. Believe it or not, purely out of fear of a Gestapo visit, people both Germans and non Germans sorted the scrap paper they used on the toilet in case it contained any leaflets or other printed material from politically unreliable elements or, god forbid, contained a picture of Adolf him self. People today may find that funny but there were actually people who did long stretches in KZ camps or even died there for the simple offence of insulting the visage or persona of the 'Führer'.