I’ve had the Secret Service visit me at work for something I posted on FreeRepublic. I had overheard someone at work say something that I thought sounded like a threat against President Bush, so I posted here on FR asking for advice. Once I was convinced that I needed to report it, I had the mods remove my post, and I immediately called the USSS office in Orlando. I felt that it was time sensitive, since President Bush was coming to Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500 and this guy at work had said he “bought a gun for the occasion.”. The Secret Service office in Orlando took the info and said someone would get back to me. Someone finally came to my office at work, asking about me, and I talked with him on the phone. It turned out that he was NOT following up on my call to the Orlando office, but was instead following up on my post here on FR. They had subpoenaed the records from JimRob and tracked me down, apparently through my Social Security records or something.
A lot of people wonder who “asked me to quit posting on FR”. You can guess now.
LOL!
From your post in 2004:
At this point, I felt that I had to tell our Chief Operating Officer what was happening. I was a little disappointed that [USSS Agent] PC hadn’t just gone to the guy’s home over the weekend instead of waiting and coming to the workplace, but I figured our COO should know that a USSS agent might be showing up at the job site that day to see this employee, so I told him the whole story. He had a strange look on his face and he said “Well, let me tell you what I know. This morning, during our meeting, two Homeland Security ‘suits’ showed up at the site flashing pictures of you and [employee_name]” and saying they needed to talk to you both.” He went on to say “…any idea you might have had that this would be anonymous was wrong.”
Probably was your IP, not your SSN, however.
That is disturbing. IT would show then a trend of laziness and bias. You’re lucky they did not haul you off because apparently they did not want to keep your credit of calling them alive.
Not a first time government does not debauche science, authority, snooping and weapons of all kinds.
The TSA’s gropping abuse scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. I am seriously worried about the health of the spiritual soul of our government agents. THey need help. Could they be like Romney, with “Cult Secrets” and voices in their heads?
No, I had not been frog-marched in there on an anonymous tip. I volunteered to drive myself over to their office and they said “Come on down!” I told them that President Bush might be in danger in a manner that they might not have anticipated...and no, it did NOT involve a fellow liberal high school classmate...although the thought of reporting his did cross my mind from time to time, given the Bush Derangement Syndrome on display on occasion.
In that room, I explained to two Secret Service agents that Bush could be attacked in a manner that neither the government nor the general public appeared to be aware of...at least from what I could see on the web.
Once they had determined that I was not personally planning such an attack, they accepted some paperwork analysis that I brought with me and then escorted me back to my car where they requested that I allow them to examine the contents of my trunk, which I permitted. I had told them, only partially in jest, that bipolar mania with delusions ran in my family. Their parting words to me were “Mr. Seizethecarp, you might want to get your meds checked.”
I was subsequently able to get a branch of the military to take my speculations seriously, and a high level research director called me to thank me personally for making them aware of the danger.
Last December, after keeping silent for six years, a terrorist incident very close to my speculations prompted me to publish my presidential danger scenario here on FR in a thread, but it was pulled as suspected “loose lips.”
Sometimes there is not a hard line between “loose lips” and “forewarned is forearmed.”
While I was withholding my information from the public I found that the DOD does extensive research on how the president and the US public could be endangered by new technology or tactics and then makes those studies public, so long as secret technologies are not revealed.
By making attack scenarios public, the public can be enlisted to look out for suspicious persons who appear to be enabling themselves to make an attack. I regard my FR vanity as falling into that category, but that is not my call.
Before going public, I had to ask myself "Would I feel worse if a terrorist used my ideas, but at least there had been a chance for defenses to be prepared, or would I feel worse if a terrorist figured out the same vulnerability to an attack that I had imagined and then carried out a successful attack, but because neither I nor the government had not warned to public, the public had been unable to assist in thwarting the attack because they didn't know what to look for?"
Prior to the 911 attacks, there were countless US citizens who could have intervened to uncover the 911 plot if it had not been for "a failure of imagination" that such an audacious attack was possible and which persons to look for to keep an eye out for as persons engaging in suspicious activity. My attack scenario endangers not only the president but the general public as well.
While defensive measures can likely be concentrated on protecting the president from my imagined attack by augmenting existing protections in secret, IMO there is no way that the general public can be protected without getting the word out to the public on what to look for and undertaking expensive new measures.
While I would hope that the Admin Mods here on FR would lift the block on my thread, I understand there sensitivity and I can and have used other internet channels and a blog under the name "2branta" to get my information out there. For an idea striking enough to get pulled from FR, it has generated little buzz, so far, other than a "Thank you" from a Christian Science Monitor reporter, and a "This may be a real threat, but we better not discuss it" from a prominent high-tech entrepreneur, but time will tell.
Interesting what you tell. If I read correctly your saying info on all persons posting on FR are open to the Feds, it is only to FR readers that personal information is secured. Inquiring minds need to know. In my case I don’t really give a darn because I think I have served this Nation honorably and long enough to make a public noise if circumstances warrant such.