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One of my complaints about privacy and digital hygiene obsession that's so in vogue with early middle aged white people is that they all appear to believe that they're subversives, potential enemies of the state, and that they best adopt Signal for e2e messaging privacy, and use VPNs to avoid tracking, and limit their socials, etc.
There are other reasons to care about digital hygiene, but the most anodyne people worrying that the FBI is maintaining a dossier about them is probably an effect of five decades of media obsession with counter-culture and rebellion.
My friend I literally just linked an article last week about the FBI skimming through everyone's credit card purchases for "suspicious activity."
Sure, but there's a >99.999% chance the people worried about this don't do anything edgy or counter-culture enough for the FBI to look twice at.
People here don't buy guns or gun accessories that the Biden administration is trying to use administrative procedure to make retroactively illegal?
People here don't read books the FBI considers "warning signs of domestic extremism" such that buying them puts you on an investigation list? We didn't have literally a thread about those books a few months ago?
FC might have something to say about that.
Citation linked for the 5th time btw because apparently nobody ever reads them or just pretends it never happened EVERY SINGLE TIME
Hold up. What's the specific claim? I'm not a huge guns guy but I do remember having to submit to a background check for both a rifle and a handgun. Additionally, I understand if I purchase a suppressor this requires multiple submittals to various agencies. I fully understand and don't really... worry... that they know all about my gun life? What impact is a consumer VPN service or switching to Signal going to have on any of this? What does the FBI scanning bank records have to do with this?
SteveKirk believes, with fairly credible reason, that the federal and some state governments is working in coordination with various online and meatspace merchants to track the sales of major firearm components, in an attempt to track down people who are manufacturing 3d printed or other self-produced guns.
((And while SteveKirk hasn't said it explicitly, I think the feds probably also are trying to track down likely owners of guns sold in private sales who use them enough to modify or require repairs of major components, for both manufacturing charges and to prepare state efforts trying to 'close' private sales or interstate or unregistered ammunition sales, such as California and New York.))
This is bad enough in the sense that it's not actually illegal in many jurisdictions that it's being covered in, and plausibly unconstitutional even in the states that do ban it, but that's just the surface level problem. If you own a 3d printer and normally-bought guns that you're maintaining without producing any 3d-printed weapons, you might avoid a conviction (or even a trial!) should a bunch of ATF agents break down your door looking for guns, but it won't bring your dog back to life. Same for stuff that 'looks like' silencer material.
There are also bump stock or (more often) pistol brace components that have been retroactively banned, after long periods where the ATF claimed they were legal, in ways quite a lot of gun owners who own these things -- and might put photos that get auto-cloud-uploaded, if they're particularly unlucky -- may not know they have been banned.
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Do you also complain about people buying insurance? The chances of your house being set on fire or destroyed are vanishingly small, so these people are just throwing money away for no good reason. Similarly, why waste time putting on a seatbelt when going for a drive? You're probably not going to be in a crash after all, so why subject yourself to the discomfort and wasted time?
Information security and privacy are probably not going to be terribly important for the average person, but you don't know if you're going to be in the minority for whom it becomes exceedingly important and the techniques used to protect yourself cannot be applied retroactively.
I guess I consider the odds that your online communications will be intercepted and used against you are much, much more unlikely than your house burning down or being in a car accident.
I think this is because in the back of my mind I don't expect to receive at any time a call that we must start pitching molotov cocktails at the courts and then escape the state's retribution, whereas I suspect deep down a lot of people harbor that feeling. Or some other fanciful counter-cultural notion. And in that case I will regret not having swung everything over to Signal several years prior.
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In the current political climate, early middle age white people are probably more likely to be an FBI target than almost anyone else. It's hard to accuse a trans black woman of being a white supremacist. Also, they probably have more to lose from an FBI investigation than anyone else; you can't lose your job or family if you don't have one.
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Nevertheless, the FBI (or some three-letter agency) is indeed maintaining a dossier about them. It's just a very boring dossier.
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