The Internet Map - NSA and AboveTopSecret are Neighbors

reply to post by tauristercus

coincidence? ha!

To draw an analogy from classical physics, one may say that websites are electrically charged bodies, while links between them are springs. Springs pull similar websites together, and the charge does not let the bodies adjoin and pushes websites apart if there is no link between them.

So that is how it works. The number of links between websites act to create strong associations between those websites and they get placed close together depending on the strength of their interlinking connections. Those links are a direct tool for measuring how many people go between each websites and thus how closely related those websites should be. The mathematics behind is obviously more complex than this analogy but that is the basic idea. There's nothing magical about it, all the data is mined from public sources.

...We've created another "space", one that will keep building itself indefinitely it seems...

...is it alive? lol..

reply to post by tauristercus


I assume you were looking at the internet map when that happened? Unless you want to start accusing the map maker of some conspiracy to hack your computer, the obvious answer is that the scripts on the page caused an error with Opera.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
reply to post by tauristercus

 

I assume you were looking at the internet map when that happened?

Yes, I was examining the internet map when that message was displayed. As mentioned, I have NEVER had a similar message before and the obvious conclusion is that there is a causal relationship between the map and the message.

Unless you want to start accusing the map maker of some conspiracy to hack your computer, the obvious answer is that the scripts on the page caused an error with Opera.

I am not accusing the map maker at all.
I am simply stating how unusual was the timing in which an attempt to execute "foreign" code in a protected memory location on my pc was being attempted. Why never before and why NOW as I'm discussing the possibility of active NSA surveillance/monitoring/observation of ATS ?

reply to post by tauristercus


I couldn't help but notice your note on my way to get some sleep and it brought something to mind...

When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you.

How close do you figure you have to get to the most extensive set of computer experts and professional paranoids the world has ever produced....for them to glance back at ya just out of curiosity?

reply to post by Signals


We are detectives. Coincidences happens in books and the movies. Not real life

reply to post by tauristercus

Why never before and why NOW as I'm discussing the possibility of active NSA surveillance/monitoring/observation of ATS ?

Since we've ruled out the possibility that this can't be a coincidence you better contact the site owner and tell him to stop trying to compromise your web browser security.

Research Cass Sunstein and conspiracy theories. Here is his suggestion in a written paper on how to deal with them:

"Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."

For people using Firefox, you can use a plugin called Collusion that will list associated webpages from the site you are on.

For example :



is what my browser has linked to from being on the Firefox Addon page, my local tv guide and ATS.

It's a handy tool to see what you're actually being tracked by. And oddly enough, not a single DoD/NSA link to be found.

Collusion Plugin Page

Originally posted by prevenge

Originally posted by evilod

Originally posted by Notadisinfoagent
What are the odds of NSA being next to ATS on it haha O.o

It means a lot of people that visit ATS also visit the NSA site (and/or vice versa, but I'd imagine the majority of the correlation is ATS linking to NSA). Makes perfect sense really.

no not at all.

linking to NSA - are you freaking kidding me. . enough to form such a bond like that ... lolllllzzz

there's more links to wikipedia and youtube and they're nowhere to be seen around ats on the map.. by your reasoning there would have to be more links to wiki and youtube ... like every other post would have to have a url hyperlink to somethign of relevance on the NSA site.

It's not my reasoning. The creator of this map spells it out in the About section.

Do you know how many sites have people going to/from Youtube and Wikipedia? When you consider that, you'll realize there is no special relevance between ATS and Youtube and Wikipedia. Simply, there's not a significant amount of traffic from Youtube or Wiki to ATS, and ATS is relatively not a big driver, from those 2 sites' points of view.

Of course, one would need to be intimately familiar with the actual algorithms to know for sure, but from the high level explanation on the Internet Map site, this is how I would explain it: (I am making some reasonable assumptions of traffic flow.)

Minor ATS traffic to NSA + Minor NSA traffic to ATS = Reciprocal traffic, strong correlation
Major ATS traffic to Youtube/Wiki + No significant Youtube/Wiki traffic to ATS = Not reciprocal, not a strong correlation

Remember, it's important to consider the the traffic from both sites' points of view. 1000 people going from ATS to Youtube via an embedded video is a significant number... from ATS's perspective. But to Youtube, that is insignificant.

There's also this:

Importantly, clusters on the map are semantically charged, i.e. they join websites together according to their content. For example, a vast porno cluster can be seen between Brazil and Japan as well as a host of minor clusters uniting websites of the same field or similar purposes.

The NSA have the technology and resources to monitor anything, anytime and anyone.

It's not actually relevant if the owners of this site are linked to them or not anyway.

That map is incredible. Reminds me of the old "You've Reached the End of the Internet" sites people made... With this, you can really see the end of the net - If you look closely, there are a few tiny sites quite a ways out there.

reply to post by mainidh
Interesting. I installed that plugin and for whatever reason it did not register a visit to the nsa.gov site. It registered the other government sites I visited though.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
Oh wow this the coolest website EVER. This is so awesome, it's the internet universe!

Now the reason ATS is so close to the NSA website is because there are a lot of links on ATS which point to the NSA website, and also because there are a lot of links on the NSA website which point to ATS. I assume many of their articles are like "look at this typical example of crazy conspiracy theorists on ATS" and they link to a humorous ATS thread in order to slander us.

well..

I don't remember seeing any pointing directly to the NSA but, what do I know, my memory is going..

Interesting neighborhood. This may sound odd at first, but I find it somewhat reassuring that the many intelligent members on ATS might be listened to or "read" by intelligence agencies. There is much posted here that should be listened to. There is damn good reading and inspiration toward whatever future civilzation we humble humans can muster to be found here. I wonder...wouldn't it be a good thing if a few intelligence minded folks are sporting an "I read the thread" T-shirt?



I agree, if I were them I'd hang here too...it rocks most days.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
reply to post by tauristercus

 

Why never before and why NOW as I'm discussing the possibility of active NSA surveillance/monitoring/observation of ATS ?

Since we've ruled out the possibility that this can't be a coincidence you better contact the site owner and tell him to stop trying to compromise your web browser security.

I notice you're pretty quick of the mark with your glib answers and eagerness to discount the possibility that this was nothing more than a coincidence. Must be a wonderful feeling to be as self-assured as you obviously are and to have ALL the answers readily at your fingertips.

And again, I'm not pointing the finger at any specific person or organization ... but I'm also NOT discounting any credible possibility. I'm merely pointing out the bizarre coincidence and the unusual timing.

reply to post by evilod


yea...

just got done reading the ex-text as well.....

definitely interesting..

reply to post by JPhish


ATS should move.
I hear the neighbors are REALLY nosey busy bodies!

dont think i've ever seen a link for the NSA website posted so how can there
be switching from here to there? i haven 't been to the NSA site that i can remember so
have no idea if they have links to here. but as someone mentioned i would think theyd have
a way to hide their tracks.

can anyone show me an example of a nsa link from here?

That map is flawed. We all know the NSA should be the biggest bubble on that map. EVERYTHING on the Web passes through the NSA spy centers.

Now this is how it really looks: