The FBI, just be glad it's not the CIA.

If it was the NSA you have to wait for Snowden to tell you about it.

@bo_sox,
No, although I find some of the charges against him to be somewhat suspicious. Thanks.

@Tergem,
Seen in a certain light, I'd be more comfortable with the Agency reading my emails than the Bureau. For the Agency to be interested in you, you actually have to have done something relevant to national security post-MKULTRA. The barrier to interest for the Bureau is considerably less, possibly you need only have boosted three or four million in assets to attract their interest.

Or shared files illegally, heh. I feel safer.

@Randomizer
Lulz, my friend. LULZ indeed

Al, the scariest part is that the guy was at my school two years ago. He talked a lot about 9/11. Now I wonder if any of it was classified. (And, MM, if you don't have me muted yet, he said it most certainly *wasn't* a conspiracy and he is an explosives expert...)

The whole child porn thing just makes me laugh because he had the creepy face plus the mustache and a lot of us were joking about him being a creeper - and he was.

@bo

yikes, that is scary.

He's kind of like Dexter.

But it is within the spirit of the game, Al. Why don't you find it funny?

So are you actually going to tell us what happened, Al ?

They also took all his webdip points. Serious stuff.

Holy shit, they did.

So are we going to hear a nice story Al?

It started about a decade ago when one of my friends tipped me off that Yahoo was backdoored. I'd been using Yahoo since the 90's. "Free email for life!" was a rather compelling offer.

That gmail was backdoored seemed almost irrelevant. Google's enterprise network had such a prolific population of malware that I was able to safely estimate than more than a dozen criminal groups had full access to most gmail accounts. And then the revelations of the Aurora affair, it seemed that *everyone* could read gmail.

After an extensive search, Tormail really seemed the best available alternative. For those of you knew to that sort of thing, what this means is that I happened to be using the same email server as a colorful variety of people, including various mundane civilians, privacy enthusiasts, criminals, drug dealers, democracy advocates and other vermin who had chosen to use the service. Please note that by using the service, I was not endorsing their sundry misbehaviors. Rather, various problems with the remaining services had forced my hand.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say.

All seemed well and good for a number of years. One day, I went to check my email as usual, and the service was down. Soon after it was revealed to the world that Eric Marques had been arrested, an Irish free-speech advocate who had been secretly providing web hosting to all-comers. In fact it made the news.

During the course of this it was discovered that not only had the FBI hacked the mail server, but they had attempted to hack my computer system as well. One can rest assured that they were not after me. Probably they were after drug dealers. I was collateral damage.

Or would have been, except that the FBI were unable to hack my computer. They don't know how, either to find the computer or to hack it. I had avoided mentioning this to you guys earlier because I hadn't wanted to alarm you. Thank you for your concern, but it seems as though things will be fine.

Mostly, I wanted the young people here to hear this, so that you can know that these sorts of things affect every day people. History isn't just something you read about in books, it's happening all around you.

And, may I ask (purely from an IT expert's curiosity), how you know someone attempted to hack you computer *and* how you know it was the FBI?

'Eric Marques had been arrested' - is the story that he shutdown tormail to prevent the FBI (or anyone else) from getting access to the email services?

Even if true, it doesn't mean Al's account was ever hacked and as far as his home computer goes, that has shit to do with the mail service. So I'm calling bullshit on the last part of Al's story.

@Draugnar,

I'm writing this story for my friends here. I'm not asking you to believe it. I don't have to prove myself to you. Honestly, I think you're a cool enough guy but by our age you seem far too argumentative. I'm not going to try to prove myself to you, because I'm not accountable to you.

The problem with the young people, and here I'll lump you in with them, is that you guys all lack imagination. Even if not true, this should be seen as an interesting story. Most of you have no concept of allusion, metaphor and allegory, which means that high school has failed you. Did the story fail to entertain you? That would be something that I would take more seriously.

Everytime someone on here tells a good joke, three or four nerds completely miss the point, and instead argue about basic premise related to the joke.

On the rare occasion that someone tells a good story, you get three or four of the same nerds questioning the reality of the story rather than being entertained or enlightened. Essentially missing the point.

You know I basically respect, even like you but you need to mellow out. You're an old man. You've a right to be cranky, but not uptight.

I'd offer you a Valium but I feel like you'd just take the pill in your hand, shake it skeptically and be like "I don't think there's real valium in here!" My point is that maybe there isn't, I just don't feel like arguing with you about it.

No one questions the reality of your stories, for the simple reason that they're too mundane. In the same way that an idiot who keeps loosing at poker assumes everyone better than him must be cheating, you assume everyone having more fun than you must be lying about it.

Weren't you in the military at some point? I've wanted a story from you for months but was afraid to bring it up. So here goes. Story please, and feel free to embellish.

Sorry you didn't like my story. Sorry you're always in a cranky mood. And sorry for partying.

I don't speek of my service. You will not get "stories" from me. And yes, I speak the truth with a rare bit of exaggerated hyperbole, but I was taking you at your word that this actually happened. I remember carnivore and I know the FBI has doen a *lot* of sniffing, but when your tale got so fanciful, I'd prefer it if you made it clear it *was* allegory and not try to pass it off as factual.

Your story reminds of that line from Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5.

"It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

@orthaic,

Thanks for asking. No, here are the facts as I understand them, taken mostly from media sources. Marques was basically the same sort of guy as Snowden, Manning, or Assange. He's an advocate of free speech, and government accountability. In much the same way that the aforementioned people are controversial, Marques was controversial as well. He was running a web site that basically used some space-age encryption technology to provide free web hosting to anyone, regardless of content, in a way that no one was able to find it, not even the NSA.

Frankly, I had no idea that my email was being hosted on his (Freedom Hosting) servers. As far as I know some other nerd was running the email software.

One day, a US government agency, probably the FBI, figured out how to hack his server, thereby locating it. Thereby locating him. They got in touch with Irish government, and worked out a deal to get access to the server. Somebody (possibly the FBI) then used the server to attempt to load viruses onto people's computer. Those are the known facts.

The rest is speculation. I feel I can safely speculate that the FBI were not after me. I'm a fat old man who spends about 80% of his time these days on video games. Most likely they were after drug dealers. While I'm not really puritanical about those sorts of things, I certainly won't shed any tears if the FBI arrests a bunch of drug dealers.

What makes the entire story interesting, perhaps controversial, is not that the people responsible (the FBI?) were hacking computers to get at evidence. They've been doing that for years, and I haven't anything bad to say about the practice.

What makes the story controversial is that they were so willing to hack hundreds (thousands?) of civilians in the process (like myself, heh). I'll stop short of complaining. I just think it's odd.

I think you might be confusing Lavabit with Tormail. I've never used Lavabit. Lavabit was the one that was (voluntarily) shut down because the guys running it didn't feel like helping the government help Snowden's email. I don't really believe that the two cases are related, although there are various conspiracy theories circulating.

Marques didn't voluntarily shut down his service. The first he probably knew about anything was when he was slapped in handcuffs. For what it's worth, I don't think he's as bad as people are making him out to be.

But I don't want to endorse his actions. If I were running a web server, I personally wouldn't allow unlimited free speech. I would probably ban pornography, for example. I don't really have anything against pornography, I just think it's important to have standards.

Thanks Al, yeah i was mixing up the two cases. I hadn't heard about the Marques case.

Lol, you don't really have anything against pornography, you just think it's important to have standards. That's a new one for me.

I sort of like the casual touch to it though. So many people just make a big deal out of everything these days (not like I know any other days).