Normally I would think institutions such as the military, police, Dept of Homeland Security would more or less jive with me in that these tend to be more upstanding, less-corrupted institutions. ie-I could hang out with soldiers, cops and special agents and be just fine.
But with the DHS under Obama and government workers being unionized and all, I get a little leery when I see the DHS scanning my site for 4 hours.
I'll let you know if I end up on an abandoned oil rig out in the ocean somewhere...or...well, maybe not.
hmmm... maybe it is just devout Capitalist economic conservative reading your posts on a 4 hour lunch break...
ReplyDeleteor maybe Janet Napaletano has a crush on you!
I'm not sure who got who here. That's pretty cool tracking.
ReplyDeleteI did a quick search on the rippers browser and while I found little about it, you are not the only site that has reported being accessed by the Feds. And yes, it does sound like they crawling the site and gathering what's there.
I did find a reference that ripper is used to copy everything on a website for later reading/browsing or possibly data mining. Various Federal agencies were reported to use as well as one guy reported that a Chinese military intel unit and Goldman Sachs. WTF?
Obviously whoever is using it from the DHS didn't bother to make any effort at covering their tracks
Given how the Obama administration has behaved, I'm certain this information will be used properly and in accordance with all applicable laws.
/s/a/r/c/a/s/m/ /n/o/t/e/d/
Hopefully its someone at homeland who was bored and just likes your site. It might be good news. Or they saw your story about an Arab prince
ReplyDeletejust wait until you get an "anal" probe.....
ReplyDeleteTwo possibilities: 1: you are totally and royally screwed - they are coming after you, or 2: a typical government employee has to spend there 4 hour "work day" doing something.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to take a wild one here and guess you got caught in some "Saudi"-filter, which signaled further investigation needed.
ReplyDeleteHell, anyone writing anything on the internet is at risk of being put in prison in the coming years - the whole world is turning Chinese.
At least they haven't enabled that internet kill switch yet. Or have they .... ?
If i recall correctly, www.zerohedge.com got scanned by that same dhs server a few times too.
ReplyDeleteOh, and you might enjoy that economics blog.
You know, laughing while rome burns and all.
Could be the Saudi royal family posts triggered some bot, and they decided to take a closer look.
ReplyDeleteWould not worry just yet.
They would use a proxy server if they were really doing surveillance. Their IT folks are much smarter than the average employee.
ReplyDeleteSome DHS employee probably did a search, found your page, and left it open. I leave pages up all the time after I've read them.
If you see the same IP address going from post to post and copying pictures, then you might have identified some interest, not necessarily bad.
My blog had several hits from the House of Representatives. Once I got an email from Nancy Pelosi's office shortly after I wrote a scathing blog post about her policies. Somebody was letting me know they were watching. I was flattered they thought I was important enough to throw ice cubes at.