I think ATS is being tracked.

Its the 'net'. Its the 'web'. They don't need people to track us.

Soon they'll even kill us with robots.

Originally posted by Tiamanicus
So if all these mods cannot even watch this place properly, what are the chances the government is spending any money giving it a go?

And you can do a better job?
ATS is a large place, and quite honestly...your reply had no merrit to the thread. I am really tired of all this "down with ATS" talk...and for the record, that is exactly what it has been.

In case you've forgotten, this thread is about "ATS being 'tracked'", not "unjust moderation." Please...do that someplace else, if you have a problem with how things are being run, use the complaint form, and spare the rest of us.

Originally posted by Shugo
In case you've forgotten, this thread is about "ATS being 'tracked'", not "unjust moderation." Please...do that someplace else, if you have a problem with how things are being run, use the complaint form, and spare the rest of us.

I disagree. The main point he was trying to make was, imagine how much bigger the feds are versus the ATS moderators. Why would you honestly expect the feds to have more time or money to track these forums than the mods themselves?

It's a quite valid point. Anyone who has worked for the federal government would know how utterly bogged down by bureaucracy the government is. The idea that they have the time or resources to honestly be tracking such wonderful threads like "An Alien Took Me Away Last Night!" and "Beware the NWO in Your Cornflakes!" is just....laughable.

I agree and disagree...

Yes, I imagine ATS is being watched, as are many popular conspiracy forums.

No, it isn't being monitored like you guys would think.

Having worked in law enforcement, and being buddies with a Computer Forensic's officer, monitoring of sites is done on a lesser scale.

1st, there will be a list of sites on the "watch list". These sites are downloaded into a cache, and is searched for "keywords" by a computer.

then, the computer would have significantly reduced the content for review by a massive scale.

Depending on which agency is watching, it may then be filtered again for certain combinations of words, or phrases.

Now, on a state level, where I live, these significantly filtered results are reviewed by the first actual real live person. But, by this time, the review isn't of a specific thread, or of a paragraph. Instead, the computer spits out the phrases that triggered the search along with x number of charactures before/after.

If reading these "sentences" grabs the interest of the person looking at the results, they will visit the site themselves, through anonymous proxy to avoid detection.

Like I said, it is NOT someone sitting at a computer, surfing, but instead a highly automated process.

I am not sure if this is how it is done in high level federal government orgs, but on the state/local level here where I live, this is how the internet is monitored...

edit for clarification: The example of how monitoring occurs, is actually how in my state, we catch sexual predators, and monitor our militia groups. It MAY be different for other types of tracking, but I can't imagine it would be that different.


[edit on 26-10-2008 by nj2day]

[edit on 26-10-2008 by nj2day]

Originally posted by thrashee
I disagree. The main point he was trying to make was, imagine how much bigger the feds are versus the ATS moderators. Why would you honestly expect the feds to have more time or money to track these forums than the mods themselves?

...really...care to thereof explain to me how:

Because as was stated above, they double punish people for one offense, they remove posts without actually reading the thread or the context. They deal with most problems by simply banning your ISP. So if all these mods cannot even watch this place properly,

...equates to that perception of what the *point* of the reply was? The motivation behind the reply?

...apart from the last sentence of it all of course....

Originally posted by alien
...equates to that perception of what the *point* of the reply was? The motivation behind the reply?

...apart from the last sentence of it all of course....

So he rambled a bit about the moderators; that doesn't mean he didn't tie it back to the topic at hand, does it? His examples were illustrating how if even the moderators of the given forum don't necessarily act in syncopation, how could an entity so much larger than ATS do the same?

[edit on 26-10-2008 by thrashee]

*Mod Edit: Editting myself - go figure

The original question has been answered. Its quite normal for tracking to happen via Bots and the like.

To save ongoing arguments and debates: Locking now.


Cheers.

[edit on 26-10-2008 by alien]