Take a deep breath and chill
Retired from mongering but I still read posts. Since BP shut down and another group was arrested in Seattle, mongers have been on edge. (I was one of them until A2 explained why a very small group had been arrested, and that they had conducted activities outside the boundaries of a "chat room".
Some posts have come from fear, paranoia or the belief our "secret lives" will be revealed or we will be prosecuted. Others point out ways to further protect your identity using VPNs, or some other way encript your communications, use burner phones when contacting dates, or coded wording when posting on USASG.
It has been stated (I believe correctly) that no national agency is coming after all of the mongers that post on sex forums. The numbers are simply too large, the financial and political impact would be too great to "out" all participants.
My concern is more on the local level and the possibility of shared intel between national agencies and local level law enforcement. If information were shared, certain communities would be effected whereas others would not. (For example, Polk County might go after participants whereas Dade County would not.
Having servers in Germany, and living in South America may shield the operators of this site, however that same protection is not guaranteed for the participants that post activities that are illegal in your area.
All foreign information coming into and leaving the USA is monitored by NSA. All fiber optics are monitored at three ports of entry. Each fiber is fed to a prism that splits the information into two paths without interrupting normal traffic. Two identical paths are created with one entering NSA super computers that scan all data for "key" words, code, or data. All ISPs are logged and all information is recorded. Simple emails, chat room information, ascii files are scanned. In short, nothing leaves or enters this country via fiber, cable, satellite, cell, or any other means of communication that is not monitored.
Having said all of that, your information, I'd, and anything you have posted has already been scanned, and most likely meta-tagged and stored under a file with your name on it. Leaving this (or any other site) will not change what has already been sent. A2 deleting all your files and your membership will not change what has already been sent.
On the domestic level, your fingerprint is everywhere. Search engines seek out and log trillions of bytes of data each day. Google (as an example) mines this information so they can sell advertising targeting you. Email lists are bought and sold (in case you ever wondered where all that sex spam comes from), however the REAL danger is the data mining itself. Google can determine your habits, what you like to eat, where you like to eat, what movies you watch, your political leanings, beliefs, etc, etc, etc.
Data mining is done for security reasons by NSA. Data mining is done by Google because it is profitable. Neither entity has interests in mining data to filter and provide a list of all those who have broken minor laws. Data mining itself has not been perfected. It is under constant development to improve its ability for grab pertinent information.
For those that are paranoid, change your identity and move to a country that does not have extradition treaties with the USA.
(Find one that is so poor, they do know what a computer is). For the rest of us, be content to know that you have rights that protect you under the US Constitution. Should our country fail to function under the Constitution of the United States, we have bigger problems to worry about.
[blue]You make a lot of good points, here's the thing, the NSA is the only people who can do what you're saying and you are correct there is no hiding from the NSA. If they ever get involved in sniffing out misdemeanor offenses you guys are fucked.
Though I would say if you're bouncing your shit off of a foreign VPN then that gets tough for them to do what you're saying. Most VPN's encrypt everything once you log into them, Yes, if you ever become a point of interest to the NSA no question they can break that but decrypting then decoding all traffic without the key is another story. The NSA records and stores it in that new data center in Utah.
To the guy who said "sounds like they were hacked" no, traffic doubled when BP went down
A2[/blue]
