Who knows?

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One question that concerns me about ordering food storage is that of WHO KNOWS. Can the govt. peek into the company's files and gather names? According to Janet Reno, anyone who stores a large supply of food is akin to a terrorist. Gathering the names could be done under some kind of anti-terrorist guise, couldn't it?

The post about gold confiscation got me thinking that really the govt can do about anything it wants given the right framework.

-- Kay P (Y2k@usa.net), June 16, 1998

Answers

Dear Kay

I don't think you should worry about it. According to an attorney who spoke at an April Seminar I attended, the FBI has many many millions of files on individuals in the U.S.

My guess would be that since you were smart enough to find this web site, they already have a file on you.

I don't know if it's true, but I have heard that they are able to monitor almost all E mail for threats made against the President. Big brother is watching.

The funny thing is that in all likelihood, on 1/1/2000, they will lose access to everything they have on their mainframe database. Right now, I hear it's 50/50 whether they will make it. If that happens, you and I will be two of millions of paper files. Do you know how many warehouses it takes to house millions of paper files? I can't even imagine.

-- Rev. Stephen L. Bening (Gammadim@AOL.com), June 16, 1998.


Kay and Rev. Bening,

Re. FBI files, they're not on paper any more. I saw an interview with Ms. Carolyn G. Morris, the FBI's Assistant Director (Information Resources Division) a couple of years ago. Her division is responsible for maintaining those files. At the time she stated that there were 140 million active files in her databases. This surprised the interviewer enough that he posed the question as to numbers again, and got the same answer. Those files were current from 1980 forward.

Other agencies have large databases too. If you've ever been anywhere or done anything much of note, someone has a file on you. If you didn't know, there are only about 260 million of us Americans out here, so that means there are files on half of us. Probably the adult half.

Don't worry too much about who has files or what they intend to do with them. Make the physical preparations you need to make now, in a time of relative plenty. Keep as low a profile as you can without being so secretive you attract more attention than you otherwise would. Be prepared to cope with whatever you have to- making mental preparations is the most important step of all. And remember- what's right isn't always legal, and what's legal isn't always right. Just do what's right. It'll all work out for the best in the long run.

Think of it as a great big reset button... .

Regards,

LPL

-- Lee P. Lapin (lplapin@hotmail.com), June 17, 1998.


"I don't know if it's true, but I have heard that they are able to monitor almost all E mail for threats made against the President. Big brother is watching." In neighboring New Hampshire, one evening a couple of months ago, a student at a private prep school (very tony, you'd recognize the name) sent an e-mail to another student on the same campus that contained phrases that could be construed as a threat against the Chief Executive. *The next morning* Secret Service agents were on campus to interview both students. This isn't urban myth -- it was reported in my local (Portland Maine) newspaper. It seems that all the e-mail on that campus network went through an off-campus ISP which had a filter on it -- a computer program that automatically keyed in to certain words or phrases among all the millions of e-mail messages going through the ISP. Such surveillance apparently isn't unusual. The Progressive magazine back in the mid-1980s carried several articles about word-recognition computers installed at telephone exchanges in Britain and Germany that scanned telephone calls for certain words. The article said that the exchanges around Washington DC, at the very least, were equipped with similar computers. And e-mail messages are much easier to scan than voice transmissions. The chances are excellent that anyone who has posted to these boards or any of the y2k/survivalist/militia/gun boards, on the Net or AOL or Compuserve, already has an active file somewhere in the federal bureaucracy. Jeez, I wonder what they have on Paul Milne? As a side comment, I notice that the Salt Lake city Tribune has already published an article in its Sunday edition (6/21/98) (Check out the Year 2000 Information Center) identifying the two cop-killers who are hiding in the Utah badlands as y2k survivalist nut cases, with a little Christian Identity thrown in.

-- J.D. Clark (yankeejdc@aol.com), June 22, 1998.

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