As an aside, FR is one of the top conservative sites on the net. So yes, the FIB, ATF, etc monitor it. Probably have bots running, surveiling every post for keywords and sentence fragments to be analyzed at length. OK, no surprise.
But I am also convinced that China has spies here as well, sleeper freepers. They would be fools not to. That would explain the vitriolic over reaction referened above. This was a China coup—hardware hacked every server, sent data to thier spy agencies. Imbedded hardware bots in servers phoning home, with anything they desired.
I’ve always assumed, back to the 90s and Usenet, that I and everyone else online is being ‘spied’ upon.
You pays her money and you takes yer chance...
Here I was going to change my handle to SleeperFreeper and you tainted it. I'll be branded a Chinese spy and I don't even speak Mandarin. What a way to crush my dreams.
Some years back, I had software that ID’d every attempt to put software on my computer. I took a screenshot of the attempts.
One was a pop-up of an Obama campaign org. trying to install cookies with a Free Republic thread about recipes in the background.