I am Christian. I am Republican. I am born and reared in the United States all my life from generations of Americans (albeit they came over on a slave ship). I am sure there are more Americans like me who want to be of help, but fear getting caught up in a new governmental format that seems to suggest, "Guilty until proven innocent."
Before I even saw that newspaper story, I had wondered why all the computer hackers could not come together and help our government agencies put a direct line from here to Osama Bin Ladin and/or Al Zahwari. With all of their various taped transmissions they have sent and those websites and bulletin boards they are said to post to, I have to believe that by now somebody should have been able to identify their location and to either monitor their comings and goings and heinous plans and/or shut them down and shut them up and shut them off, permanently.
I would sure like to contact Homeland Security and ask them why they do not do that (if they are not doing it), but somehow I do not think they want to know what American citizens think.
By the way, I was in a local post office earlier this week and a black leather computer bag was left out in the open by the window. I kept watching to see if anybody was going to retrieve the bag. As I looked around, I saw nobody who appeared even remotely connected to the bag. By the time I got up to the window to be waited on, it was still there. After I received my stamps, I asked the postal clerk if she knew whose bag that was. I explained to her it had been sitting there unattended. Then I felt obligated to explain (or mumble something) about Homeland Security and citizens on the lookout for suspicious things. I felt like she might have thought I was paranoid. But she looked over my shoulder and saw the bag and seemed startled. And she said, I'll get somebody out here. By the time I left, the bag was still sitting unattended in the same place. I went to my car praying nothing would happen to either that post office or any other building in this country. Don't scoff. There are a whole lot of devious minds and we have seen that we cannot discount anything we feel inside of us that is not right.
But I digress. Now, back to the subject. A snippet from the L.A. Times about a hacker who was arrested. Now why couldn't they have used him to track down terrorists? The quote follows:
According to Secret Service investigators and T-Mobile, (Nicholas, 21 years old) Jacobsen looked at information from 400 customer accounts and offered to give other hackers access to many more among the wireless carrier's 16 million users. Investigators said he could access voice messages and e-mail of any customer whose cell phone number he knew.Investigators said that some in Jacobsen's circle trafficked in credit cards and other personal information used for fraud, though Jacobsen had no access to T-Mobile credit card data. The Secret Service said Jacobsen even read e-mails from one of its agents. He also reportedly looked at pictures snapped with T-Mobile Sidekick communicators. Jacobsen was betrayed by an informant inside a major fraud ring shut down in October, court records say.
source: LA Times, Friday, January 15, 2005.
P.S. I just came across The Ward Report (Don's Political Blog post) In his article, entitled, "It's Unbelievable," he has highlighted a large part of this government's computer tracking problem. This is A Must Read!
